Politics and paper aeroplanes

The George Monbiot public meeting last night was good- at least, the talks by the panel were good (apart from the speaker from the communications trades union, whose name I've forgotten, who I'm sure was making some brilliant points, but sadly was mumbling so much I could only catch about half a sentence in every two); the questions from the audience mostly consisted of people trying to make their own points or even advertise their own organisations, and there were a couple who didn't actually go on to ask a question at all. Still, the panel's answers were interesting.
What was not so good was the traffic on the way there. After toying with the idea of taking the bus back in (I'd had to come back to halls in the middle of the day for the meeting with the halls manager), with the justification that it'd be rather late by the time it was over, I went for cycling after all, feeling that there was something rather hypocritical in contributing a bus journey's emissions in order to attend a talk about reducing emissions, but mostly because of the surprising discovery that I actually actively wanted to cycle.

Anyway, the traffic. I naively thought that the city wouldn't be a problem in rush hour because I was going into college and they were all going home and thus we would be travelling in opposite directions. However I was stuck on one road in particular for five or ten minutes only moving a few metres; with hindsight it should have been obvious something was wrong but I was still surprised when a bit further on, after it had freed up and I was moving relatively quickly, there turned out to be a police cordon across the road I wanted to go down, so that I had to wheel my bike the wrong way up a one way street to get back to my route (I pity the poor car and bus drivers who didn't have that option...). Luckily, I wasn't too late as even though the LSE contingent was supposed to walk round at 6, we didn't leave LSE for ten minutes or so after that, and I was only a minute or two past 6.

On the way back, though, it was wonderfully clear, and I managed to do LSE to Liverpool St in ten minutes to quarter of an hour- bearing in mind that Liverpool St is less than 5 minutes walk from halls so that was practically the whole way, and that at other times of day it's been taking me 35 minutes. I would have been even quicker if my lock hadn't fallen out of the bike basket at one point obliging me to stop, and since there was a long stretch of railing just there, go right round that to take my bike off the road out of the way while I went back again and picked it up. It just goes to show it's really not that far- which is probably why I'm able to enjoy it; hills of slope and length exactly calibrated in both directions to have me thinking 'I need this hill to be over' just at the point where they fortunately come to an end, while at the same time providing a nice stretch to whizz along when travelling the other way also help a lot.

Today was the Union General Meeting, which I decided to go along to out of interest, though without any intention of joining in beyond voting on anything there was a vote for. It actually turned out to be great entertainment, even though three quarters of it consisted of electing a chair and vice chair for the rest of the general meetings of the term, and the rest was reports from Students Union officers about what they'd done so far. This was because combined with a real desire to deal with the serious business was a great sense of fun, the most visible sign of which was the paper throwing, which I'd read about in the Beaver, but which I'd assumed was a sign of approval or disapproval that manifested itself once or twice a meeting- in fact there was an almost constant shower of paper, mostly newsprint, formed into balls or planes and occasionally just in sheets, from the balcony. The same people were also teasing the chair person and others who came up on stage. All in all it was pretty enjoyable and I'm planning on going again. As a bonus, I met one of the Green Party committee members, P, while waiting to go in, and got talking to him; we were joking about the proceedings (though he's a second year undergrad it was his first meeting too) and generally getting on fairly well. After not having fancied anyone for at least a year (well I didn't really meet anyone), I seem to have suddenly developed simultaneous and constantly shifting crushes on about four or five blokes, mostly Green Party committee (should make the meetings more fun :-) ), including P but also both this year's and last year's male co-chair (last year's is now the Elections co-ordinator), and also a non-Green Party guy from halls who I haven't actually seen since the first week so that's not currently such a major thing. The two co-chairs are probably unattainable, but P might be a possibility...

On a slightly more mundane level, we also had the first Surveys and Experimental Design lecture today, which was very interesting- as an introduction we briefly looked at the methods behind a Danish study of all the children born in Denmark between 1991 and 1998 which indicated that there is no causal link between the MMR vaccine and autism (comparing it with the original report which studied just 12 children who all had autism (there was no control group), and one of whose authors was receiving money from a single measles vaccine manufacturer...). The lecturer called the Daily Mail's coverage of it 'idiotic' and added that was no surprise because it was 'an idiotic paper'- like Ginger I have a passionate hatred of the Daily mail (though where she loves getting angry and emotional about it I prefer contemptuous but detatched ridicule- anger is too much like validation through taking it seriously) so I enjoyed that bit. I left feeling inspired with a passionate desire to go into research, in an experiment-design-and-statistical-analysis capacity.

I'd actually been meaning to put in some serious research into possible careers (bearing in mind that some might have autumn deadlines for jobs starting summer 2007), and wanted to find a starting point by talking to a careers advisor (something I managed to put off to the point of never doing it at UCL), but had a problem in that at our departmental induction the man from the careers serivice had explained that appointments could only be made on the day, from 9.30, that they were booked online, and that they usually all went by about 9.32, especially at this time of year what with those graduate recruitment deadlines. Now I have just one lecture each on Thursday and Friday, giving me plenty of chance to be flexible with appointment times, but guess which one it is? That's right, 9 o'clock. And I also have a nine o'clock lecture on Wednesday, when I have the whole afternoon free though the morning is busy. I don't have one on Tuesday, but I have so many lectures that if the appointments sell out fast the chances are when I get to them they won't coincide with my free slots. So, since I had somehow forgotten about Monday, I was seriously considering cutting today's lecture as the first one is, apart from some admin, rarely important compared to later ones- and if I had to ask the lecturer for notes, say, I could give the impression that I'd swapped from another course and so missed one week. But I really didn't want to have to miss it, and decided I could probably do without the careers advisor.

After the lecture, when I was on the computers in the library, I thought I might as well see what the process was for booking appointments. Expecting to find it fully booked, I went through the two or three stages, only to find they had appointments galore. So I booked one, and had a look at the websites the recommended before it was time to go and see the advisor.

It wasn't quite as usefull as I'd thought it would be; I suppose most of my questions could only really be answered by someone who'd actually done the jobs I was thinking of- but at least I established that it is possible to be part of a research team at a university or private firm as a statistician without theoretical background knowledge, since that's a possible area I'm interested in, and also that the deadlines would probably be not just yet (though of course I should find out for myself exactly when they are)- though it might be something I'd have to go into after a year or two's experience. The advisor also pointed me in the direction of alumni to ask about the Government Statistical Service since I want to clarify how much it is statistics and how much general project management and so on. So I'm getting somewhere...

I got soaked on the way home, since it was raining and I don't have a waterproof coat that's not extra warm. I changed out of my wet things and made myself a cup of tea when I got back, which went some way to warming me up, but I discovered that my heater, working perfectly in the hot weather of moving in day when I checked it so as to be able to tick it off on the inventory, and which I haven't needed since, doesn't seem to want to turn on now. Feeling really tired, I curled up in front of it anyway and had a nap.