Advertisement
On this fine Wednesday I went to work, nothing very exciting happened. But I did feel as though I was very helpful today, because I was able to make some important corrections of the use of certain English words. The first good deed was done when on our way to lunch Kitty was saying this guy in the accounting department was very "shame". So I had to give a lesson on the difference between "shame" and "shy" to everyone in the elevator. I think they were very greatful to be corrected so that they wouldn't continue to say the wrong thing. The second good English deed was done while helping one of the supervisors revise an email she was sending to an auditor. Basically the document was a series of questions she wanted answered having to do with various monetary accounts. But all of a sudden the questions started dealing with a "grand". My first thought was that she had learned the slang for $1,000, but when I questioned her as to what she meant she told me that they had applied for and the government had given them a "grand". Ah....you mean a grant! It makes me feel a lot better that foreigners have an easy time mixing up similar words in English. I think each time I repeat a word in Chinese it means something different, or nobody understands what I'm saying because I have changed the inflection ever so slightly.
Since nothing much else happened today, I would like to make all of you Wikipedia addicts aware that you shouldn't take such awesome services for granted. I mean I think we are all aware that just having electricity is a blessing, but has it ever crossed your mind that once you have access to the internet you still might not be able to see everything that someone else in another part of the world can? Well, apparently Wikipedia is one of those sites that Chinese people are not allowed to see. I've tried at the dorm and at work, but when I click on a hyperlink to a Wikipedia website, it comes up with the "page cannot be found" message. I am not sure if there are other websites like this that the government has blocked, but now every time I get the "this page cannot be found" message I have to stop and think whether there is any reason it might be being blocked or whether its server is just down at the moment.
Advertisement
Tot: 0.136s; Tpl: 0.01s; cc: 5; qc: 44; dbt: 0.0807s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.1mb
Otto
non-member comment
You may be on a list
Every time you try to access a forbidden site you may be alerting everyone to your subversive actions. Otto