Winter in the Land of my Bikes & Wife
- Thread starter Norm
- Start date
walter
Fourth Party
Thursday December 16th
It turns out that I’m probably going to have a handful of pint glasses left when this fundraiser nonsense is said and done. I was going to give one to Chainsaw, but after that useless comment my man is at the bottom of the barrel now. I’m hooking Walter up with one because he’s the man, one of our longest supporters, and offered to help dole out some of the MTBNJ swag once I figure out where it all needs to go. I think I’m going to have Walter over for a beer and we’ll smash one of the pint glasses in the street, then pour some beer on it. I took Dustin out of the will too.
Note that nonsense here means coordinating with 103 (or more) people who donated is making me bald faster than I already was.
Glad to see some of you liked the epic reference, though it seems that Kev missed the link. Not sure how a big blue bold link can be missed, but there you go. Utah sent that to me yesterday and it was truly LOL-worthy in spots. I read some of his other stuff, like this, which the regulars of that site will have seen but is worth watching again. Points to Jimmy for using it in a sentence, even if he does break his wrist rolling over when he wakes up every morning, or afternoon sometimes.
Maybe on the justin.tv but only when I’m in Taipei. Just for the sake of making sure we’re all on the same page, I’ve drawn a map for everyone to follow along with. As a reference, it’s about twice the size of NJ, with most of the island being uninhabitable. Population is something like 25 million:
So when up up top we’ll have wifi. When we’re in Luodong, I have no idea. And when I’m out biking in the Carnage there’s like an 8% chance I disappear among a wave of dirt and rocks. If that happens, give Dustin a pint glass.
I have the vholdr with both a helmet and bar mount, plus a few different digital cameras I’ll have with me. Being that it rains most of the time I don’t think I’ll be doing much off-road riding, if any at all. But the Carnage roads may turn out to be that anyway. It would really be interesting (read: it would suck) if I was doing one of these monster rides and I got caught in an earthquake. Damn you’d never hear the end of that if I really got caught in it. I’d probably piss & shit myself and forget to turn on the video though.
I gave up the Chinese about a month ago. I may pick it up when I get there, but with the Everlasting Cold I was just living under a cloud and learning a totally incomprehensible language in that state is nearly impossible. My boss is now dating a Chinese woman and asked me how the hell I deal with trying to learn the language. Unless you’ve tried, it’s impossible to understand what I'm saying. Having said that, I know enough to live there. I can ask for a bathroom (ce suo zai na li?) or tell you that your ass is big (ni you hen da de pi gu). I got the basics covered. But I fear I’ll never really move on from a 3rd grade level, and that’s on a good day.
So an example, check the first 20 seconds of this video. The teaching stuff is cake. I mean if everyone talked like that it would be easy. But this gibberish is more like normal conversation, which I can understand almost none of. I mean I pick up little slices here and there, like when the UFO lights stop I hear someone say the shit disappeared but it’s pretty obvious, you know? So when I go to get coffee and the guy holds up a milk container and asks something, I usually know he just asked me for milk. If he held up the milk container and asked me for a date, I might be in trouble. Well not really, as I drink my coffee black. I guess he could go all double negative on me.
To Walter, most people do, in fact, assume she’s black. But yeah, she’s from Taiwan. I chose to go with the bikes in the title first because a) I have more of them and b) she’ll never read this. I don’t really know about the wife producing capabilities of the island, though if they do produce them, I'm sure they come from the Left Coast, which is where we never go because most of the population is there and it's just too damn crowded.
While Ilya doesn’t like this format I find it easier to write because I can just go, and don’t much need to think about what I’m writing. This is somewhat key, as some of you will notice that there hasn’t actually been any mention of bikes, or riding bikes at all, in this post. Currently the time is 1:47 pm and I had every intention of getting outside today. But I’m still in my sleep clothes and need to make the best of it, so I’m likely on the trainer again in about 15 minutes. I’m sure you’ll read about it in a moment.
-->”the break”<--
See what I did there?
Ok, I just used 2 lame-ass Internet blogging widgets that I can’t stomach. The first being, “the break”. People say stupid ass shit like, “Yeah I went to McDonald's last night. More after the break.” They will then start a new paragraph and say, “I ate 7 cheeseburgers.” This brilliant generation of bloggers thinks that the word “paragraph” is too arcane and have renamed it “the break.” More on the second one after the break.
The second one is saying, “See what I did there?” Translation: I’m either too lazy to write something that makes sense, or I’m so insecure in myself that I need to point out that I may have sort of sniffed a clever thought a few minutes ago. But either way, I’m sure you didn’t get it because I was so incoherent in what I wrote that you never would have gotten the correlation, and I need you to recognize my genius.
Ok, enough of that. I know Pearl will take exception to that. But he eats 3 meals a day at Quick Chek and robs cars with fat chicks so what does he know?
I let the day get away from me again today so I had to settle for the trainer because I needed to take a break every 15 minutes and reply to email. We have a sort of prod issue and I have to keep on top of it. I was hoping to get outside today but the snow on the ground really turned me off to going out and I just stared blankly out the window most of the day instead of actually riding. I only ate 2 cookies though.
Tomorrow I’ll do something, or not. I’m really being a wimp when it comes to riding outside right now. You guys want me to be human, well I haven’t ridden a bike outside since the last Horseshoe race. And for sure I must have consumed 50 cookies since then. For real.
It turns out that I’m probably going to have a handful of pint glasses left when this fundraiser nonsense is said and done. I was going to give one to Chainsaw, but after that useless comment my man is at the bottom of the barrel now. I’m hooking Walter up with one because he’s the man, one of our longest supporters, and offered to help dole out some of the MTBNJ swag once I figure out where it all needs to go. I think I’m going to have Walter over for a beer and we’ll smash one of the pint glasses in the street, then pour some beer on it. I took Dustin out of the will too.
Note that nonsense here means coordinating with 103 (or more) people who donated is making me bald faster than I already was.
Glad to see some of you liked the epic reference, though it seems that Kev missed the link. Not sure how a big blue bold link can be missed, but there you go. Utah sent that to me yesterday and it was truly LOL-worthy in spots. I read some of his other stuff, like this, which the regulars of that site will have seen but is worth watching again. Points to Jimmy for using it in a sentence, even if he does break his wrist rolling over when he wakes up every morning, or afternoon sometimes.
Maybe on the justin.tv but only when I’m in Taipei. Just for the sake of making sure we’re all on the same page, I’ve drawn a map for everyone to follow along with. As a reference, it’s about twice the size of NJ, with most of the island being uninhabitable. Population is something like 25 million:
So when up up top we’ll have wifi. When we’re in Luodong, I have no idea. And when I’m out biking in the Carnage there’s like an 8% chance I disappear among a wave of dirt and rocks. If that happens, give Dustin a pint glass.
I have the vholdr with both a helmet and bar mount, plus a few different digital cameras I’ll have with me. Being that it rains most of the time I don’t think I’ll be doing much off-road riding, if any at all. But the Carnage roads may turn out to be that anyway. It would really be interesting (read: it would suck) if I was doing one of these monster rides and I got caught in an earthquake. Damn you’d never hear the end of that if I really got caught in it. I’d probably piss & shit myself and forget to turn on the video though.
I gave up the Chinese about a month ago. I may pick it up when I get there, but with the Everlasting Cold I was just living under a cloud and learning a totally incomprehensible language in that state is nearly impossible. My boss is now dating a Chinese woman and asked me how the hell I deal with trying to learn the language. Unless you’ve tried, it’s impossible to understand what I'm saying. Having said that, I know enough to live there. I can ask for a bathroom (ce suo zai na li?) or tell you that your ass is big (ni you hen da de pi gu). I got the basics covered. But I fear I’ll never really move on from a 3rd grade level, and that’s on a good day.
So an example, check the first 20 seconds of this video. The teaching stuff is cake. I mean if everyone talked like that it would be easy. But this gibberish is more like normal conversation, which I can understand almost none of. I mean I pick up little slices here and there, like when the UFO lights stop I hear someone say the shit disappeared but it’s pretty obvious, you know? So when I go to get coffee and the guy holds up a milk container and asks something, I usually know he just asked me for milk. If he held up the milk container and asked me for a date, I might be in trouble. Well not really, as I drink my coffee black. I guess he could go all double negative on me.
To Walter, most people do, in fact, assume she’s black. But yeah, she’s from Taiwan. I chose to go with the bikes in the title first because a) I have more of them and b) she’ll never read this. I don’t really know about the wife producing capabilities of the island, though if they do produce them, I'm sure they come from the Left Coast, which is where we never go because most of the population is there and it's just too damn crowded.
While Ilya doesn’t like this format I find it easier to write because I can just go, and don’t much need to think about what I’m writing. This is somewhat key, as some of you will notice that there hasn’t actually been any mention of bikes, or riding bikes at all, in this post. Currently the time is 1:47 pm and I had every intention of getting outside today. But I’m still in my sleep clothes and need to make the best of it, so I’m likely on the trainer again in about 15 minutes. I’m sure you’ll read about it in a moment.
-->”the break”<--
See what I did there?
Ok, I just used 2 lame-ass Internet blogging widgets that I can’t stomach. The first being, “the break”. People say stupid ass shit like, “Yeah I went to McDonald's last night. More after the break.” They will then start a new paragraph and say, “I ate 7 cheeseburgers.” This brilliant generation of bloggers thinks that the word “paragraph” is too arcane and have renamed it “the break.” More on the second one after the break.
The second one is saying, “See what I did there?” Translation: I’m either too lazy to write something that makes sense, or I’m so insecure in myself that I need to point out that I may have sort of sniffed a clever thought a few minutes ago. But either way, I’m sure you didn’t get it because I was so incoherent in what I wrote that you never would have gotten the correlation, and I need you to recognize my genius.
Ok, enough of that. I know Pearl will take exception to that. But he eats 3 meals a day at Quick Chek and robs cars with fat chicks so what does he know?
I let the day get away from me again today so I had to settle for the trainer because I needed to take a break every 15 minutes and reply to email. We have a sort of prod issue and I have to keep on top of it. I was hoping to get outside today but the snow on the ground really turned me off to going out and I just stared blankly out the window most of the day instead of actually riding. I only ate 2 cookies though.
Tomorrow I’ll do something, or not. I’m really being a wimp when it comes to riding outside right now. You guys want me to be human, well I haven’t ridden a bike outside since the last Horseshoe race. And for sure I must have consumed 50 cookies since then. For real.
That map rules! This reminds me of this classic -
Seems pretty damn accurate to me, commie.
walter
Fourth Party
am I the only one who laughed at the fact that his map says "dong" (well, kinda)
Im here for ya pal. I would like to say that the last time Norm and crew went to Taiwan, I was just about to have my shoulder surgery and I want to say Norm either called me from Taiwan or called me soon after arriving in the US of A to see how I was doing. Maybe not, but I was pretty stoked that he called whatever the situation was.
you know my deal, lemme know when you get all that stuff ready to go.
Im here for ya pal. I would like to say that the last time Norm and crew went to Taiwan, I was just about to have my shoulder surgery and I want to say Norm either called me from Taiwan or called me soon after arriving in the US of A to see how I was doing. Maybe not, but I was pretty stoked that he called whatever the situation was.
you know my deal, lemme know when you get all that stuff ready to go.
soulchild
Well-Known Member
wow... so not only do you have to learn the language... but you need to learn it in multiple variations of intonation and pitch?!?!? oh hell to the no... you sir are a better man than I...
I'll stick to languages that I am capable of both ordering food and cursing in like English & Spanish :getsome:
This is far better than TV. I'm on lesson 3 with Yang-Yang!😀
THATmanMANNY
Well-Known Member
Btw that pic of your daughter and pink socks on FB is cute. Mixed children rock! By the way things been going with me ill have one of my own. Also my nephew is full blown 100% chinese so the lineage continues. I hope my children are trilingual with girlfriend slash future whatevers sister being a spanish teacher and all. I also utilized my chinese in c town last week. It was nice getting a bigger discount when youre not white washed.
That map rules! This reminds me of this classic -
i have this map on the wall in my office right under my "yankees suck" sticker.
Friday December 17th
Did I mention I really like this new format? Colin has it a bit right, but more than that is the fact that I can just sit down and write this way. It appears that my bike training blog has turned into my old blog, at least for now. So just FTR, I try to make the most of all the links I post. And since I don’t say, “See what I did there?” that means you may or may not need to click to get it. Ok, I admit that was my way of using that second widget but that’s all I’m going to write about it.
You know what drives me crazy? Rob does. He’s pestering me this morning about how the comments about the bloggers was actually about him. You see what I’m doing here? If Rob annoys me I happily throw him under the bus, in fact I revel in it. I don’t need any underhand jug moves to subversively slag him. He’s been asking me for training advice, and part of me would love to direct him in such a way that he would win a cat 1 race next year. At the same time, I’d never hear the end of it, and I know he would never give me credit. To be fair, he hasn’t been too difficult about the design contest win, but the fat fuck did eat my birthday babka.
Several people commented about the map, which is cool. I wish I was that clever all the time. Unfortunately it only happens once in a blue moon. Well...I think I’m clever and all that, but this mix of people doesn’t necessarily agree with me. I originally wrote don’t and not doesn’t there but caught it. To Colin’s point again, I do try to get it grammatically correct but sometimes it’s just too much effort. Capital and capitol gets me most of the time.
Happy to see Manny still reads, at least sometimes. I figured he gave up on me when I never made it down to his dad’s restaurant. It would have been a valid point, I’m a jerk about that. I don’t know why we never made it there, I really don’t. Truth be told, we more or less go around the world to eat good food for 6 weeks (and 2 days). But we can’t go 20 miles south? I’m not sure what’s up with that. I think for both of us, the world somewhat ends south of route 78, the Horseshoe Scramble being excepted for that.
Here’s the picture he’s referring to. I wanted to use this as our Xmas card but I wasn’t allowed. Apparently feet and Christmas are mutually exclusive:
You might get a trilingual kid, but what I know of you doesn’t bode well. You’re pretty much like my wife. I don’t know if you’re ABC or not, but you both more or less act that part. Our daughter doesn’t speak much Chiniese/Taiwanese at all. And that video up there popped up when I search for ABC. It’s just too rich not to post. The Internet is a bottomless pit of entertainment, keyword “pit”.
No, there are no Quik Checks in Taiwan (that I remember), but the place is a bastion of 7-11s. There was a spot near my BIL’s old apartment where you could stand and actually see 3 different 7-11s. From wikipedia (stuff it Robin this isn’t a class project), Taiwan leads the world in 7-11s per human, with one 7-11 per 6200 people. As a comparison the US has 48,000+ per store.
This is not atypical in Taiwan:
And Lou has it right, you need to learn the tones for each word, and there are 4 basic tones. So the sentences I wrote above actually have tones, which I won’t go into because it would be pointless. It’s kinda like the different ways to say dude. Too lazy to find a video for that. To put it in more concrete terms, I’ve seen these language indexes which tell you basically how hard other languages are to learn. The typical Euro language like Spanish/Italian/French is something in the .9-1.2 range, IIRC. The Eastern languages are just short of 5. Essentially, it takes 5 times as long to learn Eastern languages. Again Wikipedia backs me up (hugs and kisses Robin). Mandarin is listed in the top 5 most difficult to learn for a native English speaker. The others are Arabic, Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean.
Finally today I think I’m at least 98% back to normal and the idea of riding my bike outside didn’t make me shiver with chills and eat more cookies. I took the road bike off the trainer and went to change the tires to a set of the Kenda C2Cs that I had great luck with last winter. Well lo and behold, one of the nipples had popped off the spoke and was bouncing around inside the well of the tire. I tried to get it out, with no luck. However, some random flake-like products did fall out, which kinda concerns me, it being a carbon rim and all. I texted Jim, who of course told me to bring it in tomorrow. In other words, stop whatever it is you’re doing now, and let me look at it. Fair enough. The old Norm would have pulled out the sawzall.
So then I turned to the Fuji cx bike which is still filthy from the race season, and started to take that apart a bit while on a conference call for work. One of my RD pulleys is frozen solid and no amount of taking it apart and greasing it helps. I can get it to spin freely if I don’t tighten it all the way, but we all know how that will turn out, especially since I want to take this bike to Taiwan with me.
So a quick scoreboard. I have 7 bikes but only 2 are fully operational right now, the geared race Niner and Big Red, the SS Niner. Determined to go outside today, I took the geared Niner out on the road because I needed to get out of this basement. I’m 90% sure I’m going to take the mountain bike out on Sunday, and ride actual dirt trails. I think Bill wants to go but we haven’t exchanged smoke signals on that yet. Well I sent him one, but I think he’s too busy trying to get busy with YangYang.
Cool that Jeff got that Wawayanda race off the ground for next year. That’s not going to be an easy one that’s for sure. 50 miles in there is a solid race.
I applied for Team MTBNJ to be an actual USAC team next year. Of course, I’m playing the role of McChese. As I was filling out the paperwork I was texting Bill, when it struck me that he would be a great Vice McCheese, so from here on in he can be referred to as The Hamburgler or Grimmace.
Kevin (not Kev) asked about food in Taiwan. Seriously, that’s funny. I just asked Nat what percentage our trip is based on food, and she said, ”Less than 50.” Not 5% or 10%, but more like 49.8%, maybe 49.9%. I asked her if the food there were like England, would we go? She did not hesitate in saying no. You Facebook users have seen this, but here’s a bowl of chicken hearts I had the other day. This is what you’re going to get 6 weeks of starting soon:
For real, how am I going to go over there and come back in race shape?
This weekend I’m on-call which means tomorrow I’m a house junkie. I’ll possibly hit the trainer in the morning with the Fuji, but I need to tweak it so it actually works, which shouldn’t be too too hard. I need to get that to be a reliably functioning road worthy bike though I’m not sure I’ll get that shifter working before I go. I’m strongly considering bringing the pt wheel, which I’m sure surprises nobody. I actually decided to bring Magic Bike as of last night but my wife reminded me that if it gets “lost” on the flight there, a) I’m going to be a real asshole for 6 weeks and b) Eva Air pays $10 on the pound for lost luggage. I’m not too keen on paying all sorts of $$ for insurance just to keep my peace of mind. So I’m probably going to compromise and bring the Fuji with power.
My FIL emailed last night and found a used size 56 Trek for $650 and wanted to know if he should pick it up. I was really tempted, and he reasoned that it would be good to keep there for future trips. I have to say, I’m really intrigued by this idea. Apparently he’s found a used bike source and if a fair deal pops up, I’m all over it. I guess I should check that listing. I’m sure the market for a 56 isn’t very big over there. It might be a steal.
Did I mention I really like this new format? Colin has it a bit right, but more than that is the fact that I can just sit down and write this way. It appears that my bike training blog has turned into my old blog, at least for now. So just FTR, I try to make the most of all the links I post. And since I don’t say, “See what I did there?” that means you may or may not need to click to get it. Ok, I admit that was my way of using that second widget but that’s all I’m going to write about it.
You know what drives me crazy? Rob does. He’s pestering me this morning about how the comments about the bloggers was actually about him. You see what I’m doing here? If Rob annoys me I happily throw him under the bus, in fact I revel in it. I don’t need any underhand jug moves to subversively slag him. He’s been asking me for training advice, and part of me would love to direct him in such a way that he would win a cat 1 race next year. At the same time, I’d never hear the end of it, and I know he would never give me credit. To be fair, he hasn’t been too difficult about the design contest win, but the fat fuck did eat my birthday babka.
Several people commented about the map, which is cool. I wish I was that clever all the time. Unfortunately it only happens once in a blue moon. Well...I think I’m clever and all that, but this mix of people doesn’t necessarily agree with me. I originally wrote don’t and not doesn’t there but caught it. To Colin’s point again, I do try to get it grammatically correct but sometimes it’s just too much effort. Capital and capitol gets me most of the time.
Happy to see Manny still reads, at least sometimes. I figured he gave up on me when I never made it down to his dad’s restaurant. It would have been a valid point, I’m a jerk about that. I don’t know why we never made it there, I really don’t. Truth be told, we more or less go around the world to eat good food for 6 weeks (and 2 days). But we can’t go 20 miles south? I’m not sure what’s up with that. I think for both of us, the world somewhat ends south of route 78, the Horseshoe Scramble being excepted for that.
Here’s the picture he’s referring to. I wanted to use this as our Xmas card but I wasn’t allowed. Apparently feet and Christmas are mutually exclusive:
You might get a trilingual kid, but what I know of you doesn’t bode well. You’re pretty much like my wife. I don’t know if you’re ABC or not, but you both more or less act that part. Our daughter doesn’t speak much Chiniese/Taiwanese at all. And that video up there popped up when I search for ABC. It’s just too rich not to post. The Internet is a bottomless pit of entertainment, keyword “pit”.
No, there are no Quik Checks in Taiwan (that I remember), but the place is a bastion of 7-11s. There was a spot near my BIL’s old apartment where you could stand and actually see 3 different 7-11s. From wikipedia (stuff it Robin this isn’t a class project), Taiwan leads the world in 7-11s per human, with one 7-11 per 6200 people. As a comparison the US has 48,000+ per store.
This is not atypical in Taiwan:
And Lou has it right, you need to learn the tones for each word, and there are 4 basic tones. So the sentences I wrote above actually have tones, which I won’t go into because it would be pointless. It’s kinda like the different ways to say dude. Too lazy to find a video for that. To put it in more concrete terms, I’ve seen these language indexes which tell you basically how hard other languages are to learn. The typical Euro language like Spanish/Italian/French is something in the .9-1.2 range, IIRC. The Eastern languages are just short of 5. Essentially, it takes 5 times as long to learn Eastern languages. Again Wikipedia backs me up (hugs and kisses Robin). Mandarin is listed in the top 5 most difficult to learn for a native English speaker. The others are Arabic, Cantonese, Japanese, and Korean.
Finally today I think I’m at least 98% back to normal and the idea of riding my bike outside didn’t make me shiver with chills and eat more cookies. I took the road bike off the trainer and went to change the tires to a set of the Kenda C2Cs that I had great luck with last winter. Well lo and behold, one of the nipples had popped off the spoke and was bouncing around inside the well of the tire. I tried to get it out, with no luck. However, some random flake-like products did fall out, which kinda concerns me, it being a carbon rim and all. I texted Jim, who of course told me to bring it in tomorrow. In other words, stop whatever it is you’re doing now, and let me look at it. Fair enough. The old Norm would have pulled out the sawzall.
So then I turned to the Fuji cx bike which is still filthy from the race season, and started to take that apart a bit while on a conference call for work. One of my RD pulleys is frozen solid and no amount of taking it apart and greasing it helps. I can get it to spin freely if I don’t tighten it all the way, but we all know how that will turn out, especially since I want to take this bike to Taiwan with me.
So a quick scoreboard. I have 7 bikes but only 2 are fully operational right now, the geared race Niner and Big Red, the SS Niner. Determined to go outside today, I took the geared Niner out on the road because I needed to get out of this basement. I’m 90% sure I’m going to take the mountain bike out on Sunday, and ride actual dirt trails. I think Bill wants to go but we haven’t exchanged smoke signals on that yet. Well I sent him one, but I think he’s too busy trying to get busy with YangYang.
Cool that Jeff got that Wawayanda race off the ground for next year. That’s not going to be an easy one that’s for sure. 50 miles in there is a solid race.
I applied for Team MTBNJ to be an actual USAC team next year. Of course, I’m playing the role of McChese. As I was filling out the paperwork I was texting Bill, when it struck me that he would be a great Vice McCheese, so from here on in he can be referred to as The Hamburgler or Grimmace.
Kevin (not Kev) asked about food in Taiwan. Seriously, that’s funny. I just asked Nat what percentage our trip is based on food, and she said, ”Less than 50.” Not 5% or 10%, but more like 49.8%, maybe 49.9%. I asked her if the food there were like England, would we go? She did not hesitate in saying no. You Facebook users have seen this, but here’s a bowl of chicken hearts I had the other day. This is what you’re going to get 6 weeks of starting soon:
For real, how am I going to go over there and come back in race shape?
This weekend I’m on-call which means tomorrow I’m a house junkie. I’ll possibly hit the trainer in the morning with the Fuji, but I need to tweak it so it actually works, which shouldn’t be too too hard. I need to get that to be a reliably functioning road worthy bike though I’m not sure I’ll get that shifter working before I go. I’m strongly considering bringing the pt wheel, which I’m sure surprises nobody. I actually decided to bring Magic Bike as of last night but my wife reminded me that if it gets “lost” on the flight there, a) I’m going to be a real asshole for 6 weeks and b) Eva Air pays $10 on the pound for lost luggage. I’m not too keen on paying all sorts of $$ for insurance just to keep my peace of mind. So I’m probably going to compromise and bring the Fuji with power.
My FIL emailed last night and found a used size 56 Trek for $650 and wanted to know if he should pick it up. I was really tempted, and he reasoned that it would be good to keep there for future trips. I have to say, I’m really intrigued by this idea. Apparently he’s found a used bike source and if a fair deal pops up, I’m all over it. I guess I should check that listing. I’m sure the market for a 56 isn’t very big over there. It might be a steal.
I maybe be biased, but IMO, Korean is the easiest language to learn how to read. I bet you can spend a solid week learning the characters and you will be able to read anything from child's book to phD dissertation. I mean you won't understand a thing, but you'll be able to read stuff out loud.
Korean is very mechanical that way i.e. opposite of Chinese. There are no tricky or alternate pronunciations, basically what you see is what get. Every block is one syllable, so there is absolutely no confusion on how to divide a word up into syllables. Unfortunately, this has resulted in absolutely horrible rap music in Korea. There's only a few ways words can end, ususually something like -ah, -dah, -mah, -boh, -suh, -nuh, etc.., so rhyming is silly.
Korea used to use Chinese, but one of the Kings from one of those dynasties decided to make Hangul and make it the national language. Personally, I think the language is genius. But because it's so mechanical in nature, I think some intangible creatively artistic type of thing is lost. I'm guessing they say Korean is hard for an English speaking person probably because of the vocabulary (no similarity b/w words i.e. english/spanish), backwards grammar, certain syllables that are hard to pronounced for a Westerner, etc... also the old school people still throw in Chinese words, which confuses me too.
This is for Robin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul
Korean is very mechanical that way i.e. opposite of Chinese. There are no tricky or alternate pronunciations, basically what you see is what get. Every block is one syllable, so there is absolutely no confusion on how to divide a word up into syllables. Unfortunately, this has resulted in absolutely horrible rap music in Korea. There's only a few ways words can end, ususually something like -ah, -dah, -mah, -boh, -suh, -nuh, etc.., so rhyming is silly.
Korea used to use Chinese, but one of the Kings from one of those dynasties decided to make Hangul and make it the national language. Personally, I think the language is genius. But because it's so mechanical in nature, I think some intangible creatively artistic type of thing is lost. I'm guessing they say Korean is hard for an English speaking person probably because of the vocabulary (no similarity b/w words i.e. english/spanish), backwards grammar, certain syllables that are hard to pronounced for a Westerner, etc... also the old school people still throw in Chinese words, which confuses me too.
This is for Robin: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hangul
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Please warn me the next time before you post a picture of food that is actually an identifiable body component.😛uke: I like my food non-descript and unintelligible but tasty. Raw shellfish is about as far as you'll get me.
I WILL attribute what marginal success I had to you. Not for providing training advice or anything silly like that (why would I ever train). But simply for getting me out when I may not have gotten out, for pushing me hard when I would soft pedalled. I had FUN. Now I am going to get my ass kicked by some kid (Rob has a much better tatoo than you).
I WILL attribute what marginal success I had to you. Not for providing training advice or anything silly like that (why would I ever train). But simply for getting me out when I may not have gotten out, for pushing me hard when I would soft pedalled. I had FUN. Now I am going to get my ass kicked by some kid (Rob has a much better tatoo than you).
ChrisG
Unapologetic Lifer for Rock and Roll
Remember when this was Fred's avatar?😀