Archive for February, 2008

Cutest. Kid. Ever.

 

 
This has absolutely nothing to do with Asia, but it’s too entertaining not to post. It’s an adorable little three-year-old girl sort of giving a synopsis of Episode IV of Star Wars (that’s the original Star Wars for you non-geeks). Comments from the author below:
From www.fistofblog.com

Here is my daughter, age 3, explaining the plot of Star Wars Episode IV.

She explained the whole movie to me in much greater detail but unfortunately I didn’t have the camera going. When I finally caught her talking about the movie again she delivered this truncated, but still funny, version.

Edit: Thank you all for the nice comments. Maybe I will print them out for her and someday and when she’s all growed up she’ll get to read them herself.

A little more about the video: She wasn’t coached to say anything, nor was she forced to make the video. She rarely stops talking. Those of you with children understand this: sometimes it’s harder to turn the faucet off than to turn the faucet on.

Believe it or not, she has the seem the movie only once, and I spread it out over 3 days so it wouldn’t be too much all at once for her.

The video was edited to make it shorter, more cohesive and hopefully funnier. I did move some of the lines around so it would make more sense.

Please visit the mother blog at www.fistofblog.com.

Things the Chinese invented…

 
I’ve joked before about how many things the Chinese invented, but I didn’t really know what all they had invented. I mean, a few things I knew, but for the most part, I was clueless as to what all we use in our lives that the Chinese came up with. So I did a little searching and found that Wikipedia has an incomplete but pretty good list. Here it is, for better or for worse…
 
  • Battens in cloth
  • Belt drives
  • The blast furnaces
  • Bituminous coke
  • Cast iron
  • The chain drive
  • The repeating crossbow
  • The escapement mechanism
  • The exploding cannonball
  • The fire arrow
  • Firearms
  • Fireworks (not Adobe Fireworks, the real thing)
  • Gun powder
  • The horse collar
  • Hulk compartments/Bulkheads
  • The kite
  • Land mines
  • The lottery
  • Noodles
  • Paper
  • The pound lock
  • Woodblock printing and movable type
  • The multistate rocket
  • The rudder
  • The sailing carriage
  • The seismometer
  • Silk (ok, technically they didn’t INVENT it, but you get the point…)
  • The sluice gate
  • Stirrups
  • The toothbrush
  • Toilet paper
  • The trebuchet
  • The trip Hammer
  • The wig
  • The wheelbarrow
  • The winnowing machine
And here are some inventions that, according to Wikipedia, “are considered by various authors to have been first discovered, discovered contemporaneously with other civilizations, discovered separately after other civilizations, or simply used by the Chinese:”
  • The abacus (first appearance: Mesopotamia, 2400 BC. First certain appearance in China: 12th century AD) - Is it just me, or is this a pretty huge difference in time???
  • Armillary sphere (invented by the Greek Eratosthenes), with the world’s first water-powered armillary sphere by Zhang Heng
  • Various automata
  • Bellows
  • The compass (wet and dry)
  • Camera obscura
  • The cannon
  • Chain pumps
  • Crossbows
  • Drydocks
  • Flamethrowers
  • Flash locks
  • Early explosive grenades
  • The Odometer (also by Archimedes and Heron of Alexandria)
  • Paddle wheels for boats
  • Paper money
  • Parachutes
  • Pontoon bridges
  • Porcelain
  • The postal system
  • The saw
  • Segmental arch bridges
  • Star catalogues
  • Tea
  • Teeth (I’m pretty sure this one doesn’t belong on the list, guys)
  • Collapsible umbrellas
  • Vaccinations
  • The water clock
  • The water wheel (also of Greco-Roman tradition)
  • Windmills
That’s a lot of stuff…
 

No matter how cool you think your ballet is, it’s not as cool as China’s

 

 
How did China get the monopoly on cool acrobatics? I have no idea, but I’ve never seen another country come up with acrobats even remotely as talented as China’s. Check out the video above, and I’m sure you’ll agree that China just needs to go ahead and send out a letter to the rest of the world:
 
Chinese letter to the world
 

Chinglish #11

 
Sucker for non hotdrink!
 
I have a non hotdrink. Where’s my sucker?
 

Another cooler-than-American-stuff Japanese product

 
Check out this beast of a motorcycle available in Japan. It looks like it was taken straight out of a Japanese manga, which is cool enough in itself. But even cooler is that it’s street-legal (Japan only). The company’s website doesn’t give any English specs, so I have no idea how fast it goes or anything like that. But they DO give the price in American dollars: $21,500. Even if it were legal, at that price I wouldn’t buy it. Still, it’s another example of how cool stuff in Asia is compared to stuff in America.
 
sweet motorcycle
 

Magibon = site traffic

So I was checking the stats on the site and saw that the search query that has brought the most visitors is one word: Magibon

Apparently, the whole world is either smitten by or disgusted with her, and somehow my site managed to become (as of this posting) the #2 link on Google when you search for her name. I have no idea how that happened, but it’s kinda cool. The only site above mine is Buzzfeed.com, which actually references my site. So in a way, I’m kind of number 1. Sweet!

Yes, it’s the little, completely unimportant things that excite me…If I had any business sense whatsoever, I’d find a way to capitalize on this. I’ll have to comment more on her videos until I can figure something out.

Good news for socially-inept guys in China!

Total dork
 
Dorks of China, rejoice! According to a survey sponsored by China Matchmaker and the Chinese Academy of Marriage and Family, as long as you don’t mind marrying a woman over the ripe old age of 30, you’ve got a pretty good field to choose from. Stats from the article:
  • Of the men surveyed, about 65 percent said that they wanted to marry a woman between the ages of 25 and 28
  • Only about 25 percent of men surveyed said they’d even reluctantly marry a 30-year-old woman
  • And when a woman reaches 35 years old, only 12.5 percent of the guys surveyed would accept her as a wife

On the other hand…

  • One third of the women surveyed said they’d be willing to marry a man as old as 35 years old
  • And about 15 percent of the women surveyed said they’d marry a guy in his forties.
So there you have it, my socially-awkward Chinese friends. No matter what your age is, you’ve got a pretty good chance of being able to find a woman to marry you once all the rich, good-looking, socially-aware guys have had their pick. Unfortunately for you, Chinese men still largely outnumber Chinese women. So you’d better quit playing WoW and get busy wooing some woman before the dork down the street gets her first.
 
Link to article
 

Ni Hao, Kai-Lan premier

Ni Hao Kai-Lan
 
Ni Hao, Kai-Lan finally premiered yesterday on the Nick Jr. TV network, and Tim Goodman over at the San Francisco Chronicle has posted a review on SFGate.com. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, read the excerpt below from the review:
“Ni Hao, Kai-lan” takes the “play along, think along” concept that was popularized by “Blues Clues” and adds the ethnic element that helped fuel “Dora” as a major hit with kids. Like those shows, Kai-lan (who is 5 “and three-quarters,” if you must know) goes on a variety of adventures and asks children viewing at home a string of questions. (This interactive trick has proved quite successful in the children’s programming arena. Kids love to shout out their answers.) Along the way, everybody learns a valuable lesson.

His review is pretty helpful and points out some interesting aspects of the show that are pretty different from the way Dora does things. It sounds as if it’s a pretty quality show. Of course, that’s only one review. If you want more information on it, click here to go to its official site.
 

North Korea up close and personal…well, sort of.

North Korean Statue
 
Neil Woodburn over at Gadling.com posted a lengthy and fascinating article chronicling his five-day stay in North Korea. It’s amazing just how applicable the nickname “the hermit kingdom” is, even once you’re actually allowed inside the country. Below is an except from the article:
It was very strange. I’ve never been anywhere where I couldn’t communicate in some manner or another with the locals, thereby gaining insight into living conditions and culture that only can be gleamed from first hand experience. Nor have my movements ever been completely controlled; we could only go where they wanted us to go in North Korea and see only what they wanted us to see. We couldn’t wander into a neighborhood store or market or anywhere off the carefully choreographed itinerary. In fact, after we pushed too hard one evening to visit somewhere off the itinerary, I was surprised to hear our frustrated guide quote Shakespeare in telling us that it wasn’t possible, “It doesn’t mean I love Caesar any less, it just means that I love Rome more.”

It’s extremely interesting, so I highly recommend reading the whole thing.

Another white foreigner’s shameless self-promotional Youtube video (Grade: D minus)

 

 
Please tell me this is a joke. His Chinese isn’t bad, but Tom Jones + Carlton Dance + Goofy smile = DORK. In spite of the fact that it has arguably twice the entertainment value of any of Magibon’s videos, this video gets a D minus. Unless it’s just a joke, in which case he gets a solid B.