Japan

上次我告诉你们我跟我女朋友三月一起去日本。现在这个不对，因为日本两限期以后有九大的地震。我们还有打算去夏威夷。我们也打算去旧金山和葡萄酒。

所以，每问题。下次我们可以去日本，香港，也去韩国。九十月那？

日本

我跟我女朋友九月去中国。我们回来的时候想下次去那里？现在我们知道。

三月三十一好我们去日本跟夏威夷。我们打算住在日本九天，然后作废几道夏威夷。我们觉得这个是一个很好的打算。

所以，现在我们开始学日语。今天学第一次日语教案。日语很难。我还有很多国语不知到。。。

Two films

Here are two films Amy recommended we watch:

对不起我爱你 / Sorry I love you：On Tudou。

一页台北 / Au Revoir Taipei：On Tudou。

This weekend I'll watch at least one and write about it.

新年须爱了

大家好，

好久没有在这里用中文写。最近我学习中文太少了。

我二零一一的打算是找到我觉得有意思的东西可以学习。初年我看很多电影也看中文书。

有人有没有给我的主意？

I'm hoping to get back to immersing myself in Chinese this year. I had a lot of drive leading up to my trip at the end of last year but after we got back it has kind of tapered off. What excited me about the language? What did I have fun doing? What do I do in English that I can do in Chinese instead?

I'll be taking a closer look at these questions on the road to fluency.

新年须爱了！

Year in review

Happy new year!

This post is not language specific, although it does relate in some sense. I was inspired by this post from Seth Godin's blog to publish a list of what I shipped in 2010.

In his post he mentions that it is difficult to write such a list. Here is my attempt at a list:

• Launched this blog (Life in Language) to track Mandarin studies and progress from a month long China/Taiwan journey.
  
• Created a monitoring tool for Subversion branches.
• Implemented Scrum for team Projects, shipping and demoing many new features. (This could actually be a long list).
• Launched weekly information sessions to encourage knowledge sharing.
• Took on Executive role with ToastMasters club (VP PR + Club President).
  

I need to work on my definition of "shipped". Most of my accomplishments are from work - this is OK. However, I want to start up several initiatives of my own in 2011.

The fact that this list is short will motivate me to ship more in the coming year. Great things are coming!

MC Hotdog

One of my favorite Mandarin artists is Taiwanese rapper MC Hotdog. Here are my two "most played" tracks of his at the moment:

我爱台妹

西門町老人

The second song sounded catchy, and the more I listen to it the more I understand. MC Hotdog is famous for his vulgar lyrics. I have a hard time picking up on them (I don't know a lot of vulgar words). Translating part of this song has given me a better idea of what he's up to.

Coming up later, a translation of 西門町老人.

刘谦 (劉謙)

Last week I had the opportunity to see Liu Qian, a famous Taiwanese magician, at the River Rock Casino in Richmond. The tricks he performed were amazing and he was always humorous to listen too. I especially liked one part where he made up an embarrassing scene with an audience member, and then found the whole thing transcribed in a scroll hanging from the ceiling.

The best part was that the entire show was in Mandarin. I was able to follow along most of the time (missing some details here and there). I'd love to find more Mandarin shows in Vancouver to go to.

上个刑期四我去看一个魔术表演在RiverRock赌场。这个魔术师是从台湾来的。他在中国非常有名。我跟我女朋友都很喜欢他的魔术。表演以后，我在电视说一些东西。我用中文，但是觉得说不懂。每问题！魔术很好玩。。。