Frustrating phases in l...

Share Language acquisition can be broken down into phases.  There may be many ways to differientiate phases, but I find stages of frustration the most revealing.   Each stage is frustrating in a different way based on patterns in language learning, and thus requires adjustment in...

11 Reasons to Ride a Bi...

Share In the recent two months I have been experimenting with healthy living, and I found that having a bike makes healthy living a whole lot easier.  What is more surprising though is that by riding my bike daily to get places, I see many parts of life in a completely different...

City of Life and Death ...

Share Nanjing! Nanjing! – City of life and death – was not an emotional roller coaster as most films like this tend to be.  There was no happiness.  There was no point that I felt like jumping for joy.  If you know anything about the Japanese “rape of...

How to Learn a Language...

Share If you’ve followed the earlier parts to this series, one, two and three, you are ready to move on to actual learning!  Ideally, the early game should last no more than 3 months, meaning that you are ready to start sounding like an idiot in front of groups of strangers native...

How to Rent an Apartmen...

Share I’ve lived in 7 different apartments in Beijing.  I think I’ve come across almost every possible bad situation that one can come across when trying to rent an apartment here, so I feel the need to help those of you out there who are soon to be renters. When renting an...