leejcandle

My wife uses her cell phone (cheap calling card) to stay in constant contact. Still, she's had to deal with homesickness from time to time. But just having Chinese markets and even a Chinese church congregation haven't been enough: She comes from a big loving family, and also left a son (now 20) in China. Much of the drama she has these days comes from trying to mother her son from such a distance (fussing at him about work, having the wrong friends, etc.). She's also the "big sister" of the family, and she also spends alot of time trying to help manage tough situations the family is dealing with. It's got to be hard on her not being able to be there. When she reminisces about home and past situations, I listen intently. I feel that listening that way helps her deal with not being there. (It's also very interesting just from the point of view of learning in detail about her clan.) My family here has given her lots of support. And her coworkers like her. So my wife's new family and friends certainly help her feel she has a new home, not just her old home in China.

¶Ô²»Æð Are you typing pinyin, Dan? Jiaying will need character recognition (she's a holy terror with that - seems like 100%) so I'll have to get my graphics tablet working. She'll bring her Kingsoft translation software with her. 171228[/snapback] Randy, I just now discovered this thread; though I realize your post was last November. I bought PenPower 9.1 from Fry's here in Austin. Handwriting recognition is pretty good. I use if for study. I couldn't use my own Wacom tablet; you have to use the included tablet, it has different drivers and functions. For learning Chinese characters and dictionary lookup, I've had the best luck with handwriting recognition. For example, you already need to know the pronunciation to use Pinyin. But with HWR, you can input characters you seen on the TV screen, or some written material.

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My wife initially spoke no English, and still very little when she came here. Use a computer to translate, while you learn Chinese. Seriously... I've been at it for a couple of years; we initially used people, then computers to translate for us. Overall, even though she's making progress with English... I've found that the deepest impact of a statement from me comes when I say it in Chinese. She can have conversations with people now, but when I want to make sure my point gets straight accross, I use Chinese. Sometimes I have to go back to the computer, but it's worth it. P.S: I can give you lots of tips on books, etc.

Hello : YOU lOOK NICE, i am from Nanning .Guanxi. what can i do for you. Jenny 177725[/snapback] VRDzxx, Thanks for the compliment. Where are you? We're near Austin, Tx.

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I went ahead and bought PenPower (3x2). Though the tablet is Wacom, I had to unstall my Wacom Graphite drivers for the PenPower software to find its tablet. There's an incompatibility issue with KingSoft PowerWord mouse-over popups. I have to disable that function (Cntl-Alt-F1) to use the tablet. I really like the PowerWord dictionary, so that'll be tricky. The nice feature I already like is that you can set the recognizer to change a Traditional input character to its Simplified equivilent. Already one of the uses I wanted for a recognizer is to copy newspaper articles from local Chinese newspapers; which seem to be all published in Traditional character set. (I know I can get articles from the same papers from their web pages. But my intent is to use handwriting HanZi myself as a learning vehicle. That worked well for me when I studied Japanese.) Even though the Full Screen recognizer is recommended, I'm having better luck with the writing pad; which allows for choosing the input character from a list. (The full-screen recognizer sometimes is misinterpreting my input, then immediately inputs the wrong character.)

I use PlecoDict everyday on my Palm Tungsten W. I also got the HanWang recognizer plugin. I'm spoiled, so I want to do the same things on my PC. I want to copy sentences/paragraphs into a document to translate and learn. I've found entering characters into PlacoDict much easier than PinYin or radical lookups. I also have a GD-988, which has a larger dictionary, but the handwriting recognizer is harder to use, and not as accurate as HanWang on PlacoDict. As I indicated before, my only problem is that the offerings I see have tablets; I already have two Wacom tablets. For PlecoDict: http://www.pleco.com/plecodict.html Get some of the extra dictionaries, such as CED and LDC. The base Oxford dictionary isn't enough.

Alas, mine is only showing an IME Pad under Japanese, not Chinese PRC. By the way, I see from your sig your sweetie is coming tomorrow. Good luck.

Now that's as counterintuitive as I've ever seen; install the Japanese IME to get the Chinese writing pad. Does this have anything to do with something I read today; that Microsoft previously imbedded a Chinese recognizer, then HanWang sued. Looks sneaky to me... Ok, I'll try it.

I'm looking for Chinese handwriting recognition software, such as PenPower. But I already have a Wacom tablet, and all the titles I see on the web come with tablets. Anyone know where I can get just the CDROM?

I was with AT&T, and I could SMS from my Palm Tungsten-W; but only in English. For Chinese, I used a service called Quickdata.ca. After setting up an account, you send email to their site, which gets converted to a text message to her phone. The reply from her phone gets converted to an email reply to you. For us it was indispensible; especially before she got a computer. Once I set up my Tungsten to read and write simplified Chinese, we could communicate on-the-go most hours of the day.

Ah! There's one I forgot: Consistency; Everything I ever learned about her, from other people, watching her, or her own descriptions were always consistent. No hint of hidden agenda or hidden personality. Beyond that; I guessed for myself while she was in China what might be unsaid that I would find out later. I satisfied myself that if my guesses were true, that she would still me my good wife; and they did come true. So consistency was a big deal for me, before and after her arrival.

1. 3 visits to China, 6 months in America, and now 2 total years of relationship: I could see she is a very family oriented person. Even now, her biggest daily concerns are her son and her parents in China. 2. One of my nieces (25 years old) watched our video we made for the consulate. She gave me the comment: "Wow, that woman really loves you." 3. She was never concerned about the green card process, maybe didn't even know it existed. She didn't study the concept and details until a couple of months after it arrived. 4. Her primary concepts of love and happiness stem from experiences in her family growing up. This I get from scores of anecdotes she's told me from her childhood. 5. She explained to me yesterday that the ample money she and her ex had (from successful business) didn't equate to happiness; but in fact was part of the misery. 6. I believe I know her true motivation; a blissful relationship with her husband and family. This list isn't well thought out; just the things that come to mind as clues to her core being. I may re-post later as I think of more "romantic" stuff; she is very romantic.

After my first visit in Dec2003-Jan2004, I asked my wife (then fiancee) to buy a cell phone that could send and receive SMS in Chinese characters. Subsequently, we used a service that would convert Chinese email here to a text message on her phone there, and vice versa. Before my wife bought a computer, our 1-on-1 communication (to bypass translators) was almost entirely SMS-email. For a long time, with an occasional visit to a friend to use Yahoo Messenger, SMS-email was the backbone of our relationship. We would SMS back and forth to have a conversation; say good morning, good night, etc. (Sometimes on Yahoo with webcam, if she had trouble with the proper pinyin, I'd see her lower her head and punch an SMS message into her cell phone...then I'd get an email with what she was trying to say; a very interesting crutch/workaround at the time. )

我应该为我的妻子拿一个礼物吗?

As regards movie recommendations, try Beauty and the Beast. The songs provide some nice repetition and pauses. While I was growing up, I really hated "musicals". But this is one of my favorite movies. (I might go buy the Lion King DVD; haven't seen that one in a while. )

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My wife's English is very weak. I was allowed to translate, and I was asked to answer some questions on her behalf.

Trigg, The proof of us living together would have been tough, because I only have our joint (I added her name) checking account. I brought a bank statement. If they wanted more, I would have been scratching my head. Like others have said, they ask simple questions; I think to get an impression that you know each other. But he didn't ask any tough questions directly of her; mostly to me, of her. For example, he asked her "why did you get a divorce from your 1st husband?" I translated, and she gave a simple answer. The interviewer wanted more detail, so I gave him an in-depth explanation of things about her ex that she had told me. I think that, and other things we discussed, is the sort of thing that shows the interviewer that we know each other well (or at least that I know her well). He didn't look at any of the paperwork I brought. He mostly corrected a few details on the application, like my wife's son's name, her mother's name, etc. I opened her birth certificate (the Chinese version) and read the name to him, transcribing it in pinyin for him. I think this sort of detail tells the interviewer "these folks are a couple". I put some hours into preparing for the interview. If I had done nothing, we would have done just fine. About the location and possible language issues: This was the San Antonio location. I think they're used to dealing with folks with budding English skills, because they deal mostly with Mexican immigrants. The interviewer didn't bat an eye; simply telling me to translate for her. Good luck to you folks coming through process. :

The guy seemed pretty gruff at first (ex-Army). But since I'm ex military, that didn't rattle me at all. When I tried to offer documentation, he said he'd ask for what's needed. He ended up not looking at our docs (briefcase full) at all. He had us give him information to fill in some omissions I'd made in the forms. His questions seemed to be aimed at determining that we know each other, some details about the length and circumstances of our previous marriages, etc. Were I work; for how long; what work she plans to do... He had all the docs he needed in our application package on his desk. He said all the security checks, etc, came back fine. I think the nature of our answers let him know he didn't need to dig any further. Besides not asking for a translator, he asked some questions meant for her directly to me. Now we're on vacation at the beach.

Julia's AOS interview is scheduled for July 6th. (San Antonio, Tx) Amongst the other usual myriad of documents they ask for, the instructions say that if the applicant doesn't speak fluent English, we must have a translator. Furthermore, it must be someone not interested in the case. I.e., I can't translate for her. Has anyone here had experience with this aspect? Do they ask complicated questions? From what I've seen posted in the past few weeks, AOS interviews have been fairly straightforward.

I looked at the local Home Depot and Lowe's before making that trip. I would have had it in weeks ago. We started talking about it months before we came. But she's very pleased. Whether or not the flue can handle the full rated CFM, it has to be much better than that teeny-weeny fan of the original unit: two big turbines without filter mesh in the way. I do wish it had a flue damper; I can always feel the draft during cold spells.

Stats, I didn't see your post until this evening; we're already back. We got a nice vent hood at the store you described, after having a couple of models demonstrated for us. We got the San Yang Pai CY-968, stainless steel version. The main new feature compared to others is that the main components can be disassembled for cleaning. Then we hung out at a book store that had been closed on the previous visit. We went to Hong Kong City mall and walked around for a while. This was our second visit together; my third. I still didn't find the 'newer' mall after driving around a while. Maybe I went the wrong direction on Bellaire. Next time maybe... I'm going to install the vent hood in the morning. I'll let you folks know how things turn out. CY-968