Fridge Lingo - Talking to your Ayi

Sadly, most expats here, excluding myself of course, cough cough, have something from marginal through to no Chinese language skills whatsoever.

What to do?

Buy a Fridge Magnet set from http://iWantOne.cn, and communicate (or alternately make pretty word patterns, that part’s up to you).

The Fridge Lingo sets have common phrases for various situations. The first set, available now online, and at select venues around Shanghai is “Talking to your Ayi”.

Each set has over 200 words and phrases with English, Chinese and Pinyin (per word/phrase) which you can use to make sentences with.

Smart Shanghai were lucky enough to get a set, and as they pointed out in their review, we neglected to include a “you’re fired” phrase, but the rest of the phrases in the set are pretty useful, including such gems as “empty the cat litter”, and “please”, both of which go well together, at least in my apt.

The View from the Fridge

Our second set (coming out soon), is aimed at a different segment of the marketplace. We’d probably recommend that people don’t try to mix the 2 sets on the Fridge, unless you really like your ayi, but we’d be giving too much info away.

You can buy them online here – http://liurl.cn/eu, with Cash on Delivery available to anywhere that our Kuaidi company will send someone to, which apparently includes most of Shanghai. Yes, even that bit across the river called Pudong, not that anyone actually lives there, right?

Remember… Fridge Lingo is hand made by Laowai’s for Laowai’s. Only the best slave labour will do*

*Unfortunately I’m the slave labour.

Fridge Lingo is available at select venues around town, or online at http://www.iwantone.cn

Go buy a set!

GIF Animation the Staff made

Ok I’ll be the first to admit it, I’m a recalcitrant Mac user now thats quite happy to never use Windows again, especially after the mess that is Vista.  That said, we still have a good proportion of clients that haven’t been assimilated^H converted to Apple.

For at least the last 2 years, I’ve been telling people to use 360Safe antispyware software if they have the dreaded lurgy, er I mean Windows.

The number one issue people have is that its all in Chinese.

While its fun to say “It’s all Chinese to me”; or as my family back home like to rib me with the perenially popular in South Africa –  “Howzit my China”*, people do have a point.

*Yes, I know thats totally irrelevant, but I had to throw it in somewhere

So, without further ado or waffle masquerading as informative writing, I present to you below: Read more »