I was looking through the various New Year's Day eCards on Care2.com when I came across this phrase "Chu Shen Tan" which was supposed to mean "Happy New Year" in Mandarin.
This sounds nothing like "新年快樂" (xin1 nian2 kuai4 le4), so I thought maybe the reason I didn't understand it was that they were missing the tones.
So I googled it and found that the entire phrase was supposed to be "Kung His Hsin Nien bing Chu Shen Tan" which apparently means "Merry Christmas and Happy New Year."
See why I'm confused?
The thing is, in Mandarin, the only verbal consonants that words can end with are "r", "n", "ng" and "m". In other words, "His" does not represent any word in Mandarin.
Therefore, "his" must have originally been "hsi".
Which would give us "kung hsi hsin nien bing chu shen tan".
I believe "kung hsi hsin nien" is supposed to be "恭喜新年" which in english is approximately "wish you a happy new year", although this is wrong and is barely understandable. "恭喜" is closer to "congratulations".
What about "bing chu shen tan"?
I'm guessing "bing" is 並 which can mean "and", and "shen tan" probably is 聖誕 which is the Mandarin for "Christmas".
The "chu" is the problem here. The closest and best guess I can offer right now is "祝" (zhu4) which is the more proper way of saying "wish" as in "wish you a merry Christmas".
If so, this entire phrase should mean "congratulations new year and wish Christmas". Or else, I'm entirely wrong.
Better New Year's Day greetings in Chinese can be found on this page. No English pronunciation guides there though.
If you search this phrase on Google, you'll be surprised how many results there are for it.
Since 主義 means "ideology", 社會主義 = "social ideology"? If so, the following wouldn't make sense... would it?
Produce more steel to speed up the construction of our social ideology?
I know it doesn't sound right but I need to understand this before I can phrase it better.
Often when fighting in RPGs I'd think at the back of my mind how these enemies are always isolated in tiny groups that make no tactical sense. Not in Mass Effect 2 since they sometimes come in squads of 6-7, but in other games like Fallout 3, Fallout: New Vegas or Oblivion, they often come in duos or trios.
Now if you have an army defending a location, why would you ever want to spread them out like that?
Even in ME2, many incidents would have ended tragically for Shepard if the enemy had just focused all available firepower on a single choke point.
That's not the only common strategic blunder in games.
The other thing I notice is this strange habit that all villains have of sending their weakest minions/henchmen first before sending progressively stronger soldiers.
That doesn't make sense. In real life you don't read about historic generals sending their greenest recruits to sally outside a city during a siege, and you don't see modern era commanders posting recruits to the frontlines without a good reason. Instead it is often the commandos, ie the best soldiers, who attack first. Meanwhile, the worst soldiers are kept at the back for defence or used as cannon fodder.
In other words, if villains in games were to make use of proper strategies, we would be fighting the final boss in the prologue. Come to think of it, maybe that's why they don't.
Ordered Sarpino's last night. Even though the pizza I picked was the Ultimate Double Meat, it was surprisingly full of vegetables, mainly tomatoes, onions and green peppers. The cheese is quite light and the meat is mostly buried under the veggies, making it almost vegetarian. It's not bad, really. In fact the tomatoes are juicier than I expected.
Adding the fact that the menu contains more vegetarian pizzas than any other pizzerias that I know of, I feel that Sarpino's is a good choice for people who are more inclined towards a herbivorous diet.
Unfortunately that does not include me.
I like the garlic bread sticks though, despite the fact that the jalapeno dip is just mayo.
So apparently there is an auction site for first-hand goods for Singaporeans. At Bidhere.com people bid for stuff and the highest bidders gets the items. The catch is that each bid costs money.
Initially I wanted to wait till they offer good signup bonuses before making an account but I couldn't find a list of prices for their BidPacks, so I made an account out of curiosity.
This is the price list for Singaporeans. Prices differ in other countries.
At S$0.85 per bid, it's not that cheap when you take into account the possibility of making lots of bids for really hot items. Boxed options are temporary offers.
However, look at what I found on the Ended Auctions page:
So if you're actually into online shopping and have some patience, this looks like a great website for you. But for me, this is just a place to keep an eye on. Maybe someday I will see something I want.
The PS3 is great but so far hackers have only managed to jailbreak it this month. There is still a long time before we can play pirated games on it.
Anyway I've later noticed that this isn't the only one and is probably just one of many out there that Singaporeans can use. Another thing is that these auction sites may be scams.
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