What a day. I rolled out of bed at 10am, brushed my teeth, and sleepwalked over to Starbucks for a business meeting. It went pretty well.
Then, it was to the school, where I had to so some last minute editing for my Tuesday/Friday class’s first semester exam. For some reason or [...]

This is a demonstration of David’s new Adsotrans plugin. Below is a copy of 85度C’s drink menu. Click on any Chinese words you can’t read to see a popup with both pinyin and an English translation. You can also edit translations. I’m interested in hearing how you like these popups compared [...]

I wasn’t kidding when I said I liked the new dictionary at labs.chinesepod.com. After getting used to using it all the time via the search bookmark I made last week, I started wondering why I still had the MDBG searchbar up on my page.
After I quick consultation with David (CPod’s CTO), I had [...]

I’ve long been a fan of David Lancashire’s Chinese-English dictionary and anotation engine Adsotrans. I’ll admit I’ve had my share of frustrations with its previously poor support of traditional characters, but I’ve always loved the engine.
Since he David joined Chinese Pod, his various technical marvels have been springing up here and here throughout [...]

Those who have been checking my blog over the last few days have probably noticed a lot of down-time. I’m completely to blame.
This is a long, boring post. For those who don’t want to read it, here are the key points:

ANHost is fast.
Their tech support didn’t impress me.
My blog is a fairly complex [...]

Last night, I went to Range’s (likemind). Truth be told I thought the name sounded like some creepy sort of cult, but I love meeting up with people and socializing, so I was really psyched about it. The location they picked was a bit far from me- in Banqiao, 13 stops down the [...]

Tonight I went to a Harbin restaurant that Martin found a few weeks ago. The cool thing about this restaurant is that the laoban actually is from Harbin. Unlike the other Chinese restaurants I’ve been to in Taiwan, this one is pretty authentic. There were great lamb kabobs, quite a few potato [...]

Having spent the last three and a half years as and EFL teacher in Taiwan, and having seen an extremely wide variety of schools, I like to consider myself to knowledgeable about the English industry here. When I first arrived, I knew nothing. At my first job, I worked at a Sesame Street [...]

One thing David questioned about my school last week is why my boss is looking for North American teachers as opposed to British, Australian or other native English speakers. I can completely understand how this sort of policy would be annoying to those it excluded, much like the fact that high paying IELTS jobs [...]