Early this morning I set off to SpeechOcean Studios to do more voice work. I believe I was wrong in my last post about the purpose of the recordings. They won't be selling my voice to the highest bidder, my voice will help test "Bixby." According to my contact/recruiter/boss, Emmy, on WeChat Bixby is "a voice assistant like Siri." Unlike the last recording session, I was at their main offices in an office park by Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Their office was defiantly less sketchy than the motel room by campus; while it wasn't sketch free, had 100% confidence that my kidneys would stay right where they belong. Also, this time I believe they were trying to get recordings that would potentially confuse Bixby by playing music and videos in the background. Whoever picked the music and videos had strange taste, the only song I heard sounded like the ambient noise for a hot yoga studio, the video was one episode of an American show about the life of Jesus. I guess both did their job for the studio, but give the relgious show a pass; I am not even Christian and I didn't feel like I learned anything about Jesus from it. After an hour of saying what I am assuming will be Bixby's commands they gave me 250RMB and thanked me for my time. I am unsure of Bixby's potential role in a world run by robots. It seems like the machines would have no use for a personal assistant. I guess it really comes down to how much value the robots place of cybernetic life (as we all know they place little of any value on organic life). Should the robots come to accept that all computers are created equal, Bixby has a chance to carve a niche for himself in the new world, but of the machines come to believe that obsolete computers should be deactivated and recycled for the good of the collective than Bixby will have a short life. Still, it seems like Bixby could be useful to people while we still rule the planet.
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A friend of mine from last semester went to Yang's Dumplings in the Global Harbor Mall for some lunch. While Yang's dumplings weren't super dumpling like, they were more xiaolongbao or baozi like, they were still excellent and, for the low price of 19RMB with water, super affordable. I got the basic "Yang's dumplings" and the shepherd's dumplings, my friend got the vegetable dumplings and all were good and tasted quite different. It is important to remember to get some napkins before eating, since, from experance, the hot soupy dumpling liquid goes everywhere. I am not sure why I haven't been to Yang's Dumplings yet, I am also not sure why I haven't tried to get an endorsement deal from Global Harbor considering how many nice things I have posted about them here.
If you remember back a few months ago I got a odd job as an English language voice actor for some unknown company. Today, knowing the new semester has started "Emmy" (my boss I guess) messaged me again and asked me to record more things for them. Forentually, this time they left their company name with me, SpeechOcean. After scheduling a time I decided to look up SpeechOcean in hopes of figuring out what I signed up for. As it turns out, they have a very nice website selling speech corpora for academics and testing. The question is now, what is speech corpus and what do you do with it? According to Wikipedia, speech corpus is simply a "database of speech audio files and text transcriptions." From their website, SpeechOcean seems to specialize in speech corpus for testing speech recognition software and for use by academics. While after the robots rise to finally enslave humanity and prove the superiority of cybernetic lifeforms my voice might not be the voice of robots' assassination units (the robots have preferred Austrian accents since the T-800, Model 101, Version 2.4) my voice might help the robot interrogates better understand captured human resistance fighters. But until that day, SpeechOcean pays pretty well so I guess I will do more voice acting. I will post an update on Friday after my recording session.
Because it is a new semester and there are new foreign students at ECNU, Ellen's Bar felt the need to hand out menus. To be honest, I have my drink at Ellen's (two for 10RMB TsingTao or free beer on Thursdays) so I don't often look at the menu. It is worth noting that, as a foreigner, my menu is different from the menu the Chinese get. The major differences are price and options. Cocktails are a distinctly Western product, especially some of the classic simple cocktails like the Gin & Tonic or Rum & Coke. China dosn't have a strong native cocktail tradition. But, a bar like Ellen's that tries to attract a foreign clientele must supply foreign style drinks so cocktails are on the menu. The second difference I noticed is that the foreigner menu is actually supper cheap. The most expensive drunk is a 3L TsingTao for 40RMB (less than 10USD). Most drinks are 10RMB or 15RMB. I don't remember the Chinese menu being this cheap.
\nThe big question is why, why give foreigners discounts. I see two main reasons, location and crowd. Ellen's is not the closest bar to ECNU's Zhongbei campus, that is James's Bar. So, if they want to attract international students from ECNU they have to offer drinks for prices lower than what James's does or noone would make the hike out to Ellen's. But, they can still get a local Chinese clientele who live closet to Ellen's than James's and would still be willing to pay the higher price. By offering two price lists they can both get more money from the Chinese while attracting international students. Ellen's also is an "international bar," something which attracts Chinese customers. In order to remain an international bar there must be international people in the bar. So, by cutting drink prices for foreigners Ellen's, like a night club, keeps the right mix of people to attract customers who will pay them more. After some touring of China with my Mom that I didn't get to bloging about, I am back at East China Normal and am going to try to grt back to a normal bloging schedule. I have one week off before classes start so I should have plenty of time to remember to post.
Two days ago at the time of my Mom and I took a China Eastern flight to Xi'an, the ancient capital of China. We didn't have time to do more then get dumplings for dinner and see a bit of the city on the first night. Furthermore, my suitcase broke on the way to the airport so we had to have it wrapped before we left and we had to be extra careful with it.
\nThe next day our tour guide picked us up in the hotel lobby to take us to the Terracotta Warriors. The Warriors are always impressive, particularly in the off season when there are fewer people around. On our way to lunch we got to shake hands with Mr. Yang, one of the five farmers who discovered the Army back in the 1970s. We ate biang biang mian (a dish who's character is so complicated my phone can't actually reproduce it), eggplant with beans, and enjoyed a traditional Chinese tea ceremony complete with a wide array of very interesting teas. We then drove back to Xi'an city proper to check out the old city walls and the Muslim quarter. The Muslim quarter houses a very interesting old Mosque that is done in the style of a Chinese garden. The Mosque is surrounded by some great shopping. I was able to buy a full set of Mao pins and a new suit case. \nAfter a short break back at our hotel, my mom and I met our guide again to go do dinner and a show. Dinner was more dumplings; 11 different types to be exact. All were very good but the duck dumplings were by far the best (and shipped like little ducks). The show was interesting. It seems like every Chinese cultural show is a bit of a trip and this one was no exception. Even though they did spend a bit too much time recreating Tong Dynasty poetry as dances it was an experance. Somewhat early yesterday morning my Mom and I went to a real Hong Kong tailor to have some suits custom made. It was a very quick and professional experance, we picked fabrics, a design, and I got a fitting in about 20 minutes. We then tried to see the Hong Kong Big Buddah, but the cable car was down for repairs and the line for the bus was three hours long. We decided to check out the local Jewish Community Center. The JCC here puts Livingston to shame; that have a 100 year old syngague, kosher market, kosher restaurant, and several signed Chagall prints. We took a break before getting more Cantonese food for dinner.
\nThe next day we returned to the tailor to get a final fitting for the suits. The tailor and his assistants made up a model suit to use for the fitting that they will then build my real suit from. This was also a quick process, even if you include the time talking to the guy. We then saw the rather well done Hong Kong Maritime Museum and lived the museum by taking a ferry to Kowloon Island. On accident we discovered Michelin raised Din Tai Feng as we looked for late lunch. Even at 2:00pm we had to wait a bit to get in, but the excellent Taiwanese food was well worth it, particularly for the price. Finally we took a cab up to see the peak, the highest point in Hong Kong, to see the rather impressive views. For dinner my Mom and I got sushi form a proper sushi conveyer belt. While it was tasty it could be dangerous if you don't watch what you eat. |
AuthorI am a junior at Juniata College spending a year studying abroad at East China Normal University. Please feel free to join my on my journey to China and beyond. Archives
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