Michel Thomas Mandarin Chinese Vocabulary Course

The Michel Thomas Mandarin Chinese Vocabulary course has been recorded, edited and is scheduled for release in the UK in August, 2009. It will not be sold in the North America.

Those outside of the UK may order it via Amazon.co.uk, download it from Audible.com or get it directly from the publisher, Hodder and Arnold. My understanding is that Amazon discounts it and, for North Americans, the delivery service is quite good in my own experience.

This is the third and probably the last part of a complete course. If you do the Beginner ( Foundation), Advanced and Vocabulary courses you will have the complete course for spoken Mandarin. The essential patterns and necessary vocabulary will be yours to use in any way you choose. It is basically a course in how to communicate in Mandarin.

A lot of work went into the preparation of this course. You will learn many new words, expressions and more Chinese patterns which will bring your command of spoken Mandarin to an even higher level.

It is especially geared to those who travel to Mandarin-speaking parts of the world. I use it a lot in my local interactions here in the States with Mandarin speakers. There are more and more Chinese speakers everywhere I go. Many of them speak Mandarin though it may not be their native language.

They are absolutely delighted when I speak with them in Chinese.

I hope you enjoy the course and let me know how it goes for you.

Reflections on a prediction.

Several people have asked me why I haven't removed the prediction on the US election.

I am leaving it as it is because I want to remind myself to not take myself too seriously.

Obviously, Obama won the election, not McCain.

The American people took the high road and elected the most qualified person to lead our nation.

In the end I voted for him as did my 92 year old father. We watched the debates and were quite impressed with what we saw and heard. He will be a great president.

A newspaper editor in the 1920's wrote a letter to the paper's astrologer to let him know that he was being dismissed.

" As you have doubtlessly predicted you are fired.'

I will stick with what I do best and leave predictions to others more qualified.

Wonderful news

Today I received news that I have been accepted as a student in the International Chinese Language Program at National Taiwan University in Taipei. This is one of the most prestigious and rigorous such programs in the world. It is a tremendous honor for me to to be in this program.

I am especially excited that this will provide me with even more training to help the many students who are learning Chinese via the Michel Thomas Mandarin Chinese language course published by Hodder ( UK ) and McGraw-Hill ( North America).

My hope is that I will learn even more to amplify and improve my teaching of Chinese.

Stay tuned for more details.

Prediction - US elections

I have developed a method whereby I check in via my body to get some feedback on items for my patients. Over the years I have learned that a feeling of expansion correlates with a positive response and a feeling of contraction correlates with a negative response. I originally got this idea from the work of University of Chicago psychologist Eugene Gendlin, the developer of Focusing. When I was studying at the University of Chicago in the mid-1970's I took a brief course with him and learned about getting feedback in this way. I subsequently took more courses and refined the method on my own during over 17 years of patient contacts in my medical practice.

The day of the New Hampshire primary the polls showed Barack Obama ahead of Hillary Clinton by anywhere from 10-13 points. The Clinton camp was already sending signs of spinning the impending defeat. A few days before I had asked my body sense who would win. The answer was consistent: Hillary. I couldn't make sense of this. How could such a large advantage in the polls be wrong? It was impossible for Clinton to win. Yet every time I checked I got the identical answer; Hillary would win New Hampshire.

The night of the NH primary I kept checking the question. The response was consistently the same; Hillary wins NH. In the end she won by a few points.

I had long learned that this body sensing seemed to trump my logical conclusions. So I used the same process to skip forward.

Here is what emerged over and over again over the last few weeks and up until the time of this writing:

Michael Bloomberg will enter the race as an independent at the end of February.

Obama will win the Democratic nomination.

McCain will win the Republican nomination.

McCain will be elected president.

After two years he will no longer be president.

I hesitated to post this since I don't want to interject politics into this blog but I thought that it would be interesting to see how these predictions stack up based on what happens in the future. Hence, this post.

This actually happened.

Last night I watched John on the telephone attempting to place an
order.

He got some automated program where you speak to a computer and
it processes your order. He read out the order number, the address,
etc. etc. At some point he became exasperated because the computer
voice kept saying, ' We are sorry but we cannot understand what you
are requesting and cannot process your request. Please repeat your
request again.' Finally, he started screaming, 'Operator! Operator!'
Then he began yelling, 'Assistance! Assistance! ' At this point I
suggested saying customer assistance. He said this several times. Each
time the automated voice replied, 'We are sorry but we cannot
understand or process your request.'

Then, at his wits end ,he screamed, 'Asshole!'

The voice replied, 'Thank you. We shall transfer you immediately to one
of our customer representatives.'

We both laughed. And, yes, the customer representative was a real asshole!

I welcome your feedback

Please contact me at the e mail link below.

Or contact
us at hrpharold [at]gmail{dot) com