Mondays lecture was exceptionally easy, and they basically gave us no work to do, so there was no point in turning up for the afternoon lab. I did my laundry, lounged around a bit and tried my computer just to make sure it still doesn't do anything, and it blatantly doesn't of course.

Math 390 has not turned out to be particularly difficult so far, which is good. We are learning LaTeX which is a mathematics mark up language, it is what you use to type mathematics into a computer to create a document with instead of a word processor. I find it quite easy, having learned to program BASIC on a ZX spectrum aged about 8 I don't find doing things like this on a computer that difficult. I basically have 1 lecture and 1 compulsary lab in the morning, and a two hour lab in the afternoon is available(but not compulsary) ifI need any help. Today I got quite into it and at the end of the compulsary lab went to the john Nelder lab to finish it off for about 45 minutes. I couldn't finish it,so I went and had lunch. After lunch, I went to the afternoon lab and found out what was wrong, and finished it in about half an hour. I was so just getting used to it that I went home, picked out some old homeworks at random and brought them onto campus to type up for practice. When I was in the John Nelder lab doing it, I heard someone say that they had been in there for 3 hours,so I'm guessing that not everyone found it that easy.

Afterwards I went home and quickly had my tea before Cathsoc(so quickly in fact that I was still eating cheese on toast as I walked to the bus stop). At Cathsoc we were doing the laying on of hands, and someone called Katy who had never been before came because she heard them say what it was at the service in the Catholic chapel. We split into two groups and each group sat in a circle with one person in the middle. The person in the middle said how they wanted us to pray for them, i.e. what they wanted us to pray for God to give them, and then we all layed our hands on them. There was quiet Taizé music playing in the background so we couldn't be distracted by what the other group were saying. I really got quite deep into prayer during this. In our group, Stephen Hoyland would indicate we had finished by saying the same thing each time, but I can't remember what that was now. Afterwards, one person would anoint the person in the middles hands and head with oil.

After Cathsoc, we went to County bar and there was an England match on the big screen. It was against Serbia Montenegro, and we won 2-1. We went outside and co-opted Phil Younger onto the Cathsoc exec. Also, I gave Daffy the account book to use to forecast next years expenditure at a meeting we have with LUSU tomorrow.
posted at 10:44:00 pm