Most of today was spent pimping myself for Goldsmiths with Rachel Bilson, who is on a recruitment trip.

In the evening, however, I had an interesting dinner with Prof. Chris Connery, from UC Santa Cruz. He is heading up the University of California’s Education Abroad Program here for a couple of years. Although most of his students are Business majors, he himself is from the Literature Department, but is really a historian of modern and contemporary China. Among other things, when we got into a cab on the way back, we noticed it was one with a screen on the back of the front passenger seat. Chris hates them, and so we turned them right off. However, he also told me that these screens have now been banned. Apparently, they’ve only ever been in one or two companies’ cabs, and the passengers don’t like them. But then, the real turning point was an incident in which an actor or some sort of celeb was cut by the screen in a traffic accident. Of course, the best way to prevent that would be put seatbelts in the back seats of taxis! But I guess taking the screens out is another way to address the issue! Wu Dan and I will have to follow up on this.

Advertisement