Well the HSK (Mandarin standardized exam) is tomorrow, so today is the final cram session. I have a sizable collection of test prep books. Unfortunately, one is a total bomb. Totally inadequate explanations and the included CD only covers some of the exercises. Nice. The other exercises are apparently on another CD (sold separately); of course, I realized all of this just today. Anyway, wanted to share an interesting statement in the editor’s note up front:

All the articles and texts in the new edition are selected from the publications between 2004 and 2005. For the need of teaching and test-preparation, we did some polishing in language. Due to the time limitation, we failed to get in touch with the original authors of these selections one by one, so we would like to make sincere apologies to them here and hope that they could contact us or the publisher.

Am I reading this right, or is the editor apologizing for stealing content? Or maybe the editor is only apologizing for “polishing” the language without approval from the authors? Hmm, something tells me the former case is more likely. Hey, at least someone is admitting to taking content… still a rather weak attempt to cover ass but then again, this is China: piracy is in the air and water here.

In other news, Ozzie went home today. I’m a bit bummed. He was a boisterous little fellow who demanded quite a bit of attention, but now I miss him. Too bad Remy and Martin have erased me from memory already. No love, man. It’s a sad day.