What is music? Why do people like it? Why does it make them feel the way they do? These are deep psychological questions, to which there are no easy answers. But last night, fair Soppygit shed light on this confusing matter with the following words of wisdom:

"John is like music, and music is like John."

The first comparison is unoriginal and easily interpretable: he contains lots of black notes and a few white ones. The second, however, demonstrates a level of insight rarely seen among us mere mortals. Music is like John. But of course! How can no other great thinker have realised this sooner? For how obviously thousands of years of human creation compare to a history graduate who spends his spare time designing new types of inlay card! This is why everyone who has ever known John has found music terribly derivative since their initial meeting! How enlightened our lives can be from now on!

However, today was not a good day. I tried to get into the Biology department with a swipe of my debit card. You would have thought the door would be susceptible to bribery, but seemingly not.

In Dutch, however, we learnt how to say "take your clothes off!" ("uit de kleren gaan") This occurred in an article about the increasing popularity of parties where underwear is displayed, tried on and bought in Holland in 1994. This strikes me as a slightly strange thing to learn about in my twelfth ever Dutch lesson, considering, after five years of four-times-a-week French lessons, we most certainly didn't know how to say "bras", "panties" and "bodies" in French. (Although being between the ages eleven and fifteen probably didn't help there.) However, my Dutch textbook is deeply strange all over. We have yet to learn to say how old we are, book a hotel room and understand directions to the cathedral, but we do know how to ask, "can you take these trousers in?" and talk about the work of the Salvation Army.