Unfortunately, Week 7 this term has seemed to fade away into distant memory; more specifically, I just don’t think anything interesting happened, so now, in the lead-up to Christmas as I write this, I can’t remember anything interesting happening. Even with the aid of my Google Calendar / Facebook updates… I seem to have disappeared off the face of the earth this week. Worrying.
This week saw the continuation of teaching myself PHP / MySQL, finding it a fair bit easier than other programming languages – probably due to both their nature (being web-based) and the fact that I’ve had a year of computer science at university to instil some kind of core concepts. Anyway, that’s coming along well, and surprisingly the maths seems to be going fine as well – not 100% standard at all, but significantly better this time last year – no lists of death in sight! (Can’t say the same for next term though…) We had a meeting about what maths options we’re all taking for the rest of the year, and unfortunately (?) I can only take two full courses, so I’ve decided to do Probability and Integration, both are apparently very useful for any Actuarial careers. On the job front, I went to the financial career fair on Wednesday, and came away with not so much a broad understanding of what careers were available, but a hefty load of pens, t-shirts and mints.
Friday was the ARCO room ballot, in which I was below the cut-off point for getting a room in college for my 3rd year… but since some people about me decided to live out, I was able to get a room! Yay! We also went to see S1L3NC3 (“magic Simon”) at the Burton Taylor Studio in Oxford, and I was somehow cheated out of an 80% chance of winning £100, darn. But the show itself was really good, definitely up to usual quality. The following night I was treated to a dinner with Charlotte and her mum, and then we went to see West Side Story, an amazing play which I would encourage anyone to go and see, even if not musical-inclined (like me).
Final thoughts: managed to book in for Christmas dinner, despite getting up at 8am to find the server going ridiculously slow. Also, Doctor Who. “I’ve gone too far.” You think?
The main, and mostly only, event this week was going to London and seeing Jonathan Coulton live! After faffing around with our booking reference (I gave them to Jess to take back to her house by accidentally leaving them in my rucksack, oops), the trusty iPhone was able to save the day by downloading them over the not-so-speedy EDGE internet connection. The night was amazing, as always photos and videos will (may) follow some time in the near (distant) future. The set-list was:
Charlotte and I both really enjoyed it, we even got t-shirts! And, most importantly, we even got to meet Jonathan Coulton at the end, get our t-shirts signed and got a photo with him! 
That was on the Friday evening; we spend a good part of Saturday with Jess going around London a bit, eventually getting some lunch / dinner in Pizza Express, before heading back to Oxford.
*sigh*
Happy David.
I think the bullet point system works well, so I think I’ll employ it again for the main bulk of the post.
This week, I:
In addition, my body has, for some reason, refused to wake itself up in the mornings properly recently, resulting in me missing 3 of my 6 lectures this week, oops. There’s no harm done, since the lecturers just read out the online lecture notes anyway, but it’s kind of annoying, and I feel a bit guilty.
On Saturday, it was the Mansfield Ball! We had booked early, so we were able to get dining tickets, which meant that we were able to go in at 7pm and have a 5-course meal in the dining hall. It was a bit squashed, as all meals at Mansfield are, but the food (apart from the 2nd starter) was nice. The ball itself was amazing – attractions included dodgems (or, to give them their proper name, bumper cars), banana swings, a fortune teller, a casino (where we won >£10000, but then promptly lost it all by betting on red instead of black on the roulette wheel), free (included) burgers / chicken nuggets / potato wedges / fudge / sweets, shows including dancing and magic, and loads of music. It was such a fun night, we left a bit after 3am, and I wasn’t even tired. Although some fairly hyper dancing was done and seen near the end…
Thought: Why do some people write Halloween Hallowe’en? Silly people.
Anyway, this week included the following (yes, laziness is prevailing somewhat):
On Saturday evening, I went to the Oxford University Light Entertainment Society (OULES) Halloween party, where I met a bunch of people who I’ve only seen in plays before, not as actual “real” people. So, it was essentially the same as being at a celebrity party. I kept saying “Oh, there’s the evil villain / bee man / random villager!”. They were all really fun people and we got on swimmingly. I can’t say the same for the state of the bobbing apples though…