Technology and Long-Distance Relationships
If you had asked me about long-distance relationships a few years ago, I would have said, “Never. Too hard.” But when you find yourself in a position where you have to do a long-distance relationship, and you recognize that the girl is totally worth it, you change your mind. Besides, technology has gotten to a point where many of the misgivings we have about LDRs no longer apply.
When technology works, that is.
Skype (or MSN, when Skype is broken) doesn’t always give us a clear connection, but at least we can see and hear each other every day. If I had to do this solely through written letter, I would have a much harder time making it through. Because we can use the Internet, though, we are even able play games together. My favorite outlet is to use a site called It’s Your Turn that doesn’t require us to be logged in at the same time to play chess or checkers.
Everything you do in a long-distance relationship, however, never feels like enough. You’re always trying to find some new way to keep things fresh, since there is only so much you can say over Skype. Packages and letters are nice, albeit expensive and untimely. But I can order something online. Deal Extreme has a bunch of cute, little gifts under $2 with free worldwide shipping. And she can use Net10’s online SMS form to send me free text messages when I’m away from the computer. (Skype lets me text her for five cents a message.)
Don’t get me wrong. LDRs are still challenging. I miss my girlfriend and wish I could see her for more than just 1-2 hours of Skype a day. Support has been iffy, too. People in China always replied to our situation uneasily, “Oh… good luck…” in a way that meant, “This will never work.” But when I look at all of the avenues that are available for us to stay in touch, the distance doesn’t feel so far. I know we can do it. And if you’re in a similar boat, I’m sure you can do it, too.
How to Check Your China Mobile Balance
China Mobile sends out a reminder when your account reaches a particularly low balance, but these messages tend to get lost amongst all the other junk mail. If you missed it, don’t worry. There’s still hope! Write a text message that says Hfcx (and nothing else) and send it to the number 10086. A few seconds later, you’ll get a return message.
This new message is, of course, all in Chinese, but if you scroll down, there will be two numbers followed by a yuan symbol (元). The first number tells you how much you spent last month, and the second number is your current balance. Keep in mind, though, that I’ve only tested this with phones bought in Jiangsu province. The rules may be different in other parts of the country. Feel free to share them if they exist.
Five Web Resources for Learning Chinese
Before I got too tired to study in my free time, I had looked up a lot of ways to expose myself to as much Chinese as possible. Well, I could walk down the street and accomplish that, but it’s a little less intimidating to find ways to practice inside before going outside. Here are some of the tools I found particularly helpful on my journey to move beyond “ni hao.”
1. Perapera-kun Firefox Add-on
If you’re serious about turning your computer into a Chinese-learning station, the best thing you can do is install this add-on for Firefox. With it, you can highlight Chinese characters anywhere in the browser, bringing up a small window with the pinyin and meaning. It’s worth making the crossover to Firefox just for this.
2. Google Gadgets: Word of the Day
And if you haven’t already set iGoogle as your homepage, do so now. I can wait. Some of the widgets you can add to this customizable front page are “Chinese word of the day” applications, and there are a lot of them. Since the words aren’t always useful (why so many math terms?), it’s helpful to have a few of them on there.
3. Chinese Character Flashcards
Learning characters may not be high on your list of priorities, but if you’re itching to impress your friends, this is a great start. It will let you choose what sets of characters to drill (based on their difficulty) and whether to use traditional or simplified characters. The pinyin and English meaning are also given.
4. Serge Melnyk’s Podcasts
Serge Melnyk has already released a huge number of theme-related podcasts that are great to play in the background. Finding this website should be like a gold mine for you. Unfortunately, his voice has seriously gotten on my nerves, but the vocabulary and grammar rules introduced in each lesson are very valuable.
5. Chinese Course Sentences
Chinese-Course.com has a huge list of sentences that use a lot of common wording. The sentences are only displayed in Chinese characters and English, though, so you’ll need to pair this one up with the Perapera-kun add-on to get the most out of it. Together, they make a great resource for studying sentence structure.
Site Statistics Say You’re a Pervert
I love checking my site statistics. It’s a daily ritual, like checking the stock market or Facebook (when it was available… still no luck with that one). It’s always interesting to see what search queries led people to read my blog or at least glance at it and say, “Screw that, I’m outta here.” September’s winner was “paypal sucks,” though it could have done even better if people knew how to spell Paypal (patpal and pappal made the list, as well). Here are the top phrases:
Hey, wait a minute… what’s “hot sister pics” doing on that list? How does my site even come up in those results? You really have to dig deep to see a link among so many porn sites pointing here. All right, so my post about the national park, Huanglong, was titled a little misleadingly. Sister-seekers, however, should realize that a website called “Clark Nielsen for the Win” isn’t going to give them what they want. Huanglong does sound like one hot chick, though. I can’t resist a girl who has “long” in her name.
Paypal Sucks
Every time I try to order plane tickets using Paypal, I get a call from the flight reservation company telling me Paypal is preventing them from receiving my money. So I open my Paypal account and see that it’s been frozen due to suspicious activity. Every… damn… time. When this first happened, I called Paypal in Shanghai and explained that I was on vacation in China. They agreed to re-open my account and mark it as a special “China case.”
A few weeks later, I had to order some emergency tickets from Beijing to Xi’an. Surprise! Paypal froze my account. I called them again. They weren’t as willing to cooperate this time around but finally opened my account so the transaction could go through. Another week later, I tried to order tickets again, this time from Jiuzhaigou to Chengdu. BAM! Frozen. And Paypal refused to help. Nevermind the fact that they opened it twice before and had supposedly marked my account to prevent this from happening in the future. Their only suggestion was to call Paypal’s office in Omaha.
Uh… I’m on vacation in China, you idiots.
When these disputes arise, there are ways you can resolve them without having to call customer support. Their website offers many solutions. Of course, these methods include Paypal calling your house at a certain time, uploading bank statements, or copying information from a check, none of which you can do when you’re on vacation in China! So my account’s still frozen and will probably remain that way for several months. At least I know I’ll have some money waiting for me when I finally go home.
A Day Without a Computer
My reliance on computers had become pretty evident when I was more worried about the prospect of not having my own PC for the month of July over not knowing what I would even be doing about a job. I was able to convince a friend of a friend to let me rent his laptop, but said laptop is old and decided to blue screen me before I had a chance to back up my meticulous itinerary for next month’s vacation. I should learn by now that saying, “Nah!” after telling myself to back something up usually means I’m going to regret it.
A local computer shop re-installed Windows for me—and for free—but the catch is that they installed the Chinese version instead of the English version. The original owner of the laptop is Chinese, so maybe I actually did him a favor, but for the time being, I now have to deal with menus that look like this:
Keep in mind, there’s no way to change Windows from Chinese to English without re-installing with the English CD!
The sad part is, I actually know (for the most part, anyway) how to find my way around Chinese Windows. But before you start to marvel at my superb character-reading skills, I should tell you I’ve already spent so many years of my life navigating around PCs, I have a pretty good idea what the third option from the bottom of every menu does. I’m one step closer to being able to do this in my sleep. Though when I’m having computer problems, I find it hard to sleep at all…
Happy Tiananmen Square Day!
At the risk of having my blog pried from my cold, dead fingers, I’m going to draw attention to the day the PRC wants everyone to remember as the day…
nothing happened.
How can I possibly ignore this, though, considering the Chinese government blocked Youtube at the end of March, Blogspot about two weeks ago, and now Flickr and Twitter. Even Hotmail got the axe, although temporarily. It’s back up now, but man oh man, for the time it was down, I was horrified. This is how I’ve been communicating with recruiters! Totally unfair, guys!
Luckily, Gmail has this cool feature where you can import e-mail messages from another address without actually logging into that account. The downside is that I already had Gmail set up to forward all incoming messages to Hotmail. So when I imported my Hotmail inbox, it sent everything back to Hotmail again and created a nice, big mess for me to clean up once the ban was finally lifted.
Blogspot Blocked in China, 2009 Edition
I am not amused by the Chinese government. Blogspot has been blocked in China again (where the word “again” implies that this has happened multiple times in the past) and joins Youtube as one of my most visited sites I no longer have access to. Well… you can use a proxy server to bypass the block, but it’s a hassle, and I don’t feel very comfortable sending passwords through a proxy. I guess I should just digest my filtered Chinese news like a good boy and be happy nobody’s pulled the plug on my own blog yet. I’d better ensure this never happens with some positive chanting:
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I love China! I love China! I love China! I love China!
I’m not sure if this has anything to do with censorship or if it’s just a mind-boggling coincidence, but sometimes I’ll do a search that shuts down Google for the next several minutes. At any given time on any given day, as soon as I search for “zhenjiang attractions,” Google goes completely blank. Is there something in Zhenjiang I’m not supposed to know about? Oh, right, I should be minding my own business. I love China!
Loading ...