Had some introductory talks today. They were fairly useless, but a goth bloke came up to me at the second and gave me a flier for some club nights, so w00t! There are all of eight people doing my exact course. At least two of them have fiancés and one attended the university in Sweden where my Dad is lecturing on Thursday. I now have 68 MEGABYTES of hard disc space (that's more like it!), my e-mail account is sorted and I'm going to apply for beginners' Russian classes. Yay!


Tuesday 30 September 2003

Yesterday, I decided to find out how difficult it was to eat some sandwiches while surrounded by dozens of hungry fowl. In case you're wondering, it proved incredibly difficult, until I threw a tiny piece of bread to one. After that, rather than hovering around me hopefully looking for more, they left me alone and persecuted the people at the next bench, looking for similar generosity. How interesting! Perhaps they don't like Marmite though. I will try with plain bread today, weather permitting.

Last night, I went into town with some of my coursemates and someone off The Other Course (which is even more of a mouthful than mine (Mathematics In The Living Environment): Data Analysis, Networks and Nonlinear Dynamics. They share a lot of lectures with us), supposedly for eating and pub-visiting purposes. But alas, I was tricked into attending a trendy nightclub! Arrrrrrrgh! But I amused myself by trying to decide whether garments worn were tops or just fancy bras, and realised that my ability to predict every single note of . . . I don't actually know what to call it, progressive funky dance music with rap-style vocals? I've never heard before remains intact, nine years after I first discovered I had it, when I convinced everyone at school discos that I spent my free time working out dance routines to every jungle track under the sun, when in fact I only ever listened to Blur and Shampoo.


Wednesday 1 October 2003

My "find foul food to feed fine fowl with" experiments had to be abandoned yesterday, because the fowl had all retreated to the centre of the lake and my throwing abilities aren't up to much. Either they are so pleased that someone actually gave them food on Monday that they're in a daze, or they really don't like Marmite and are scared to ever receive it again.

Yesterday morning, I was taught how to use LaTeX (for the third time - LaTeX as in the evil computer program, alas) and in the afternoon, we had a three-hour-long class about mathematical writing (though it only lasted two). We were told a little about the mathematics of population growth (which I know about already), then told to read three articles on this and related issues, and give them marks out of ten for comprehensibility, interest and how much we liked them. This was all very pleasant - I sat on a comfy sofa for an hour and painted my nails when I finished reading them - but the conclusion was: readability good! Incomprehensibility bad!

Apart from the fact that this is common sense, I had two hours of lectures last year about exactly the same thing! In more depth! But I'm not complaining, since it wasn't Actual Work!

In the evening, I phoned Mum, Smill and Jo, and met one of my housemates for the first time. We went for a drink. I am clearly getting old, because my lightweightness is worse now than it was after seventeen totally teetotal years. After two drinks, I felt woozy and proceeded to fall asleep at 9.30 with my clothes on. In the middle of the night, I plugged my phone into its charger, and not only didn't think to switch the charger on, but I somehow persuaded my phone that it was going to be 7.11 forever and ever. Since my watch remains broken, aiiiiie! Lost in tiiiiiime! Luckily, the computer clocks reassured me that it was exactly the time I thought it was, and my phone clock, having been corrected, now works again.

This morning, I had a session about how to use Word and Excel. Considering, during my period of lacking-in-gain employment I myself taught people how to use these programs, this was not terribly useful for me. There was some Maths in it, which may well have been new to some people, but I'd done that before too. However, I was kept amused by the novelty that I stumbled across the lecturer's livejournal yesterday. (No, I wasn't looking for it - my days of cyberstalking local people are over [if only because I don't have a paid livejournal account anymore which makes this activity more difficult]; he posted to a York-related community I'm in.)

The fowl, though they still hadn't left the lake, were at the side this lunchtime, so I conducted part two of my "find foul food" experiment. Is feeding ducks supposed to be a relaxing activity? Ha! As the first scrap of bread flew from between my fingers, about twenty of them swooped towards it, making a terrible racket, and continued to do so as I gave them two crusts. Some hours later, two left the lake and hovered around me hopefully. I have gained their trust now!

Tomorrow's experiment: how do they react to a different type of bread.

(Despite not having done Biology since the age of thirteen, I'm apparently part of the Biology department now, so I've got to get into the habit of doing life-related experiments.)

This afternoon, we did posters. This involved trailing round campus, looking for posters and deciding whether we thought they were good or not. Although this helped us Find New Places, the lessons in poster making we learnt probably need not have taken two and a quarter hours.

Not complaining, of course. After all, I even got to go into an area of the Physics building I'm not authorised to enter!

As long-term readers may remember, I have an unfortunate obligation to write Bryn a poem for his every birthday. In the past, it's been quite easy, since I just wrote silly soppy or dodgy stuff about us, but this year, that's just not an option. And so, here is the most feeble of my efforts yet!

When Brynny goes to concerts,
He doesn't shout and scream.
He just checks out men's equipment
And has a pleasant dream.

But he's not that big a pervert
And he's certainly not gay.
Size matters a lot to him -
But it's the size of the PA!

Yes, some men are into little girls,
Some men are into boys.
But if Brynny's got a fetish,
It's for things that make a noise!

Bryn wants Zed to be a groupie,
But he wouldn't watch or hear.
While she's blowing off the roadies,
He'll be nicking the band's gear!

So Brynny hasn't got a hope,
Of getting into heaven.
But when he goes out with a bang,
He'll go up to eleven!