Ten unrelated things

1. It is time of the year again for school catering outlets to raise their prices.  Good, at least one third of the students won't know last year's price.

2. And it is also time of the year to see International students, usually Chinese, going to the canteen with no idea what a "typical" meal looks like and grabbing a weird combination of food items.  Usually it costs a lot (although they have no idea what a reasonable price is) and, more importantly, doesn't fill the stomach.  Although, to be fair, it is indeed very difficult to pick anything reasonable. The only obvious choice is:
.
.
.
chips.

3. Why are (almost) all Erasmus students Spaniards?  (Ok, there were two French yesterday...)

4. And girls?  (At least those that I need/choose to deal with.  Today the office was about to send another one to me.  As soon as I hear it is a he, I redirect him to the next door.)

5. Of course, nothing wrong with Spaniards, nor girls, nor Spanish girls; I already had "Final Year Projects: I teach you in a Spanish way" twice in the past. (Readers of this blog should be old enough to get this.) Which probably won't happen this year, unless they assigned some extra load on me.  That is when I had 20 vivas ("oral defence", in some sense) in a single week a couple weeks ago.

6. The average student here seems to have absolutely no stock market experience, unlike those in Hong Kong.  I have yet to supervise one project student which really know how the stock market works.

7. I hope you don't mind me indulge myself a little bit here:

It doesn't happen very often, you know.  Last year I think I topped only once and was then quickly surpassed. And I should spend half the time I spent on this game on a real stock market:

8. "A holding midfielder, right back, and center back away from an excellent starting XI and all injured."  Actually according to BBC you can just about put out a team like this

Van Persie
Fabregas Frimpong Diaby Walcott
Gibbs Vermaelen Bendtner Ramsey
Almunia

The missing one is Denilson, who is daydreaming at the centre circle.

9. In the past two weeks or so there were at least 3 occasions of strangers in the street saying "Ni hao" to me, in different places and from different "types" of people (non-Chinese, obviously).  Didn't know that many people know Putonghua.  However, when I think about it a little more, it reveals something very disturbing (to me)... you know, in the past unknown strangers usually speak Japanese to me.  Perhaps as years gone by I looked more and more like...

10. How should we "celebrate" the (63+1)th national day in 2013?