Dan R

So many things to learn Chinese is almost as confusing as English. I had understood that Tai Tai is a term used in Hong Kong and Taiwan. All my Taiwan friends use the term Tai Tai. No one mentions the term Ai Ren which use to be in all the study books about 20 years ago. So when is Qin Ai De used? This was the term I was told to use and I have heard other couples call each other this.

It means not now but in the future. This is very exact terminology in the world of GUZ. Just a rough guess would be two to three months to go. You need to post more! Might not speed things up butit is soothing on the nerves.

Try checking this government site http://studentaid.ed.gov/PORTALSWebApp/stu...glish/index.jsp

When it happens to an American citizen it is hushed up unless it is caught on film. I've had hispanic friends harassed by cops and believe me they are good guys. Black friends have been cuffed and after doing a run down on them released. One was billy clubed for wasting their time. My son in law was stopped and shoved around by the police a number of times because of his shaved head and tattoos. But these were incidents not recorded by police who will go on doing it until it is news. I think the reason it is such an issue is it is an international incident directed at a foreign citizen. However if I as a manager of a company have knowledge of an employee that has harassed anyone in the company and did not take action to prevent future occurances, I and the company face fines and charges with possible jail time for negligence. Why is he charged and not his supervisors. The law holds supervision accountable in companies for their employees but in government it seems the fall guy stands alone.

But now what is "white"? Seems that depends on the situation. When I was growing up I was not white, now I am. Hitler called the Japanese white and therefor able to be allied with. Australia use to restrict southern Italians from immigration as nonwhites. In winter I am whiter than in summer but at best an off white. The whitest skin I have seen was a Chinese woman in Hawaii. Have you seen pictures of Vanessa Williams? Not sure where the color goes sometimes. It is all so confusing. I just wonder why we need to classify. What's the point?

Relax and have a wonderful trip.

You've already received advice and consensus is just do it. I would not use anything dated prior to the divorce as the filing instructions are clear that filing while married disqualifies you. A date on paperwork prior to the divorce could be looked at as not being proper and result in close scrutiny of the divorce delaying processing. Best of luck.

One more thing to be prepared with. It is rarely asked for.

We have had many discussions in CFL about the way people from different cultures view things. Here is a study you may find interesting. Asians, Americans Show Perceptual Divide By RANDOLPH E. SCHMID, AP Science Writer 47 minutes ago WASHINGTON - Asians and North Americans really do see the world differently. Shown a photograph, North American students of European background paid more attention to the object in the foreground of a scene, while students from China spent more time studying the background and taking in the whole scene, according to University of Michigan researchers. The researchers, led by Hannah-Faye Chua and Richard Nisbett, tracked the eye movements of the students — 25 European Americans and 27 native Chinese — to determine where they were looking in a picture and how long they focused on a particular area. "They literally are seeing the world differently," said Nisbett, who believes the differences are cultural. "Asians live in a more socially complicated world than we do," he said in a telephone interview. "They have to pay more attention to others than we do. We are individualists. We can be bulls in a china shop, they can't afford it." The findings are reported in Tuesday's issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The key thing in Chinese culture is harmony, Nisbett said, while in the West the key is finding ways to get things done, paying less attention to others. And that, he said, goes back to the ecology and economy of times thousands of years ago. In ancient China, farmers developed a system of irrigated agriculture, Nisbett said. Rice farmers had to get along with each other to share water and make sure no one cheated. Western attitudes, on the other hand, developed in ancient Greece where there were more people running individual farms, raising grapes and olives, and operating like individual businessmen. So differences in perception go back at least 2,000 years, he said. Aristotle, for example, focused on objects. A rock sank in water because it had the property of gravity, wood floated because it had the property of floating. He would not have mentioned the water. The Chinese, though, considered all actions related to the medium in which they occurred, so they understood tides and magnetism long before the West did. Nisbett illustrated this with a test asking Japanese and Americans to look at pictures of underwater scenes and report what they saw. The Americans would go straight for the brightest or most rapidly moving object, he said, such as three trout swimming. The Japanese were more likely to say they saw a stream, the water was green, there were rocks on the bottom and then mention the fish. The Japanese gave 60 percent more information on the background and twice as much about the relationship between background and foreground objects as Americans, Nisbett said. In the latest test, the researchers tracked the eye movement of the Chinese and Americans as they looked at pictures. The Americans looked at the object in the foreground sooner — a leopard in the jungle for example — and they looked at it longer. The Chinese had more eye movement, especially on the background and back and forth between the main object and the background, he said. Reinforcing the belief that the differences are cultural, he said, when Asians raised in North America were studied, they were intermediate between native Asians and European-Americans, and sometimes closer to Americans in the way they viewed scenes. Kyle R. Cave of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst commented: "These results are particularly striking because they show that these cultural differences extend to low level perceptual processes such as how we control our eyes. They suggest that the way that we see and explore the world literally depends on where we come from." Cave said researchers in his lab have found differences in eye movement between Asians and Westerners in reading, based on differences in the styles of writing in each language. "When you look beyond this study to all of the studies finding cultural differences, you find that people from one culture do better on some tasks, while people from other cultures do better on others. I think it would be hard to argue from these studies that one culture is generally outperforming the other cognitively," Cave said. ___

He's a goat at heart.

We put "By Birth" and N/A. I thought this may be used to check for legitamacy of future requests to sponsor relatives. Other than that it makes little sense to me.

Not only dialects but food, shopping and work are seperated by region in L.A. area. When I am out with friends from different regions they don't take me to the same places. In fact if I mention a restaurant that I liked with one the other either doesn't know it or says it isn't good. There are so many people now in L.A. from China that they come with recommendations for jobs or call old friends as soon as they get here. You may be lucky that she doesn't want to have contact. It has pulled some people apart as they see how successful others have been the Chinese way here and don't acclimate. Perception of honesty and following laws is definitely cultural. Large communities and protected civil rights makes a big difference for today's immigrants compared to those from the 50's and before. Many of the jobs are 10 to 12 hour shifts paid cash or even tips only. What worked in China seems to work even better here. Competition with American business is no longer an issue because the community is larger than most U.S. towns and small cities that it is almost self contained. Immigration has been so fast that most are first generation. This is not unusual. It is the way of the immigration waves in America. It takes second and third generations (or grow up from childhood here) to be aculterated. Those who come as adults and live mostly as they did back home have little reason to adapt. In fact it is often regarded as a disadvantage to adapt when American law makes it easy to skirt and being caught carries almost no punishments. Work hard the first 5 years doing things you would not do at home then buy your way up is a common story. For those that marry Americans they must decide how to balance two societies. I am referring to the L.A. area and other very large Chinese areas. To immerse one's self in the spouses culture is a good way to try and adapt as well as learn language. Those living where there are few Chinese do not need to make this hard decision, it is just there. I think you may be lucky with her choice.

Congratulations! Every step brings a sigh of relief knowing there is progress.

Hear! Hear!

Guys use the search. You will find many comments by Amber as well as maiyademama, beijingjenny, jgrier and a few others. CFL is a mixed if slightly unbalanced (in demographics I mean ) group.

I always find it interesting that as soon as a person does not act properly conditioned they are said to have a syndrome or affliction. Yet the conditioned response dictated by society to perpetuate itself or assure stability is simply regarded as right or proper. Mix exoticism with middle age crises and you will get all kinds of gossip. Why isn't it called middle age readjustment? Then it lacks a negative conotation. How about the women in CFL. They can't be victims of exoticism because they are not males? On that J is safe on two counts and our Afro-American & Asian-American brothers here are also. Seems like a selective condition that may be spreading into another gender and races. How often is reality twisted to fit a label?

There are two conditions related to diary (cow's milk). 1. Intolerance to lactose and 2. allergic to the milk proteins. People with either can eat yoghurt because the process alters both. They can also eat goat cheese (feta is one). Cheese was Europes answer to preserving milk and Yoghurt was Asia's. Outside of Western Europe few people ate cow's milk cheese. Other regions use mostly goat, mare or yak milk. Both yoghurt and cheese were means of preserving milk before refrigerators. I keep cheese in a cheese keeper on the kitchen counter. Chilling it drasticly effects flavor. 20 years ago 10% of Americans were dairy intolerant. Today with more Asians here the % is 12 and rising. Dairy intolerance was discovered in Hawaii where Asians first came in contact with an American diet. Fresh milk and cream were not in wide spread use until the 1940's and refrigerated distribution. In my case milk or cream of cows makes me violently ill for up to 2 hours. This can include nondairy creamer which by FDA decision may contain the milk product casinate. If after eating things made with milk your SO gets the sniffles or keeps spitting or swallowing mucous, that is the symptom. Be sure they avoid common things made with milk like iceing, ice cream, battered fried food, buttermilk bisquits and mashed potatoes. It at best is uncomfortable and at worse fatal and you never know how the reaction will be. The lungs can fill with mucous and the throat constrict requiring trachiotomy and lung suction with oxygen. Or it will just be very embarassing as the body rejects the toxin by violent heaves. Luckily I have never gone beyond a point where I can't breath on my own. Any allergy is serious stuff precautions must be taken. For Americans with an allergy to sesame seed or soy Asian foods also pose risks.

Cool but with http://earth.google.com I could see the block my SO lives on. For the U.S. you can get as close as the house.

Great post! Ok now, all together.....

As long as it takes. How long is that? Only GUZ knows

Well I just can't wait for my first driving experience and to pull up onto the sidewalk to park in front of the store we are shopping at. I thought that was

Best of luck! Is the place ready?

There's a Wrong Lane?????? I looked to me as though it was first come first...... 147480[/snapback] So many things are similar between the US and China, but they have different meanings in each place. I think Dan is confusing Chinese 'Road Art' with the similar markings on US streets and highways. In the USA we limit ourselves to the boundries of this art work, while the Chinese enjoy it because it breaks up the bleakness of the roads. 147640[/snapback] Exactly... Why limit your free expression on the road to one lane or set of rules, explore the infinite possibilities... why have only 3 lanes of traffic in 3 lanes when 4 or even 5 will fit... 147679[/snapback] You guys never drove in Manhattan with three car lanes on a two lane street? Or had the car on your right make a left turn suddenly in L.A.? Creative driving at its best Oh yeh, and the farmers' kids in Kentucky seeing how far they can drive in the opposing lane before someone refuses to move over on friday night in Cincinnatti?! Then there is the L.A. freeway commuteron the way home from work in his souped up street racer that has to see how fast he can dodge home without having his license suspended. Do they do road rage or drive by shootings in China? In L.A. we have both

Trigg I gotta laugh with you on that concept. I'd hate to see the remains of someone that tries that.

FFFAAAAANNNNNTTTTAAAASSSSTTTTIIIIIC