maxiewawa

I made my way to the Apple Service Center, and this time they were open. The helpful guy at the desk said that my warranty would indeed cover a new hard drive. That was good. They would try to recover what they could from the dead hard drive, but couldn’t guarantee anything. That was gad.

But whether or not they can fix it, I will have a new hard drive, and my blog will be musical once again!

On the way back to the metro station, I noticed a large crowd gathering. Knowing how much the readers of my blog enjoy a weird story, I wandered over to have a look. As I arrived, I looked around, puzzled. What was everyone looking at??

“有人跳楼!” (I’ll translate this later!)

Ugh. I knew that I would regret it, but quickly scanned the ground near where everyone was looking for a puddle of person.

“那边！” (Up there!) said someone, pointing up.

Oh! I breathed a sigh of relief, and looked up at the fourth floor at a woman dressed in a red tracksuit, howling and screaming, on a window ledge.

Now, regarding “有人跳楼”. It basically means “A person was/is/will be jumping off a roof”.

It’s not true to say that the Chinese language has no  tense. I don’t think there’s any language in the world that hasn’t got a past tense. But in Chinese it is often ambiguous, more so than any other language. All that is clear is that a person, a building, and jumping is involved. Whether the person is on the ledge, falling through the air, or bloody mess on the ground is not clear.

Anyway, it seemed that a lot of people were having the same problems with the Chinese language. After hearing that there is/was/will be a person jumping off a roof, they first looked on the ground for their grisly remains, scanned the air for their falling body, and finally found the person standing on a ledge.

Needless to say, a large group had formed, and was blocking traffic. I watched the spectacle for a while. The woman was crying and howling about something, it wasn’t clear what. Even if she had jumped, she wouldn’t have hurt herself badly; although she was on the fourth floor, there was an atrium that was on the second, so she wouldn’t have fallen far enough to do herself serious damage. It was still disturbing though.

A scuffle broke out behind me. Astonishingly, it was between a man and a police officer. There weren’t any punches thrown, but there was a lot of shirt grabbing and wrestling. Another policeman appeared, and their reaction was really surprising: they ran off around the corner. Back home a group of policemen would have smacked the guy to the ground, handcuffed him, and taken him away!

A lot of onlookers were faced with a dilemma. Should they follow the policemen being chased around the corner, and see what happened, or continue watching the screaming suicidal woman? After some hestitation I followed the fight.

But I had hesitated too long. A group was gathering about 50 meters down the street, and I couldn’t see what was going on. I could have run down, but that would mean missing the crazy woman.

A group of Shanghainese were gossipping away about what had happened. One noticed me and said “Even the foreigners are having a look!” (I understand enough Shanghainese to know when someone’s talking about me!) “So what’s going on?” I asked. “Oh, nothing,” she answered. Typical. Every dramatic street scene  plays out in Shanghainese dialect, and I never know what’s going on.

By the time I made my way back to the audience for the crazy woman, the crowd was blocking traffic. The SWAT team had arrived, and was trying to get people out of the way. I saw a strange sight: a fully armed policeman, with bullet proof vest, helmet, and large firearm, banging on a rusty bicycle loaded with scrap wood, yelling out “whose bloody bike is this? Get it out of the way!”

People were shouting at other people to get out of the way, and I took that as my cue to leave. Bikes were going in every direction, policemen were telling people to get out of the way, and I didn’t feel like staying.

I walked down the street to an intersection, where a few people on bikes were looking down the street, puzzled. From the intersection, you couldn’t see what was going on, only that there was a large crowd, and a lot of people yelling at other people to get out of the way.

So I’m not sure how the story ended. I didn’t want to wait for the woman to jump, and for the CSIs to appear, and I was still in shock about possibly losing my computer.

Stay tuned for the conclusion to the Saga of the Dead Hard Drive, and possibly another dramatic story from the streets of Shanghai!

And don’t forget to backup important data in case your computer dies like mine!

I left my computer on last night, downloading the latest goodies from a file sharing service. I’ve done this many times before. But this morning, going through my usual ritual of putting on the kettle and sitting down in front of the computer, I found it had turned itself off. Strange.

I pressed the power button to turn it on, but all I got was a grey screen with a question mark blinking at me. A bit of research, and I found out that the prognosis wasn’t good. My computer’s hard drive had died, and was beyond resuscitation. I don’t mind so much having to get it replaced (luckily, I purchased an extended warranty when I bought it, so a new hard drive should be free） but it looks like a year or so of photos, stories, and work has been lost. Oh well. I guess I’ll be careful to back up anything I need from now on.

The last time I needed something to be done on my computer, I went to a new place near 时代广场 on 淮海路. It wasn’t long ago, and everyone there was really friendly. It took so long to install Windows that I got to know almost everyone who worked there. So my computer’s problem was a bummer, but at least I’d have a chance to see all those people I’d met a few months ago. Maybe it was because they were new, and were eager to get my business, but they were particularly helpful.

No such luck. As seems to happen so often in modern 上海, the place had shut down. Oh well. I took my computer to a busy, smelly, noisy electronics market on 黄陂路.

The guy I talked to didn’t take much time to make a diagnosis. “Hard drive,” he said. “You’ll have to get a new one”. I wasn’t so disappointed, I had been expecting this. I showed him my Apple Insurance card. He gave me the address of the Apple Service Centre, luckily just down the street.

While I waited for 爱香 to arrive (I’d been so shocked at my computer dying that I’d rushed off in the morning without waking her up and telling her where I was going!) a fight broke out in the computer market. As usual, a crowd gathered to watch and discuss what had been going on. And usual, when people’s tempers flare, they revert back to their native language, in this case Shanghainese. And as usual, I couldn’t understand.

A well dressed guy in a velvet jacket was yelling at the staff in the Sony booth. He was really worked up. One of the bigger staff members kept pushing him outside the boundary of the Sony booth but he kept trying to push his way back in, yelling at people. There were 6 or 7 staff members looking grimly on at him, and at the one staff member holding him back. He’d look at one, yell, point, and try to get a reaction. Getting nothing but a dead stare, his gaze would wander over to someone else, and start yelling and pointing at them.

A few staff members yelled back, but they didn’t take the bait. This seemed to infuriate him even more. His hands were shaking with rage. He kept trying to force his way in. Behind him, the group had formed into a semi-circle. I heard a child whisper “What’s happening mummy?” Mummy’s answer was “I don’t know dear, Mummy can’t see either. Why don’t you push ahead there, have a look, then come back here and tell mummy what’s going on?”

So I didn’t know what was going on, other than some maniac was yelling and shouting. And anyone who understood Shanghainese was too busy discussing the whole situation (in Shanghainese) with other people to stop and explain it to those of us who were from out of town.

The disgruntled customer was getting angrier and angrier. He wasn’t just yelling, he was trying to push his way into the booth, getting red in the face, and his hands were shaking with rage. A few people started taking pictures.

Eventually the guy’s girlfriend pulled him away. The whole crowd sighed (whether with relief or disappointment, I don’t know!) and started to disperse. Just then, a short security guard waddled onto the scene briskly, looked around and demanded “So what’s all this about then???”

Everyone burst out laughing. Just as the situation had diffused itself, he decided to butt in. Someone said to him “The idiot who wanted to fight just left, and only now you turn up!” or something like that.

But it wasn’t over. As everyone started milling away, a woman shouted, and the same guy who had been arguing before charged back towards the Sony stand, wielding a metal chair over his head and screaming some kind of war cry. Before he could inflict some serious damage, his girlfriend grabbed him. She really grabbed him too. In fact, I would say that she tackled him in a tackle worthy of any international rugby game.

She wrapped her arms around him, crying hysterically. There they were, with an audience of 20 or 30 watching on. He was red in the face, ready to knock the head off any Sony employee in his way, and she had him in a tight embrace, trying to calm him while sobbing/whispering in his ear. With all this drama, the crowd quickly regathered. I also returned to look, staying a safe distance away from the pair, since it wasn’t sure if the guy would resume his attack.

But the show was over. She kept whispering in his ear, and he calmed down. The chair fell from his hands with a clang. She kept whispering to him, and although the crowd were reluctant to leave,  since if they did, they would give up prime viewing spots for the final battle, but they gradually dispersed.

The funniest moment in the whole Sony Employees Versus Chair Wielding Maniac episode came from something I overheard from a shop opposite. Someone wandered into the shop, saw the group of people milling away, and asked his friend (who had seen the whole thing),

“So what’s going on?”

“A fight,” he answered

“A fight? What kind of fight?!” he asked. You could see he wanted details.

“Just the usual,” was the reply.

Eventually I met up with 爱香 and we made our way to the Apple Repair Centre. We passed a whole group of people gathered around someone lying in the middle of the road, which usually means someone has been hit by a car, bicycle, or some other kind of vehicle. We didn’t stop to have a look though. I think I had had too much drama already!

As it turns out, the Apple Repair Centre was closed. Today is 清明节 (Qing Ming Jie), a traditional Chinese holiday. This year is the first year it has been observed as a public holiday, so I’m afraid I can’t elaborate on its significance. We turned up a little alley, found the building “C”, went up a rusty flight of stairs, through a winding corridoor to the Repair Centre only to find the lights out and nobody home. You get used to that sort of thing here though!

I’m confident they’ll be open soon, and hopefully I’ll be able to get a new hard drive. I won’t be able to record any more music until I get my computer online (I’m using 爱香’s computer at the moment) but I hope this weird “diary entry” keeps you entertained.

And sorry if it seems that all my posts from China are about people fighting; a lot happens here besides people fighting, but nothing is as dramatic as a bit of fisticuffs!

This is a recording I made when I was back in Australia. I thought I had put it on my podcast feed but it turns out that I didn’t.

Anyway, here it is! It’s called “Arabesque”. I don’t know who it’s by. I put the composer in my old blog but it has been blocked in China, and I can’t see it.

[display_podcast]

Don’t forget that you can subscribe to my podcast using http://maxiewawa.libsyn.com/rss

Bonjour!

Yesterday was the first lesson at FrenchPod101.com, the latest site from Innovative Language Learning. Now a quick disclaimer: I’m currently employed by ILL so I have to like it but I really do like it. I learnt some French in high school and I’m looking forward to having it all flood back. I found our recently that 2 of my favourite comic books as a kid, Tintin and Asterix were both French language; Tintin was Belgian and Asterix French.

There is quite a lot of French out there. I heard a documentary once about people smuggling; Central Africans would make a long journey through Africa through to the Mediterranean coast, they would be smuggled into Europe by shady North African entrepreneurs. A few were lucky enough to get residency in Belgium. Interesting to the linguist in me was that at every point along the journey (from Central Africa, through to North Africa and into Belgium) French was spoken. Everyone from the empoverished Zairean wanting a better life in Europe to the shady guy who drove them through the Saharan desert to the Belgian ministry official spoke French.

Anyway, I’ve subscribed in iTunes. Every day a lesson will be automatically downloaded to my hard drive and transferred to my iPod. The process is quite simple:

1. Open up iTunes.
2. Go to “Advanced” and click on “Subscribe to Podcast”.
3. Enter “http://www.frenchpod101.com/feed.xml”
4. Et voila! (That’s French, if didn’t you know!)

From now on, until I delete the entry, iTunes will check for a new French lesson daily. When there is a new lesson it will download it without being asked. This is the process that you go through every time you want to subscribe to a podcast.

But, how did I know what to enter in Step 3? Simple! FrenchPod101.com tells us so. Somewhere on the site, someone has written “Here is the RSS feed (put this in your pod catcher): http://www.frenchpod101.com/feed.xml”. All one needs to do is to copy that complicated looking address after the colon and we’re ready to go.

Here are some other podcasts I listen to.

• Science with Dr Karl – RSS: http://www.abc.net.au/science/k2/podcast/drk_rss.xml
• Dools & Lina on TripleJ – http://www.abc.net.au/triplej/doolsandlinda/rss/podcast.xml
• From Our Own Correspondent on BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio/podcasts/fooc/
• Lingua Franca on the ABC (Australian): http://abc.net.au/rn/podcast/feeds/lin.xml
• AM on the ABC Australia: http://abc.net.au/news/subscribe/amrss.xml
• KoreanClass101.com: http://www.koreanclass101.com/feed.xml
• JapanesePod101.com: http://www.japanesepod101.com/feed.xml

Most podcasts I have found after they have been recommended by other people, or I have just found on the internet. For instance, I found the BBC podcasts after just going to the BBC homepage and searching for “podcasts”. If you have a look at the BBC podcast site here, you’ll see all of their podcasts shows. Click on “podcast” next to the show you want, and a page displaying the address you need to enter in step 3 will appear.

I started a podcast too recently. There isn’t much at the moment, but hopefully it will be brimming with fun stuff soon. Before you look around these pages for it, don’t bother; you won’t find it. At the time of writing, this humble blog writer hasn’t found the right button to publish my podcast address yet; let me just tell you that if you want to subscribe, type http://maxiewawa.libsyn.com/rss . Let me know if you have any problems!

This is a video that goes into a little more detail. It shows some other ways you can subscribe. If you can’t see it, look here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xrGpwzGmtk

Here’s a secret. You can actually get by in China without speaking much Chinese.

You can get by in day to day life with body language, pointing, and a helpful bilingual friend. You really can.

But the one place where every foreigner needs to interact with locals regularly is in the taxi. You’ll be in taxis regularly here, and no taxi drivers speak any English. As a taxi driver told me once, “If I could speak English I wouldn’t be driving this bloody taxi” or words to that effect.

Most foreigners in China can get by in a taxi without any language problems after a year or so of practice. But after watching this video (and the 2 sequels) you’ll be able to learn Taxi Chinese much more quickly.

In this first lesson you’ll learn how to get your driver headed in the right direction.

到――――路，――――路。
Dào— lù, —lù.
To the crossroads of ___road and ___road.

If you’re able to say where you’re going, use this expression. The first syllable dào means ‘to’, and lù, means ‘road’. So you’re saying “to__road, ___road”. It’s important to have two roads; roads are really long here and just saying a single road will be a problem.

After you say the above phrase, substituting the address you want to go to, you might get the response ha? Don’t worry, this is a standard response, and translates as “pardon me?” Just say your address again. If he says ha? again, you’re probably saying it wrong. Maybe try the next phrase.

地址给你。
Dì zhǐ gěi nǐ.
Here’s the address.

You would say this phrase as you handed the driver a piece of paper with the address written in Chinese. Dizhi is address, gei is give and ni is you, so you are literally saying “give you the address”.

It’s a good idea to get your destination written in Chinese, because Chinese pronounciation can be difficult. And be sure to get it written in Chinese characters, or HanZi. Don’t show the driver something that looks like this: it will just confuse him. Show him something that looks like this.

Now before setting off, the taxi driver might suddenly ask you a question. In Chinese. Before you panic, just know that he’s probably just asking which route you think he should take. He’s probably saying “lupu bridge a little crowded today; do you think we should take Yan’An road or just take the tunnel?”

If the driver starts asking you which way you should go, just answer him this way.

走最快的。
Zǒu zuì kuài de.
Go the fastest way.

Zǒu means “walk” or “go”. Zuì kuài is fastest, and de is ‘the one’. Literally you’re saying “go the fastest one” or “take the fastest way”.

And you’ll be on the way!

You’re only halfway there though. Well, to be precise a third of the way. You still have to chit-chat with the driver while he drives, and let him know what to do when you’re near the destination. Tune in next time for Taxi Chinese part two, where you learn how to talk with the driver during the journey.