Wednesday

Have I forgotten Wednesday too?

That's it, no more delaying post-writing until another day. Oh--right! I couldn't help it yesterday. After my financial economics exam (I'm free! I'm free! No more exams for me!) I sat by the canteen in front of somebody else's leftovers. Including egg shells, which I wondered about, until I learned that she (previous occupier of my seat) complimented the food service workers and received a hard-boiled egg in return. I'd believe it--at dinner she told the lady she looked beautiful and received a free glass of milk tea. Oh, if I knew Cantonese. And possessed enough confidence to compliment strangers for food.

Right--so, sitting by the canteen after the exam. At exactly 5 I happened to glance at my watch. Yikes! I wave goodbye while dashing off to the Hostel E common room for a meeting (at 5) to plan our Friday presentation in Economics of the Family. Divorce and Remarriage. The professor is giving us extra presentation time so we can compare the United States (decreasing divorce rate) to Hong Kong (increasing divorce rate).

The trend with these presentations seems to be: blame Mainland China. Every presenter so far has related his or her topic to Hong Kong men finding mistresses and/or wives in the Mainland. It explains trends in mate selection, cohabitation, marriage, and even though I forget what the other topics were, I know the Mainland fit in somehow. So of course my group-mates offered Hong Kong's men's extra-marital affairs with Mainland women as THE explanation for the increased divorce rate. My theory? Changes in divorce law that decreased the time needed to acquire a divorce. It's acknowledged with a bulleted sentence somewhere on the slide.

And now I've rambled for two paragraphs about my project. But after meeting with them for an hour and a half I went to dinner and then from 9 to 12:45 we instant messaged information back and forth. So it consumed a good portion of my day.

Oh yes, and randomly in the middle of Wednesday's class the professor slips in that Obama won the election. It was while mentioning that the United States would find it "politically incorrect" for Michael Jordan or Barack Obama to have married a white woman. He quickly chose new words (maybe in response to my appalled/disbelieving/completely baffled face) but the meaning was still along the lines of "socially unacceptable." Then he skimmed into another example with Hong Kongers and Indians. Oh dear, America--what does the world think of you?

I remembered more of Tuesday: in Mandarin class the teacher drew the left-hand side of this character on the board and asked us what does it look like:羝 I almost raised my hand and said, "caterpillar" because clearly that's what it is. It's the top part of 美 ("měi," "beautiful", and the first character in America) and every time I write it I always always think of a caterpillar. But no. The teacher drew some curly spirals and called it a ram. Obviously. Well, she didn't say "obviously" but it was implied. However, she followed with an interesting story. Back in ancient times, that was the character for ram. And this is the character for big: 大 . So: měi" combines "ram" with "big," because a big ram is a beautiful thing.

I've looked up the actual characters for caterpillar. Two choices appeared and I have no idea which one is more right. 毛虫 or 蠋. The first one looks more caterpillar-ish, so I'll go with that one.

我 不 要 吃 毛虫.
I don't want to eat caterpillars.

Also, in one of the lifts there's a board for people to write messages to their secret angels. My master wrote me a thank you, or so I assume from the exclamation points and smiley faces--she wrote it all in characters except for "505" and "Angel." Success! She doesn't suspect it's me.