One day! Right now my brother-in-law and his family are living in Hong Kong, so I'm hoping the next time we visit them we can extend the trip a bit. You haven't been, have you? Perhaps Lord S has a period of urban exploration on the horizon?

I love vicarious flist travel. :)

And as for the Cantonese: as I was telling Alisanne above, the better half taught Cantonese bilingual kindergarten when we were first out of college. As she taught the students a few simple words and characters, I tried to learn, too. (Some of her students were Cantonese speaking, some weren't. It's her parents' language.) At the time, we were living near a Chinatown in our city, and so I'd walk though like a five year old, pointing and exclaiming "Fifth Street! Person! One dollar! Community Center!" (I actually really do know community center, for some reason.)

And the Japanese is is part due to the fact that Japanese-Americans call themselves "first generation," "second generation," etc. in Japanese: Issei, Nisei, etc. (Is that true in Europe, too?) M.

P.S. You would be *horrified* by my accent in all languages. I'm the worst sort of monolingual American--I just didn't start early enough.