Just Some Thoughts After Coffee with Joshy (Tuesday 10/05/05)

Josh and I had coffee at Lazenby’s this morning, and as usual I was late for the appointment! We were coffee-ing and chatting for about 2 hours before our lecturer who accompanied us to China came into the café. She saw us and came up to our table to say hi. She informed us that the school will be having the same Chinese Language, Society and Culture program later this year, and that the students who went on the Jan-Feb 2005 program (that is us), will be invited to attend one of the pre-departure briefings later in the semester. I was excited of course, and now that I am home, I started pondering over my actual thoughts of the Chinese course that I took up early this year…

As I thought about it, I reckon (if only I was asked to make an encouraging comment on the trip) I wouldn’t end up promoting the course to the extent that I should because I realized that the course alone didn’t have such a great impact on me, in fact what was a deeper impact was simply the experience I had when I was there such as the people I met, the group I was with, the things I did and the places I visited. And I also realized that as much as I would like to go back to Shanghai, I would also love to keep the memory as it is and not create a new history of my experience there. I mean going to Shanghai for the second time, with other people, in another place, at a different time, and for a different purpose would make a whole new Shanghai experience for me and that experience I had was entirely a beautiful one, and that I am not prepared to set free the memory by replacing it with a new one.