Thank you, Professor Jones.

He was my favourite lecturer in second year (combination of actually being interested in what he taught, and just liking him). In the lectures he would do, he'd write quite swiftly, and as a result, often misplace the bars of t's. So, we spent a good deal of time studying "integralion". Which I enjoyed immensely, since lions are one of my favourite types of catcat.

Every now and again, we'd be looking at "partilions". I actually drew pictures of a partilion in the margins of my notes. They'd often look like this:



You can tell he is a partilion because of his long brightly coloured hair, and dancing shoes.

Sometimes, we'd be seeing quite a lot of funclions.


The step funclion is going for an 80's vibe here. You can't really do a step class without legwarmers. And, the regulated funclion just looks groovy and cool.

There are many more lions in maths than the university prospectuses would like you to think.

Online punctuation.

When you are speaking, you don't think about punctuation much. You pause at the end of sentences. You pause in between items of a list or between phrases, but for a shorter time. You pause between words, so that you can tell what's being said. You raise your voice in certain patterns for excitement, puzzlement or questioning. It's instinctive for most, and you don't even think about it. That's why it's so hard for a lot of people to use punctuation properly when it comes to writing.

We have spaces, commas, fullstops, colons, semi-colons, hyphens, dashes, brackets and all sorts for written communication. When I say written, I mean formally written. Letters to your mother, essays for your tutor, resignations from your job as Head Fry Chef in Floppy Burger. In this context, you can't rely on instinctively knowing how long your pause should be, or what tone you want to convey. You have to select which punctuation mark is appropriate. It's usually pretty easy. Full stops for long pauses between sentences, commas for shorter ones in between phrases and items in a list. Question mark are for questions; exclamation marks are for exclamations.

When you write online, it's different again. You have the same rules as a written letter, except you have the instant conversation factor. It's the half-way house between a letter and a phone call. Unfortunately, it's instant like a phone, and impersonal like a letter - try raising your eyebrows with punctuation. So, punctuation becomes your sole medium for conveying tones and emotions, and with the instant receipt of your message, every dot counts.

(This is obviously only applicable to those who would use punctuation in the first place, and not the type of internet user who strips words of vowels and meaning, abuse exclamation and question marks, and generally make me want to ban them from using technology with keyboard-like facilities until they learn to follow the goshdarn rules. Grammar Nazi? Only a little.)

For example, I greet a friend on Facebook chat: "Hi!"

I use the exclamation mark to convey that I am pleased to see her online, as we haven't chatted in a very long time. She tells me she is busy, and she hopes to talk to me soon. I begin writing the "Okay" in response, but I hesitate before hitting Enter. What do I put after? A full stop is rather final. It might imply that I'm in a strop with her for being too busy. An exclamation mark is even worse. A question mark is confusing and inappropriate.

This is starting to become worse than trying to decide what to wear to work today if you're my mother. She could easily spend two hours before bed, and one hour in the morning, deciding.

So, I opt for nothing. I send the message, "Okay", with nothing at the end. Crisis averted.

In fact, the general etiquette of my friends is to either fully capitalise, punctuate and write formally, or drop the capitals and use punctuation for effect. So, the full stop instead of a blank, question mark instead of a comma, it's all a new type of grammar in itself.

Phew. Isn't it tough going sometimes?

Gym-tacular!

I woke up yesterday morning at 9 am, to enjoy my first day off work with nothing planned to do. Since it was a Monday morning, that meant that by noon, I was supposed to be thinking of getting ready to go to they gym for 1 pm.

By 11:30 am, I had finished watched America's Next Top Model, and was lying in bed, lazily watching what was up next, checking out Spotify, practically falling asleep.

I was still in bed at 12:30, just lazing. I managed to get myself out of bed eventually, and made it to the gym by 1:30, which was good.

No gym on Wednesday, I don't think. I'm working (12-3), and I'll be too tired.

I have work today. Hooray! On the "this is what you'll be paid" sheet, I was missing five hours, so I need to check that out with the manager. I have... ten hours of work this week. So, it's not dire, but it's not great either. Such is the lot of a part-time worker earning more than £3.50.

Why Harry is both wrong and right.

In one of my favourite films, When Harry Met Sally, Harry proclaims firmly that men and women can never be friends, because the sexual tension that inevitably arises ruins the friendship.

I think that, in terms of sexual tension, I don't think I've ever had a close friendship with a man that didn't have some element of attraction in it. I'm not talking about the casual friend, the colleague, the old schoolmate - I mean the type of friendship where you talk frequently (more than once or twice a week under normal circumstances), you share intimacies, moments, injokes.

I don't have many close friends. You see, I have circles of emotional/friendship intimacy, which are rather different in structure to my circles of physical intimacy. I have the Inner Core, the handful of people who are very special to me - I would want to have these people around me if I was upset. There's the Outer Core, people who I enjoy having around me but maybe wouldn't call on them first to sit with me if I was sad, but I'd still be not uncomfortable with them seeing me in a state. In the Cores, I have around seven people. Sadly, a lot of people I interact with very warmly and affectionately are not in my Cores. It's not because I do not love them, it's just a more detached form of love.

Now, I have a friend, T. Over the course of the two years I've been at university, he's transitioned from outer circles to Outer Core, maybe even Inner Core. It's strange. When I first knew him, I was attracted to him, in the way that a interior decorator is attracted to an undecorated room. After some while, events and drama, we arrived at this summer, and we spent night after night talking into the small hours about anything and everything. My life, family, friends, lovers, and the same for him. We became very close very quickly. And, the initial attraction I had for him faded and merged into my growing respect and interest in him.

Then he went away. He's in a place with no internet, and he's been there for several weeks now, and I missed him. And, he missed me. He wrote me a letter, and it was enjoyable to read. I'm going to begin to write a reply before I head to bed.

So, what am I trying to say? Well, here I have a close male friend, whom I am not sexually attracted to. I was attracted to him before, but not now. I don't know how long our friendship will last in its present state. I imagine it fading to someone I like to talk to on occasion, but not with the same intensity and frequency. Still pretty intimate, maybe, but not quite as often.

Still, it's nice to have several people who don't mind being on the receiving end of my rants. It means that it's not just one poor person who's inundated with details of my not-so-interesting life/opinion.