Get on the horse!

This is one of my favourite new Chinese vocabulary words:

马上 = mǎ shàng = at once; right away; immediately

马 = mǎ = horse; horse chess piece; Surname
上 = shàng = on; up; on top; upon; first (of two parts); previous or last (week, etc.); upper; higher; above; previous; to climb; to go into; above; to go up

So 马上 could be literally translated as, "Get on the horse!"

Masked

I had a great time again in Ithaca for New Year's. Here are Kates, Elizabeth and I with masks painted on for a New Year's Eve masquerade party by Kate's tattoo artist housemate Phoebe:



I got some good family time in as well.



I'm back in London now for a late start on the new year. This is (hopefully) my last leg in London. My postdoc applications are mostly done. So now I'm just working on finishing my thesis and preparing for my viva while waiting for word on where I'll end up next autumn.

Essen

After a full day of talking maths with the number theorists at Universität Duisburg-Essen and Institut für Experimentelle Mathematik, I'm back in my hotel, practicing writing Chinese characters (叔 = shū = uncle in direct address), with my Berlitz German phrase book audio CD playing in the background ("Wo ist die Toilette?").

比茶壶还热 -- hotter than a teapot!

昨天晚上上中文课，一段话里，妈妈说：比茶壶还热！所以我们的老师教我们：茶壶里煮饺子倒不出。意思是：知道很多东西但是不会表达的人。 昨天晚上学生只是我和马克。一老师说了这个，我们就说：数学家！

In one of the dialogues we studied in class last night, the mother used the expression 比茶壶还热 (bǐ chá hú hái rè) -- hotter than a teapot! So our teacher taught us another phrase:

茶壶里煮饺子倒不出
chá hú lǐ zhǔ jiǎo zi dào bù chū

Literal translation of words:
茶壶 -- teapot
里 -- inside
煮 -- cook, boil
饺子 -- dumplings
倒 -- pour
不 -- not
出 -- go out

So the phrase literally means "dumplings cooking in the teapot, they don't pour out". The phrase is used to describe someone who has a lot of knowledge inside, but can't express it well. Last night a lot of people weren't there; it was just me and 马克 (mǎ kè) -- Mark, a computer science professor. When we heard this, we immediately exclaimed, "数学家！" (shù xué jiā!) -- "Mathematicians!"