so i had my own taste of Ken Chay's lectures today.... he prob spent like half the time digressing from lecture stuff lah; but it was kinda interesting and amusing, from hearing him shoot down (not so subtly) an economist XXX (quote: winner of the John Bates Clark Medal, who recently published a BS bestseller) to presenting Gwyneth Paltrow's Sliding Doors plot as an example of a 'counterfactual'..... i guess i would have bits of trivia presented to me every tues and thurs from now on... =P
and i really enjoyed my History lecture today... i also don't understand why... the stuff is really interesting. i dun really understand why i can get excited over individuals trying to reform China in the early 1900s...factions within the imperial court... how Cixi usurped power... but i really did. it's just fascinating... i mean i prob wun remb this 10 yrs from now (or even 2? cos i'm so forgetful) but i just really enjoyed learning about them.. but 10 thick books in 15 weeks??
and so we were discussing famous Chinese sociologist Fei Xiaotong's text about xiang1 in Chinese class, as in like countryside... one of the characteristics being that ppl had tendency to settle down in little clusters and stayed in these communities (usually) throughout their lives... and as such there's this sense of familiarity and there's actually no need for the rule of law.. cos there's like this mutual trust among individuals.. whereas in the cities, ppl are usually strangers and we have to come up with all these rules/laws to ensure ppl keep their word etc.... and i was just thinking it's actually pretty true... (but i guess laws are also in place to make things more organized, more orderly....) then in the evening, i got a surprise cos something similar actually happened, though we're not exactly in any kind of rural area... picked up my long coats from laundry place on University and found that i had no cash to pay the auntie, and she actually let me take my coats home without paying... she was like... you can pay me when you drop by the next few days... i was just so touched... well, i've only been there once like last year, yet she trusted me so much... i'll be so totally guilt-stricken if this thing slips my mind and i forget to go pay her by this weekend...