The students and the financial crisis.

I had a speakers corner tonight. I decided to ask them about what they thought about the bad financial news from America. A few said they were concerned and worried because they had invested in stocks. After I explained the idea of bail-out, the students gave the non-committal answer that bailouts were necessary in special circumstances but not all the time.

I then asked the students about their keys. One girl had the key to her bedroom (in China, bedroom doors have locks on them) and the keys to her parents' room, but her parents did not have the key to her room, which was very strange I thought. Another student had two keys which she needed to open the front door of her apartment. Some students had no keys at all. Another had five keys for her electric bicyle (I have three).

I asked the students about the people I have seen who put their keys on a fob and then attach the fob to the back of their pants. The same student who would not let her parents have the keys to her room told me that her grandfather in the countryside hung his keys above his ass because it was the habit of people in the countryside to do so. Not a satisfactory answer but then the girl said that maybe the jingling of the keys made the likes of her grandfather feel secure. But as another person told me, they jingle just as well on the belt loop above your hip pocket. So the mystery was not solved.