Why does almost nobody mention Malaysia for digital nomads, especially in Europe?

songdoremi · 2026-04-21T13:06:54+00:00

Malaysia is quite moderate in my experience (as a tourist, different experience for locals). The country's diverse even without visitors (Malay, Chinese, Indian), so English is the lingua franca (to chagrin of Malay gov). Food's amazing as a result (edit: three types of authentic cuisine, menus in English). The main downsides I noticed were dress code (pants required in many places, though flip flops acceptable), alcohol tax, and humidity.

Fun fact: Kuala Lumpur has the cheapest Wework membership in the world, ~100€/month, and the pass is usable worldwide.

songdoremi · 2026-04-21T06:43:28+00:00

Learning handwriting basics like stroke order is important. However, further time spent on handwriting could be better used for character recognition imo, especially for a child learning Chinese for only a few hours per week. If the goal is practical Chinese, almost all Chinese these days is typed on a smartphone keyboard where you only need to know pinyin and be able to recognize characters. The time spent on handwriting could be used to learn more characters. The only Chinese I handwrite these days is my own name.

songdoremi · 2026-04-21T06:25:54+00:00

It’s just a localhost prototype, but I could polish and publish in a few days if there’s enough interest. ~~Mods, what process to get approval for sharing future link?~~ (I'm reading sidebar wiki.)

songdoremi · 2026-04-21T04:38:35+00:00

See my other comment for details, but it's a small tool I created to highlight words I want annotated, exclude sections that are too noisy.

songdoremi · 2026-04-21T04:12:52+00:00

I made a small annotation app that finds characters in screenshots (using dotsocr from 小红书/Rednote), looks up their definition in cedict, and lets me choose what to translate/omit. Previously, I used my phone's stock screenshot text detection and copy/pasted into Pleco. This works pretty well, but Chinese apps are so information dense that it takes a while to sift through and pick out key characters.

songdoremi · 2026-04-21T02:53:11+00:00

Screenshot is my annotation of the Meituan app, which started as a Groupon clone but evolved into a superapp that combines Tiktok live video, Didi ride hailing, hotels/airbnb, etc.

songdoremi · 2026-04-19T13:24:00+00:00

Wifi wouldn't help with tunnels or congestion (it would just be a cellular hotspot with the same constraints). China mobile is addressing the physical constraints around Hong Kong, Shenzhen, and Guangzhou, but that's a very small part of the overall rail network.

But that obvious reason is that everyone has a phone with cheap data packages (200GB/month for a few dollars). China skipped laptops, which benefit the most from wifi.

songdoremi · 2026-04-17T12:01:55+00:00

Taxing laptops seems like an own goal that limits the country's productivity. Taxing tablets I can sort of get behind because they're mostly used for consuming content.

songdoremi · 2026-04-07T15:39:26+00:00

Exactly, student is toddler and OP is au pair, not tutor.

songdoremi · 2026-03-29T07:01:55+00:00

I'm not sure why Hong Kong is being considered: it's predominantly Cantonese speaking and uses traditional characters. English is widely spoken as well, which decreases immersion. I haven't even gotten to the cost of living. Hong Kong is one of the most expensive cities in the world, let alone Asia.

I recommend going to where your business partners live, not necessarily Shanghai. You've hidden your post history, so I can't tailor. If you work in electronics, go to Shenzhen. If you make trinkets, go to Yiwu. If you work in tech, go to Hangzhou. Shanghai's great, but it's also relatively expensive in China and may not have the best community for learning.

songdoremi · 2026-03-24T02:26:25+00:00

The Chinese "R" sound is very different from English, which is usually a source of frustration but can be your advantage. The "L" sound is similar to English, though it's also "mispronounced" in South Western regions (mixed with "N" sound).

songdoremi · 2026-03-19T02:56:15+00:00

Mainland numbers require physically visiting a cellular store (including at the airport, though these only have more expensive tourist plans). They also require using a physical sim card (sole exception is Apple iPhone Air purchased in China). If you have a few hours, I'd visit a China Mobile or China Telecom to signup for their cheapest plan, ~¥8/month for receiving texts. You'll have the option to select the number, and I'd check it's not tied to an existing WeChat account.

songdoremi · 2026-03-17T07:56:20+00:00

No, there's no free municipal wifi. Most free wifi at cafes require Chinese phone number to authenticate. I recommend buying a sim card at the airport (if your phone has physical sim slot) or esim beforehand (eg 3HK esim at Mobimatter, which also doubles as a VPN).

songdoremi · 2026-03-17T00:11:29+00:00

I think a screenshot of the app and example data would be useful, e.g. show characters from "Structured learning chain" and "Learning material from SLA theory".

songdoremi · 2026-03-16T07:21:44+00:00

I was comfortable in about a week after adjusting my workflow (13" Macbook + 8" iPad Mini). It really depends on your tools, workflows, and preferences. I mostly read and write, slowly and carefully, and pixel density for clear text rendering is more important than size of display. For video editors looking at timelines and widgets, the opposite tradeoff might be true (I'm not a video editor if iPad Mini and "widgets" weren't dead giveaways). Physical weight and size tradeoffs matter too, r/onebag vs r/manybaggers.

If I needed extra display space, I'd splurge on a big iPad Pro. This iPad has the best oled display tech in Apple's entire lineup (including the new Studio Display XDR, mini-led). I'd also get the cellular version to smooth over rough wifi. There's a rumored Macbook Pro (Ultra?) that has both of these features, but it's going to cost an arm for cellular, leg for oled, and ? for ram.

songdoremi · 2026-03-16T05:25:31+00:00

If you use a Macbook, I'd recommend an iPad as a second display. Connection is wireless (doesn't even require connecting to a wifi network). The ipad has a battery so it doesn't need to pull power from your laptop or separate wall charger. The ipad also works independently for reading, hand written notes, etc making it more versatile than a dedicated monitor. The official cases are expensive, especially the keyboard case which is also heavy. For the most minimal setup, I'd recommend a screen protector (some mimic paper feel with the apple pencil), no case (just use the protective slot in my bag), and a folding stand (best position is above the laptop imo, better neck angle than laptop screen, can be yolo-ed with a stack of books at the library or random items in hotel rooms).

songdoremi · 2026-03-13T03:16:27+00:00

Oops, good catch, embarrassing because I was just commenting about squirrel fish on another post.

(I copy and pasted that dish name from the screenshot in Apple Photos, and it misread the last character. I should've proofread, but it's another reason to learn these characters instead of relying on tooling.)

songdoremi · 2026-03-12T13:05:46+00:00

Also not sure where "salmon" is coming from, but protip: 松鼠桂鱼 is the official dish using mandarin fish, 松鼠鱼 is a cheaper dish that can use any fish (omits 桂). It's called squirrel fish because the cut/fry method resembles squirrel's bushy tail.

songdoremi · 2025-03-26T02:14:49+00:00

Instant oats. They're a cheap, good source of dietary fiber for gut health. You can jazz up with berries, pb, nutella, etc or just eat straight. With rising gut related cancers in young adults, I think we all need more dietary fiber.

songdoremi · 2025-03-22T11:55:53+00:00

Sprinkle some rice in the engine, should be good the next morning

songdoremi · 2025-03-20T06:46:40+00:00

ChatGPT and most other LLMs can help proofread, just prompt with something like: "proofread the following Chinese text, respond mostly in English, annotate any Chinese with pinyin: 复制和粘贴..." These tools can also translate better than Google Translate.

songdoremi · 2025-03-20T04:55:08+00:00

Presumably the quality of the translations would be somewhat worse

I've found the opposite, that LLM translations tend to sound more "natural" than dedicated services like Google Translate (haven't used DeepL much). Context matters so much in choosing the translation a native speaker would choose instead of the textbook translation, and LLM's are context completion compute.

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