My housemate Jay, who is studying Chinese, just popped in my room and asked me a question “How do you write the number of One Billion in Chinese way?”. Right, this is the tricky one!

From what I learned in school in China, “one billion” is “one thousand million” (一万万), which written in number should be “1,000,000,000“. And I asked him how about in England, is it the same. The answer was correct, in England “one billion” is “one thousand million” as well. But, when I learned accountancy with a text book that published in American, “one billion” is “one million million”, which is added three more zeros in the number like this “1,000,000,000,000“. I remembered my teacher was also confused and blaming the American way of saying everything is different.

Please correct me if any of the above descriptions is wrong! But I don’t see this is true neither, otherwise how can be so many business going on between China and American?

My house mate Megan just made a site call "A Gaijin Diary" which contents all the posts that she wrote in her blog while she was in Kumamoto last year. Most of them are very interesting and I found quite a lot similarity to the time when I first came to England.

But anyway, it’s really recommended to take a look on her site, especially you are about to travel to Japan or willing to do some Gaijin study :-) .

Helen and Jay were giving speech with photos from China

There was a speech organized by the oriental museum of Durham tonight. The students who went to China, Japan and Middle East gave a speech on their year aboard. Jay and Helen, who was exchanged to Renming University in Beijing last year, represented the students studying Chinese; Jon and Matt represented us who were in Japan.

It was very interesting to listen to their speeches. First of all, because they were very well prepared and presenting skills were very good as well. Secondly, it’s interesting to know their experiences in China as foreign students. The culture differences, language barrier, foods and etc, just like my first time came to England and to Japan, but instead, it is my country. Also, after listening to those three speeches from experiences in Japan, China and Middle East, I felt the cultures were very different although they are all kind of Asian countries.

Good job, guys!

I studied Marketing when I was in OBC, it’s one of my favor business subjects. My marketing teacher in OBC was David – a very smart and experienced teacher on business. However I didn’t do very well at that time because my English wasn’t good enough to understand some very academic terms (I might not understand them even in Chinese). One more reason was my way of thinking and learning wasn’t dynamic and logical enough to study this subject, I think. Well, I started only four months right after I finished my second year high school in China which was too short to adopt a totally new education method.

The reason I like marketing is it require a very logical mind and up-to-day information. Moreover, although there are a lot of theories need to learn, but the key is to make decisions depends on the other factors such as market environment, government policy, etc. It’s very challenged.

For this the modules I am taking this year, I chose "Marketing Management" as one my optional one, but still it count for my degree. So I think I am going to work hard on it this time!