I don't mean to sound so suspicious, honest...

I was eating supper in the kitchen this evening when Flatmate 1, whom I hadn't bumped into that much over the two weeks or so of our stay here so far (though he's certainly not the one I've seen least of...), came in and started cooking, and fairly early on in the conversation, asked me how long I'd been vegetarian.

What was my immediate response? "All my life, actually; my parents brought me up that way"? No, though I did come to that slightly further down the line. "Oh, are you vegetarian too?"? It would have been a guess based on too little evidence, but surely more natural than what I actually came out with:

"How did you know?" I asked- not in a hostile way, just because I'm a curious person and in particular, since I like working things out and making guesses for myself*, I have a compulsive interest in how other people arrived at their conclusions- even though there is usually a simple and boring explaination. In this case, apparently another flatmate had told him; I don't actually remember mentioning I was vegetarian to any of them, but I'm quite willing to believe that I did.

It's not the first time that's happened since I got here. In my meeting with my tutor to discuss course options, one of the first things he said, as I was still in the process of sitting down, was "Is it [shorter version of my name] you like to be called?" You guessed it, instead of the sensible and respecfull "Yes, if that's ok!", before I'd even realised I was going to say it, I'd asked "How did you know?" Once again, the answer was rather mundane and even stupid- he'd remembered (or noted down) that that was the name I'd used when we all had to introduce ourselves in the Departmental Induction.

Luckily, neither of them seem to have marked me down as an overly suspiscious and paranoid type. Not so far anyway...

I met Ginger for lunch again today. This time, as she wasn't free till 1 and I had a lecture at 2, I'd bought a sandwich in advance (she'd already eaten), so we didn't have to waste time queuing up but could go straight into Lincoln's Inn Fields to sit, chat, and, in my case, eat.

Computational Statistics has got a touch harder. It's not so much that the stuff we're learning is more difficult than before (though I suppose it is, a little), it's that it's starting to get harder to remember all of that as well as what we did before. The lecturer asked individuals questions this time- it was the problem class rather than the lecture though we moved onto the new stuff in the last part- and I was glad that my name didn't come up till he was checking understanding of the new stuff (which I'd fortunately read through before meeting Ginger- one part he decided was so straightforward that he didn't go through it but just did some examples on the board which everyone had to attempt, then picked a different person to give each answer), as when he was asking questions about last week's stuff I realised that I couldn't remember the exact commands without looking them up. I've also been feeling a little under the weather for the past few days (I had a sore throat over the weekend though luckily it seems to have cleared up now), so wasn't feeling as perky mentally as last lecture, and it was more of an effort to concentrate.

Before coming home- which I wanted to do at around 4 to miss the rush hour- I went in quest of a lockable box to store the Green Party's cash in, what with me being the treasurer and all. I got an email last week from the ex-male co-chair, saying they'd hand the money over to me next committee meeting**, among other things, so I emailed back saying I'd be ready to accept large sums of cash and asking whether they had a lockable box or whether it'd be a good idea to get one; the response was that it'd be a good idea to get one. So I hope, what with him being the ex-male co-chair rather than the ex-treasurer, that he's right about that as otherwise I shall be lumbered with a cash box that I won't be able to claim the money back from the society for. But I thought it was important to have one before getting the cash at the first meeting which could be any day. I thought there'd be a stationary shop- Ryman's or something- in Kingsway or Holborn but in the end had to trek all the way to Oxford St, which I also had to do last week when I was looking for something. That's an annoying point about LSE- UCL was very close to Tottenham Court Rd which had stationary shops, electrical shops, supermarkets and furniture shops***, and it wasn't too much further down the road to Oxford St for clothes and stuff; as for books, there was a Waterstones right opposite the back exit which, though it was academically focussed, also had a very decent range of fiction. LSE has a Waterstones on campus, but it seems to be almost entirely textbooks- though as I've resolved not to buy any new books this year, I guess I shouldn't really see that as a problem- and the secondhand Alpha Books, also on campus, has plenty of fiction. But Holborn and Kingsway have almost nothing but sandwich shops- you'd think in an area with at least two educational institutions (LSE and Ginger's private law-and-other-professional-stuff-training-place****) as well as many offices, a stationary shop would automatically spring up to fill the niche. LSE does have a shop selling stationary, papers, and confectionary as well as things like coat hangers and adaptors to convert foreign plugs to UK sockets, but I don't think they'd have a cash box (admittedly I rather stupidly didn't actually check...)

L came round this evening and we had a great time swapping hilarious anecdotes and experiences of our respective times in Korea and Japan; we also managed to set a date and time to cook together (Friday, 7.30), and sort out what we're going to do about going to the Korean restaurant we saw near Chinatown on our Grand Tour of London- it's a little complicated as we're both planning on inviting flatmates and other people, and so we want to pick a time as many people as possible can make. So that's something to look forward to!

*Could this have anything to do with my interest in maths, statistics, and science in general, I wonder? :)

**The date and time have not yet been decided due to some people taking a long time to give the new chairs their timetable- including the ex-male co-chair...

***Not that I ever, in my whole time there, felt the need to pop out for a three seater sofa- but they did sell Christmas decorations, things that might make good Christmas presents, and some other good stuff

****I realise this is probably not the technical term