English has well over 1,000,000 words. Over 600,000 thousand are included in the Oxford English Dictionary, and this isn't including words like skyping, supersyphilAIDS, and kuai. I find Mandarin's strict adherence to its tones and characters to be limiting in my ability to express my thoughts. As groundbreaking as they are

Let's you are buying a jacket, and you ask how much it is. They say 145. An odd number right? It's like their testing to see if you will pay that obscure amount. I take their first number and divide it in half. I know this jacket should only be around 100-120, so I'm trying to keep it below this point. I say 70, try it on walk around, he drops into the low 100's. I walk out and look around other shops for a while. When I come back he recognizes me and knows I mean business. I tell him I will give him 80 kuai for it. He gripes, moans, and says Aya a couple times, but the thought of that 80 kuai overpowers his desire to rip me off, and I have almost cut the price in half.

When buying technology it's harder, when they say a number throw back something around 35% less and hope to reach about a 20% discount.

Though I have completely given up bargaining when buying foodstuffs at the local markets, I still try my ID to convince the McDonald's employees that all American's get free refills as per McDonald's code of ethics.

56. Baijiu

57. Cheap tasty cigarettes

58. Utter disregard for copyrights and intellectual property. Down with the MPAA!

59. Women who don't shave their legs, because they don't have to

HFCAMPO that was a good documentary, very interesting and informative. Thanks for the link

The Foundation series by Isaac Asimov is my favorite, stellar scifi.
For history, Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond.
Having just watched Game of Thrones, I'm currently reading the first book in the installment and it's quite tough to put down.

@Lucky Lucy River Town was excellent

@vexed Animal Farm is amazing, The Beach a must for SE Asia travelers, and the entire Ender's Game series is phenomenal.

I waste a lot of my time downloading ebooks for my kindle, and I have accrued a collection of about 1000 books. If any one else has been doing the same thing we should meet on QQ and do some old fashioned filesharing :)