Tuesday, 10am: Still in bed.

Wednesday, 10am: Several hundred miles away, in a different state, at the University of Sydney! To meet a biometrician to help me with the Sadistics side of my project.

When about to be metal-detected, the only sensible thing for me to do is to take off my boots and put them through the baggage-checking machine, as they are adorned with a ridiculous amount of metal bits. I'm not enough of a metalhead to have to remove my head as well, but I might as well have done, as some hundred metres later, I realised I'd left my ticket and passport on the machine, while putting my boots back on. Fortunately, they were still there when I got back.

At lunch time, I watched various people in the department play Bridge. Everyone was surprised to learn that I hadn't the foggiest idea what the rules were, and did not, in fact, know those to any card games. (Apart from Pontoon, but I didn't think that was worth mentioning. I can't even remember how to play Patience [what most people call Solitaire], which is shocking considering the number of days of my life I've wasted on it.)

I was, in turn, surprised so many people knew how to play. In my early years, I was fascinated by the "Bridge rules" card, but was encouraged not to read it, because Bridge was only played by middle aged ladies at 5pm over tea, and was therefore Evil. Now I'm left wondering whether it's a necessity in the world of postgraduate education, and I should learn how to play. I was reminded strongly of when I was at Maths summer school seven years ago (not something I went to because it sounded like fun, you understand, just because it would look good on my university application form) and the head of staff there, Pythagorus theorem t-shirt man who was obsessed with the concept of "God's A4 paper", outlawed a card game called Mao, at which there were shocked exclamations of recognition from teenagers across the country. Mao turned out to be a game whose only rule was "you're not allowed to tell anyone the rules". Naturally, we did play it, and it was great fun, but for all the apparent cult surrounding it, I'd never heard of it before, nor have I since, and have consequently forgotten what rules I picked up. And judging by Howard Marks' autobiography, a similar mysticism also appears to be true of the board game Go.

[Other memorable events from Maths summer school: a lecturer from Cambridge taught me origami, some people attempted to smoke a pigeon (?) and we were shown a video of what Mathematicians did, featuring one who was studying the flow of blood in the neck of a giraffe, another who was studying the movement of buses through traffic, and another who was studying the aerodynamics of falling pieces of buttered toast. I complained to a girl named Jenny, who would later get 10 A*s in her GCSEs to my 9, the geen, that I resented the assumption that this was of any interest to me, when I wasn't even going to do Maths at university, much less become a Mathematician. Little did I know . . .]

(Weirdly enough, while I've been writing this in front of the TV, a poker game show's come on, and I never even knew such things existed.)

When we'd finished talking, I had two and a half hours of daylight left to do some sightseeing, so I took a bus through town to the quay. I walked along the sea front to the Opera House, then wound my way back and forth through the botanic gardens. The view was stunningly spectacularly breathtakingly amazingly beautiful.

Did I have my camera with me?

Yeah right!

I also went in the sea! I suppose it wasn't really the Pacific, as it's so enclosed, but it's not a "sea" or even a "bay", so I think it counts. Yay!

The weather there was also fantastic - humid, sunny and 21 degrees. Considering winter solstice had been two days earlier, and it's cold in Melbourne, I was well pleased, although my supervisor had expected it to be better. While I'm no sun-worshipper and almost have the opposite of SAD, eighteen months of perpetual winter is a bit much even for me.

And yet, for the first time since I've been in this country, I caught a cold! That was probably thanks to being in such cramped airless conditions on the plane though. My main issue with the plane, though, was that just before landing in Sydney, they played "Ray Of Light" and "Sweetest Thing" and what sounded horribly like "Rock DJ" over the sound system.

Why? It's bad enough being forced to listen to music in shops. I can't believe I once applied for a part-time job in New Look (a clothes shop with a young female clientele), because I can never stay in there for more than a minute without the funky soul music they tend to play agitating me enough to flee for my life. Fortunately, either my lack of experience in dealing with the public, or looking goth as fudge (black-M&M-flavoured fudge, that is) when I handed over the application form saved me from this fate.

But at least, you know, you can, like, leave shops if need be. Not so with planes (and, for that matter, waiting rooms. Hear that York University health centre? The rustle of ancient magazines is ambience enough!) And I appreciate that Madonna and U2 are regarded as inoffensive as music gets, but the more inoffensive music is, the more it offends me. I've no issue with either artist, and in fact own records by both, as well as those of The Police, Mister Mister, REM, The (shudder) Lightning Seeds, Savage Garden and The (wince) Corrs (although I sold the Robbie (arrrrgh! What was I thinking???) Williams CDs a while back and good riddance!), much as it pains me to say it. I haven't listened to any of them in years - if you like soft rock, that's fine, but me, I should have spent the money on metaaaal! What does make me homicidal is that the genre of inoffensive thirtysomething music exists, and is used frequently and specifically for the purpose of not offending people. Most of the artists don't make it for this purpose, but their CDs are sold by the masses to thirtysomethings who have no actual like or dislike for music, just need to feel civilised and trendy at the same time, and it's wrong wrong wrong!

I'd possibly have forgiven it being played if the plane was taking us to a holiday resort, because I suppose it's meant to sound relaxing and sunny and uplifting, but virtually everyone on the plane was wearing a suit, and some hi-NRG dance-rock would have been more fitting.

In the taxi to the university, though, I wished I was back on the plane, because the driver had the radio station on and it was playing the worst songs imaginable, songs I'd forgotten about, only to realise I knew them only too well. "5ive Will Make You Feel All Right" anyone? "Doop"? Why were such atrocities ever allowed to leave England, anyway? Why are radio stations allowed to have a torture hour?

Of course, just talking about them has got them stuck in my head. I must away to my room, and listen to some death metal, to cleanse these impurities from my mind!