A Kiwi teaching English to oil workers in Beijing, studying Chinese in my spare time, married to a beautiful Beijing lass, consuming vast quantities of green tea (usually Xihu Longjing/西湖龙井, if that means anything to you), eating good food (except for when I cook), missing good Kiwi ale, breathing smog, generally living as best I can outside Godzone and having a good time of it.
I saw this one on British-born Chinese Blog a few days ago. I can just about remember how to solve questions in the English problem. As for the rest, I recall enough about geometry to know that it’s a pointless subject. In fact, that’s my answer to all the questions of the Chinese problem:
This is pointless.
Pointless for most people. Apparently it’s quite useful for some, and there are people out there who seem to think maths is amazingly important. For most of us, basic arithmetic is all we’ll ever need. Others were describing maths as an amazingly concise language. I can see the connection between maths and language, but I don’t think it’s time for linguists to brush up on their maths.