This tut was about ethnocentrism and trying to look at cultures in a detached manner, sth called cultural relativism I think - which is to judge other ppl's cultures based on their own experiences, and not ours. And not me (but Jeremy) was clearly pissed when some ang moh guy said sth like "we love dogs, but Asians eat them. So they might think "why on the world do you keep dogs when it is meant to be eaten?"
For the record, I think I don't eat dogs. Neither does Jeremy. Neither does the Bangladeshi tutor. And i think most Asians do not eat dogs, certainly not the Muslims. So far, I've only heard of mainland Chinese eating dogs - and you certainly do not call that most Asians, you unenlightened _______ .
So here the tutor was passing candy around, and I was quite pissed with everything. The candy kept passing but no one was taking it, so I stopped it from being passed when it reached me. At the end of the lesson, I was about to give 'em back to Manonita and she was on the opposite end of the table.
"Just throw the candy to me will do. No need to walk a big round across."
"You sure? The candy bag is open."
"Yah."
Ok, so I couldn't be bothered cos I told her already and I was also pissed with myself. So I threw it to her.
And as expected, the candy flew across the room, and spilling out all its contents at the same time. Half of the stuff landed on the floor.
"Oops. I'm sorry... it's my fault" ... as i helped her picked up the candy, with a grouchy look on my face.
"No it's my fault.. I should have walked across the room instead of asking you to throw it across."
Whatever. I was just pissed during the tutorial.
European Studies lect at 11am. Very dry, cos' Kati Tonkin was talking about "what is Europe?" .. so she was talking about languages, geography, natural divisions, culture, the myth of Europa, religon, etc etc.
History lecture at 1pm, and history tutorial at 2pm. We have the lecturer (who's the unit coordinator) as our tutor as well. Some Italian guy called Giuseppe Finaldi who talks in a monotone drone, not to mention the traces of Italian accceeeent he has when he's doing his lectures. But I'm happy to have him as my tutor lah, cos unit coordinators know their stuff best (they being lecturers as well, already being Dr. and so on and forth) and they take only one or two tutorial time slots. The overwhelming majority of the tuts are taken by postgrad students. The -ve thing though, is that unit coordinators take forever to return back assignments and tend to be more strict in their making... I guess.
When you sign up for a tut (we still use the manual method of going to the noticeboard and write our name, unlike NUS which has progressed on to online tut registration), they won't put down the tutors taking each time slot because that'd probably lead to everyone signing up for the supposedly (and I say supposedly again) "better" tutors, aka the unit coordinator. T4, by intuition and observation from last semester, I noted that unit coordinators (lecturers) love having their tut slots just after the lecture. And that was where we put our names in.
A note must be made about the room where we had our History tut - it was anything but ordinary. Cos it's the room of some professor who went on study leave, or isn't around / or left UWA or sth. So the room was like terribly medieval, books on Europe all over the shelves. Not to mention it was an office, not a tut room really. So there are no tables. Which is the difficult part.
Now I'm just waiting for 5pm to come cos' that is when we are supposed to meet for some discussion on some anthropology assignment due next week - me, jeremy and this new guy called chester, which I initially thought was written as "jester". Jeremy said "If it was jester, I bet his parents must have a good sense of humour."
Now that the timetable has been confirmed - I've finished all four tutorials for this week, I could publish it.
Monday - nothing (!)
Tuesday
11am European Studies 101 tutorial @ Arts G01
12pm Anthropology 101 lecture @ Social Sciences LT
2pm Political Science 101 lecture @ Social Sciences LT
3pm Political Science tutorial @ SSR 2.16
Wednesday
10am Anthropology 101 tutorial @ SS G207
11am European Studies 101 lecture @ Fox LT
1pm History 121 lecture @ Fox LT
2pm History 121 tutorial @ Arts 1.19
Thursday
11am European Studies 101 lecture @ Fox LT
12pm Anthropology 101 lecture @ Social Sciences LT
1pm History 121 lecture @ Alexander LT
2pm Political Science 101 lecture @ Social Sciences LT
4pm - 6pm History 121 film @ Fox LT (but this is only scheduled for 3 or 4 weeks only)
Friday
2pm - 4pm European Studies 101 film @ Arts Lecture Rm 5 (scheduled for 5 or 6 weeks only, and you could borrow the film from the library and watch in it.. so, Friday is considered no lessons, really)
Unless otherwise stated, lectures & tuts are 45 minutes unless the tutor or lecturer feels otherwise.
Really mundane stuff I'm talking about.