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Tuesday, January 03, 2006
a brand new year - part of my 2006 resolutions
Sharon and I've been relaxing throughout the xmas and new year period, doing not much as usual.

We bumped up our gym freqency, and i've finally decided to start to do some form of cardio. Har ha... quite a sight to see a big sized guy like me walking on the threadmill.

The day before i left Singapore, i got this thick Chinese book from Kinokuniya.
CIMG0376

It's going to be part of my 2006 resolution to finish this book! That's VERY impressive, even to my friend who was accompanying me on my search for the book. She knew how "bad" my chinese has been in the secondary school days, and while she now writes professionally in Chinese, i can't even write my own name in chinese in a legible manner. So... this is a huge undertaking.

1000+ pages, so i plan to read about 3 pages a day.. that should keep my interest up and allow me to finish it at my own pace.

Why the sudden interest in this title which is also commonly known as the Romance of The Three Kingdoms?

This all came about when i was in Tianjin for the AVAR trip. More specifically, it was when i was recommended by Zhang Jian, the organizer for the 2005 conference and a good friend of mine, to spend One Night In Beijing to avoid any unforseen traffic delays in the early morning.

So, with help from Ma Jie from Rising Tech, another AV vendor, i was dropped at this very chinese hotel called Friendship Motel, or You Yi Bing Guan. Settling down into the room, and turning on the TV gave me a shock. 50+ different channels of all chinese programmes. Never did i realise that there were such a huge amount of chinese tv, and while channel surfing, i saw a dude seated in a room, with nothing but a few pieces of paper, starting dramatizing the story of the Romance of The Three Kingdoms. That captivated me... ... and then i dozed off haha.

One of the days while waiting to meet up with some other friends, i walked unintentionally towards Bras Brasah,the book capital of Singapore. There was a book fair going on, and i was just browsing through those books on display. An annoucement came over the public announcement system about a MP3-Audiobook section on the fourth level. Since i've been into old-time radio and audiobook stuffs, i obviously rushed up to take a look.

Amazingly, the title that the booth was demoing was the same title that i saw on the Beijing TV, by the same dude! Here's the dude's "handsome" look.
CIMG0379

Checked out the pricing, and it wasn't really that bad. 18 CDs full of MP3s encoded at 128kbps, which is more than enough for just speech, with 365 episodes altogether, at 30 mins each. At a price of 55 dollars, that makes it REALLY affordable to get such a great collection. Just the right stuff to help me get through the actual book.

30 mins a day to listen to one episode, and then immediately catch up with the actual book for a few pages. That should make it easier for me.

The vendor that is selling this also has the mp3 sets for the other chinese classics, like Journey to the West (my fave), and Water Margins etc. If this way of getting back into the classics works for me, i might want to do the others in the following years.

Only if they could do a DVD-mp3 set. 18 CDs that could have been put into 4 DVD5s or 2 DVD9s would've make bringing it over to USA a lot easier. Perhaps v2?
 
posted by Jonathan at 9:25 PM | Permalink |


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