Well hidden from outsiders' eyes I was able to spot another seminar from the HUJI Institute of International Relations called - "The rise of China into the world's agenda - Challenges and Implications" with an interesting title for the main lecture "China bashing in the US". Not knowing what it's going to be about, I decided I wanted to take a look. In a very small conference room in Meirsdoff building I soon realized that I don't know anybody there since no one from Asian studies came there, it was all about the Institute of International Relations students. The organizers were very proud to host the Chinese ambassador and a very accomplished world trade specialist. The whole …

Walking around the Hebrew University today, I picked up a copy of the student newspaper called Pi-Haaton (verbal meaning the female donkey’s mouth, or something) and was surprised to see an article with a word game titled “Korea Heart” (which is suppose to sound like heartbreaking).

Not only isn’t it my own imagination that prices went up, it is now official that I haven’t gone insane seeing Asians all over the university. Yep, according to the article the Hebrew University hosts a live community of 100-200 Christian Koreans studying the holy scriptures. Assuming that there are a few dozens more from Japan and China and some more at the other campuses, that might explain why I see so many of them, …

It’s not about my own twisted perception, cause by time spent in Asia, I’m sure of that now. Israel, and especially Tel Aviv, is a lot more expensive to live in than it was a year and a half ago.

I visited two different friends of mine in TelAviv lately, both living next to down-town’s Eben Gvirol st. They both have a nice little flat in a young-shick location, 15 minutes walk away from the beach and just around the block from the best that TelAviv has to offer. They both searched for their flats for a long time till they found them, since the good ones were already taken, and they are both paying around the sum of 450US$ (2350 …

Spring in Israel has turned in recent years into a full-over-blown summer with temperatures sometimes reaching 35c up on the Jerusalem mountains. While I am annoyed by the effect that it has on me, with the needed move to doing things in the cooler nights, it’s my dog that I was really worried about.

Babby is “officially” a German Shepard, though looking at him you can see that he’s not your typical one and that there’s probably a Husky in there somewhere, which for poor Babby means tons of fur. Babby, now 14, has exceeded the standard life-span for dogs his type but is barely able to climb up the stairs coming back from a walk on the street, and now …

Lots of tools outthere to help you in your Chinese studies, most of them are free. Of all the tools I’ve used so far in my Chinese studies, there’s one that really stands out - Wenlin.

True, it is a very expensive piece of software (free demo here), but… here’s a list of reasons why Wenlin is the best thing that could happen to your Chinese reading/writing studies (by no particular order) :

It’s the most comprehensive dictionary I’ve seen. I’ve yet to see Wenlin fail by not recognizing a word or a word combination, even for slang I didn’t find in paper dictionaries.
For every character, Wenlin shows where the character comes from.
There are endless ways …

“Don’t you think fiLi has completely gone mad? he doesn’t watch normal movies any more…”. - On my 10th grade I did my Cinmateq subscription and I’ve been a movie addict ever since. For me, there’s nothing like the sensation of watching a film. I don’t know about normal, but I do admit that my taste in movies has changed a bit to a slightly different course just before heading out to Asia, and so - in the past year and a half or so - I especially enjoy watching Asian films. Every now and again a friend of mine would ask for recommendations of Asian films and I would usually say although I haven’t seen that many yet s/he …