KENNETH PORIO | the blog

Gong Xi Fa Cai (Mandarin) Kiong Hee Huat Chay (Hokkien) Kung Hei Fat Choi (Cantonese) In whatever dialect our fellow Filipino-Chinese pronounce these four Chinese characters, these words automatically brings us to our minds that it's the Chinese New Year or the Spring Festival . For those who don't know much about the meaning of these four-charactered greeting, it literally means: "Congratulations and Be Prosperous" Others greet us in another Chinese greeting: Xin Nian Kuai Le (Mandarin) Sin Ni'n Khuai Lok (Hokkien) San Niin Faai Lok (Cantonese) in which it means "Happy New Year" . For the Pinoys, we join them in celebrating the Chinese New Year by joining in their Lion and Dragon Dances, eating "Tikoy" ( "sweet cake" ) or "Nian Gao" ( "year cake" ), the white, sticky and sweet pastry made from glutinous rice that symbolizes " strong and sweet bonds with the family " or " every year higher and hig...

Back when I was in elementary in my Alma Mater, Colegio de San Ignacio, my first Chinese teacher, Mrs. Teresita Te, known as Siu Eng Siensi, gave me a Chinese name since I was just a new student there. Without knowing what does it mean, I was given by this name... All I knew before that these two Chinese characters pronounced "ho peng" in Fukienese (or the Min dialect, spoken in Fujian Province in Mainland China). All I did was just practice its stroke order - writing it in the proper way (the stroke order is displayed in the animated order of these two characters). It was Grade 4, that we were now introduced to Mandarin, the standard language of China, that I learned the Mandarin pronunciation of my Chinese name "hé píng". At that time, I mastered myself the art of the Chinese language...reading, writing, reciting, etc. It was then Grade 6, when I enhanced my Chinese learning through our Chinese Consultant, Mrs. Nancy Ong, known as Theng-theng Siensi. I was enhance...

Dear Friends, It's July 2007 and it's another week of classes here in UP in Mindanao. CompSci freshmen here are super excited and worried about the 2nd MATH17 long exam. Cramming is imminent. :-/ ~*~ I found a site that can translate names into Chinese (including a surname !) The result of my name was that name above. In Mandarin, it's pronounced Pan Kang Ning. Pan is the surname (in Filipino-Chinese surnames, it's Pua); Kang means "peaceful, quiet, happy" and Ning means "peaceful, calm". But my given name is He Ping, as you see on My Chinese Name corner. ~*~ Like Ate Tina's blog entry, I tried to Google myself with the phrase "Kenneth loves". Here's what "I" love, according to Google. - Kenneth loves to kick balls around when he's walking. Sometimes when he's sitting up too. (what?! I hate kicking balls , soccer balls, footballs, etc (unless my subject will be PE2). and the thing called 'balls'! (ew...

Dear friends, I Googled myself in the Net and saw several hits. First came in Google was this blog . I can't imagine that! Next came my Friendster account. The hits that followed were about my replies in blog posts. :-) Actually, the one that amazed me most is the countries that visited my blog. The one that topped were, of course, the Philippines. Next to our country is the United States of America, United Kingdom, Canda, and Macedonia(?!) (oooh...even bloggers in this country are fond of my blog.) :-)). I thank the people reading my blog all over the world. You are really the best! Let's not forget to thank our Pinoy kababayan s too. Tangkilikin natin ang sariling atin! I want to appreciately thank this guy, Mr. Renz Bulseco , a 1st Year BS Biology student in UP Min, who appreciated my posts. Thank you very much, Renz! I love your blog! Thanks to April too, for greeting me for my birthday on Friday. ~*~ More wishes... 3. To learn more of myself to improve it and to share w...

Hello there! It's another week of learning in UP in Mindanao, but it will be tomorrow. I asked this question in Yahoo! Answers six months ago. Now I need the voice of the Blogger people to answer this: Are you in favour of abolishing Traditional Chinese? Chinese is the language with the most number of speakers. It has a unified writing system, whatever dialect you are speaking, Mandarin, Min, Cantonese, etc. China has made efforts to simplify the methods of learning this "complicated" language. It simplified the characters that were "complicated" to write. It made a new romanization system, HanYu PinYin to make the foreigners "recognize the pronunciation of Mandarin easier". But on the other side of it, Traditional Chinese, practiced in Taiwan, has been recognized as the most important aspect in Chinese learning. They still write the actual characters. They still practice the original phonetic symbols, ZhuYin FuHao. They don't sup...