New haunts

I hadn't checked my non-LSE email address for a week or so, and found some emails from the Film Society giving listings. I got a bit tangled up with the dates- I was thinking "Week 6- that's this week, right?", as the email just mentioned days of the week for the current week's films- but then I saw the dates for the forthcoming films, and realised "[insert expletive], it's Week 7!" I cannot believe the time has gone so quickly. This despite the fact that for the past day or so I have been filling in all awkward conversational hiatuses with "I can't believe we've had six weeks already! It feels like we arrived only yesterday." (Somehow my mind refused to draw the logical if horrific conclusion and insisted, by dint of not thinking too carefully about it, that "we've had six weeks already" means "it's Week 6". Still pretty awfull but not quite as bad).

Into those six or seven weeks, I seem to have been packing three years' worth of routine and habits- unlike at UCL where I would frequent the same few places* for at least a year or so, I have gone through phases while at LSE. First there was the Garrick. That lasted a day or so, the time it took to discover how expensive the sandwiches were. Then it was the Quad. Cheaper food, the site of the stall for Climate Change Awareness Week and thus somewhere I was pretty much forced to be for all of Week 5, PuLSE fm playing, and, I admit, the chance of bumping into CMCC or one of the other Green Party people- since it seems to be where they go to eat most of the time. On the down side though, it has a Siberian draught thing going on. (This was particularly unpleasant during Climate Change Awareness Week what with the stall being perfectly positioned to catch the worst of it; luckily I had a blanket with me for a couple of the days (long story)). Simultaneously (though before and after, rather than during, Climate Change Awareness Week), I rediscovered the Garrick, which turned out to be the only place open (so far as I'm aware) at 8.30 and thus the only candidate if one wanted to have breakfast in college (which I was doing quite a bit as leaving early enough for that was a good way to make sure I got to 9 o' clock lectures on time)

Now it's changed again and the Brunch Bowl is my new favourite hang-out- plus the lockers (not to stay, just somewhere I'd go a lot to get things out and put them in) and the Shaw Library, for a few days last week at least though it's not clear if they'll be making a longer appearance on the list. You can get a hot meal in the Brunch Bowl for not much more than a sandwich in the Quad, as I believe I mentioned, plus they have a very good selection of teas, and most importantly it is Warm. And there's something snug and secure about it- maybe it's being tucked up on the fourth floor. Also, now the crush has almost totally worn off, I actually prefer to be somewhere where there's less chance of running into People- not that I don't like them, you understand, simply that my default preference is to be alone with a book over lunch (chance to have a bit of peace and recharge- the lack of that in Japan got to me quite a bit), and though that gets overridden during a crush by the urge to spend as much time as I possibly can with the object of affection, things are back to normal now. Though in fact, today I did run into someone I knew and had to spend the last half of lunch thinking of things to say. It was L's friend that she brought along to the Korean restaurant a few weeks ago; don't think I've seen her since (or L come to that, must email her), but she spotted me and came to sit with me. Though I would have preferred to be able to finish eating alone with my book, that's not to say I was seething with barely suppressed annoyance the whole time she was there- though it was hard to think of things to say, it was nice to see her again, and when we got on to the topic of Christmas, she told me some very interesting things about the multiple Santa Clauses (sort of) in Iceland, where she comes from.

Computational Statistics has suddenly got rather harder. Not the programming**, which is still not hard (though see below) but understanding the statistics behind it. We're doing multiple regression and there are different ways to go about making models using your variables and I'm not sure which is best, or when to stop adding/ removing variables, or about a lot of things really.

On a more cheerfull note, Flatmate 7 and I have signed up for the halls 'Running Dinner'- it's an interesting concept where you get matched up with two other pairs, and one pair has to cook a starter, one a main course and one a pudding, with the six of you visiting each flat in turn to eat. I was a bit concerned that it would be a problem my being a vegetarian but apparently it's fine- though only 10 people have signed up, the guy who's in charge just mentioned casually that he'd tell the people in my group to cook according to my requirements! It's going to be on Wednesday, so quite soon- but it should be fun!

*The Maths Common Room, where you could eat lunch or just hang around; the sandwich shop handily situated a couple of floors below it; the Cloisters (mostly North) which had nice benches where again you could eat, or just sit (I napped there once or twice) plus tables and chairs where you could work; the Refectory, though mostly in my first year- though I did get their filled baguettes to take away on a regular basis pretty much all the time I was there- I was equally addicted to grated mozzarella with pickle, and egg mayonnaise with avocado (which made deciding tough).

**though that is giving me some problems in the group project- I can't work out how to get rid of the loop in my functions, and it's very important that I do as the software, R, isn't very good with loops and takes ridiculously long to execute them (over an hour with the input I was using)- you're supposed to try to write functions using vectors instead, but when I tried that originally it wouldn't do what it was supposed to.