Fridge Lingo - Talking to your Ayi

Sadly, most expats here, excluding myself of course, cough cough, have something from marginal through to no Chinese language skills whatsoever.

What to do?

Buy a Fridge Magnet set from http://iWantOne.cn, and communicate (or alternately make pretty word patterns, that part’s up to you).

The Fridge Lingo sets have common phrases for various situations. The first set, available now online, and at select venues around Shanghai is “Talking to your Ayi”.

Each set has over 200 words and phrases with English, Chinese and Pinyin (per word/phrase) which you can use to make sentences with.

Smart Shanghai were lucky enough to get a set, and as they pointed out in their review, we neglected to include a “you’re fired” phrase, but the rest of the phrases in the set are pretty useful, including such gems as “empty the cat litter”, and “please”, both of which go well together, at least in my apt.

The View from the Fridge

Our second set (coming out soon), is aimed at a different segment of the marketplace. We’d probably recommend that people don’t try to mix the 2 sets on the Fridge, unless you really like your ayi, but we’d be giving too much info away.

You can buy them online here – http://liurl.cn/eu, with Cash on Delivery available to anywhere that our Kuaidi company will send someone to, which apparently includes most of Shanghai. Yes, even that bit across the river called Pudong, not that anyone actually lives there, right?

Remember… Fridge Lingo is hand made by Laowai’s for Laowai’s. Only the best slave labour will do*

*Unfortunately I’m the slave labour.

Fridge Lingo is available at select venues around town, or online at http://www.iwantone.cn

Go buy a set!

GIF Animation the Staff made

For at least the last 2 years, I’ve been telling people to use 360Safe antispyware software if they have the dreaded lurgy, er I mean Windows.

The number one issue people have is that its all in Chinese.

While its fun to say “It’s all Chinese to me”; or as my family back home like to rib me with the perenially popular in South Africa -  “Howzit my China”*, people do have a point.

*Yes, I know thats totally irrelevant, but I had to throw it in somewhere

So, without further ado or waffle masquerading as informative writing, I present to you below:

The Laowai’s Guide to 360 Safe Anti Spyware.

Installation Instructions

First thing to do is to download the software.

Go Visit http://www.360safe.com

You’ll be looking for a link on the page that looks like this:

Click the big green button marked 免费下载 (Free Download)

After a second or three you should be able to run the install software.  It will download the updates, and show you something like this after a few minutes.  Don’t worry that the Chinese is coming up as garbage just yet – we don’t need it.

Click Next (the Big highlighted button with the (N) > above).
Then click the button marked (I)
It will prompt you for where to install the Software.  The default C:\Program Files\360\360Safe is a good choice.
Click (I) again, and it will trundle away for another minute or so, installing.

When it gets to the next part STOP.

Its asking us if we want to install 360 Safe in the startup.  Generally you’ll want to do the American thing, and just say No, so click the bottom selection, and click (N)

Click (N) again on the next screen

The last screen will appear asking us if we want to reboot

If its convenient, reboot, if not don’t.  Doesn’t make a huge amount of difference.

Usage

When you first open up 360 safe, you’ll be presented with a screen looking something like this:

You’ll notice at the bottom things are happening – its downloading updates automatically. (See the 18% above).  You can let it finish downloading updates – this usually takes a few minutes or less.

The first thing to do is to scan the computer for spyware.

Click the 常用 button, then click the second tab.

Then click the Scan link

It might ask you whether you want to download updates first (if you haven’t already).  If so, click the left button to let it complete the download first prior to scanning.

If it needs to download files, a window similar to the one below will appear.  Let it complete downloading, it will disappear automatically once its downloaded its updates.

It should start automatically scanning once its updated.

Assuming the computer is clean, you’ll see nothing in the second tab (as above).

If you have spyware, then it will be listed.  To remove spyware, just check the box next to whatever is listed, and click the button on the left at the bottom.

This is usually enough to clean up a computer.

If you have some more recalcitrant spyware, then you’ll need to go a step further.  Close the previous window, and click the 3rd tab (see below)

Click the obviously placed scan button in the centre of the page.

It will list whats starting up in your computer on the left hand side.

Anything listed in the first row is spyware.  (In the picture above I have zero items listed).
If you find anything, click the checkbox next to the listing, and click the left most button at the bottom of the page.

Thats pretty much the extent of it.

If you have something really nasty, 360Safe will prompt you to download one of its more specialized removal tools.  If that happens, you’re probably better off bringing the computer to someone who knows what they’re doing, as its likely to be a more complicated removal than the average end user is capable of.

As most of the comments in this post appear to be of the Help! how do I remove 360 (why did you install it in the first place then?) heres how:

Start, Settings, Control Panel

Add Remove Programs.

Select 360 Safe

Choose the bottom option, then click next (the left button)

Say Yes to confirm (the Left button)

Click Finish (at bottom) to reboot.  If you don’t want to immediately reboot, choose the bottom option, then click finish.