Reddit mentions of Left and Right: The Conjoined Brothers (Chinese Breeze Graded Reader Series, Level 1: 300-word Level) (English and Chinese Edition)

In order of appearance:

• Graded readers are books that are written for adults, customised to their level of proficiency. I have, among others, this one. It came with a cd too, with both slow and normal speed readings of the text. After I've read a chapter, I'll listen to the chapter while reading it, and then proceed to listen to the slow version of chapter without the text, and then finally only listen to the normal version.
  
  
• Pleco - the ultimate cellphone Chinese dictionary. I paid for their SRS flashcard feature, which is similar to Anki but all their flashcards are connected to their dictionary.
  
  
• Interpals is like a social network website for language learning that connects you to natives and other learners.
  
  
• HelloTalk is like a mobile app version of Interpals.
  
  
• WeChat is a Chinese social network app, with a lot of features shared with apps like Whatsapp, Viber, Instagram, Skype, Facebook, etc. Everytime I meet a Chinese person and I befriend them (and want to be able to keep in touch with them), I ask them if they have WeChat. I've never met a Chinese who doesn't have WeChat. It's a fun app too since I can share things on it related to my Mandarin-hobby that I would never share on any other social network, and it's fun to try to read their statuses.
  
  
• Language Cafés can be found in most major cities. Check out Meetup.com for your city. Also, if you go to a big university or college with a lot of exchange students, chances are that there will be one there. Same with tandem partner programmes.
  
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  Besides the graded readers thing, I'm still looking for good resources to improve my listening ability, so I can't really recommend much there.