I went to Greenwich a couple of days ago. The weather has been wonderful this past couple of weeks, but in the morning, the weather was grey and drizzly. Joy. Anyway, Greenwich is on the outskirts of London, accessible by the London Transport system. I went with my Singaporean friend Guojing and a friend of his, and we took the Underground partway, and the elevated Docklands Light Railway (their equivalent of LRT) the rest of the way.

On the way to Greenwich, we passed through the Canary Wharf area, which was a run-down area before the 80s, but rejuvenated by Thatcherism during her reign, so the area is now a futuristic cluster of gleaming skyscrapers. Pretty reminiscent of Singapore actually. Elsewhere in London, everything is so aged (ESPECIALLY the Underground stations, many of which are older than KL), but in Canary Wharf, there's a sparkle and energy about the place (possibly because everything is so spanking new).

Greenwich itself is just across the River Thames from Canary Wharf, and the waterfront is dominated by the Cutty Sark, which is a tea clipper from the heyday of the sailing ship, and the Royal Naval College, with its Wren-designed buildings. After an abortive start (we 'accidentally' took a long underground tunnel which brought us to the opposite bank of the Thames, saw there was nothing interesting and being lazy bastards that we were, decided to take the DLR back into Greenwich...fortunately there was a station nearby), we went into the grounds of the old Royal Naval College, which is actually occupied by the Trinity College of Music and part of the University of Greenwich these days. We saw the Painted Hall, which was a hall which was quite literally covered with murals on the inside, from all four walls and the entire ceiling. The murals depicts the triumphant British Empire and things like that, just a little bit on the garish side, I thought. Lord Nelson's body lied in state here before his burial in Westminster Cathedral, and a plaque on the floor of the hall commemorates this.

Next to it is the Chapel of the College. As we approached it, we could hear organ music emanating from inside. At the entrance, we saw a sign which defined our lives for the past month or so: 'Exam in progress. Please keep silent'. However, since there was music being played from the chapel, obviously there was no exam going on that the moment. As we entered the chapel, we saw a table near the front with several stern-faced people seated, and looking at the organ loft above the entrance. Wrong. There was an exam, alright. An organ exam by the College of Music! The interior for the chapel was arranged typical of an Anglican Church, but it wasn't very ornately decorated save for a mural at the rear.

After lunch, we visited the Royal Maritime Museum. They had a special exhibition on Tintin, but unfortunately entry for that was not free, so we had to forgo it. Unfortunately, since Tintin was very much a part of my childhood, along with Messr. Asterix and Obelix :). The museum as a whole was quite interesting, with exhibits on the various topics like passenger liners, maritime trade, sea exploration (they had the boat on which Ernest Shackleton made his epic trip across the Southern Pacific). Unfortunately, we were rather pressed for time since we wanted to see the rest of Greenwich, so we didn't spend much time in the Museum.

The Royal Observatory of Greenwich is perched on a hill overlooking the Museum, within a park. It is here where the Greenwich Meridian is situated. Time from everywhere else in the world is measured relative to this location. It was predictably crowded with tourists taking pictures of the long stripe marking the Meridian, and they even had machines dispensing certificates saying that the visitor was at Greenwich at such and such time (for a small fee, of course). From the observatory, a fantastic panorama of London can be seen (albeit somewhat spoiled by a few obstrusive trees). The observatory itself is now mostly a museum dedicated to charting the quest to find a way to find longitude at sea (latitude can easily be discerned by looking at the position of the stars). Initially, it was thought that observing occultations of the stars by the Moon would provide a way of doing this, hence the observatory was set up to measure the positions of stars for this purpose). Later on, a better was found of using accurate chronometers to find the local time with respect to the time in a set position (e.g. Greenwich). As a result, most of the museum is a chronophile's paradise, with all sorts of clocks and timekeeping devices. The latter part of the museum is dedicated to to a few astronomical instruments, which of course is of great interest to me, but I didn't want to delay my friends by lingering too much. Having said that, the Observatory has a 28-inch diameter refracting telescope, one of the largest in the world (most large telescopes nowadays are reflectors, with the largest having a diameter of about 10 METERS, in Mt. Keck in Hawaii).

After that, despite the drizzle, I suggested that we see some Roman Ruins in the park, as indicated in my map. After walking around for the better part of the hour trying to find it, we found that it was no more than a small pile of rocks, to our great disappointment. We were hoping for at least a few pillars or something like that.

Following that, we decided to spend a little more time in the Maritime Museum's exhibits, but it was closing time anyway (5pm), so we didn't get to see much more apart from a whole section on Lord Nelson. So we left back to Hampstead.

It was an interesting day. The Greenwich was where the British Empire was predicated upon (the ability to navigate precisely gave the Royal Navy a decisive edge in the race for control of the seas), and the town still exuded the remnants of its proud history as heart of the Empire, in the grandeur of the Wren buildings in the old Royal Naval College. Standing on the hill of the Observatory, looking across the Thames valley, where the heart of global business still throbbed in Canary Wharf and the City, I felt that the echoes of the Empire could still be heard very strongly.

IT'S OVER NOW. Two months of near-nonstop cramming, 3 weeks of exam pressure....it's all over. In the final analysis, I guess I more or less studied to the level I set out to achieve, and apart from that stupid maths paper, I think I did reasonably well. However, I still have a talk to give and a poster to create, due in a couple of weeks, but in general I can give myself some breathing space. For once, I can ask myself 'What am I supposed to do now?', and answer 'I don't know', rather than 'study'.

I now have my internship in Baltimore to look forward to. I have already paid the first half of my rent for the apartment I'm subletting...I'll be sharing digs with a couple of Spaniards, Miguel and Gara, both from the Instituto Astrofisicas in Canary Islands. I'll be able to prattle away in Spanish by the time I'm done. My flight ticket is also sorted, although I've yet to book my connecting flight back to KL yet. I'm still thinking about it, as I'm worried first and foremost about having my luggage (especially my guitar) making a round-the-world trip without me, and also about missing my connecting flight, since I arrive in London from Baltimore at 9am, whereas the next London-KL flight is at noon, which should be enough time to transfer...in theory.

Anyway that's all for now...I'm too mentally exhausted to write more. Watch this space.

My past week can pretty much be summed up with one word: studying. From my waking moment to the second I crash on to bed, it's almost non-stop studying, with the only breaks coming from such obvious things as my bodily functions and the need to eat. I did however, allow myself little things like reading the newspaper, quick power-naps in the afternoon and the jog I let myself have in the afternoon just now...it's either exercise regularly or bloat up quickly from sitting on my ass for most of the day.

Nevertheless, it's never easy to motivate myself into such intense studying. At one level, it's purely egoistic: I did pretty well last year, and the expectation of everyone, including myself, is that I have to perform even better this time round. On the other level, I will most likely be applying for my PhD studentship on the basis of this year's results.

Still, doubts present themselves in my mind all the time. I would not have to work very hard at all to get my 1st class honours and hence qualify myself for most PhD programs. It's for the most elite of the universities that I'm hoping to qualify for, with the amount of work I'm putting in.

I have questioned myself repeatedly on this point: why in the world am I stressing so much over wanting to qualify for the very best. Is it because my self-esteem is so low that I want to prove myself? I'm interested in research in physics, yet I know that I am not a genius. Yes, I can follow and understand that stuff that I'm being taught, but that does not mean that I have the sheer intellect needed to really make a difference in the frontiers of physics. To get a PhD from, say, Harvard or Caltech would look extremely good on my CV, and it will give me a jumpstart in a scientific career, but would it really make a big difference compared with a PhD from a slightly humbler institution?

I am reminded of a Zen parable: There was a military doctor back in the feudal ages of Japan. Day after day, he would treat the injuries of numerous soldiers, only to see them return to battle and get killed. After some time, he is shocked by the carnage and the pointlessness of his duties, and he goes into a hermitage to meditate and reflect. After a long time, he suddenly gets a flash of insight and goes back to his work in the army. When someone asked him why he returned, he said, 'It is because I am a doctor'.

It is almost midnight now, and I need to get to bed. More studying awaits tommorow. It is because I am a student.

Apart from the distraction of having apply for the visa, my week so far has been characterised by almost nonstop studying (attempted nonstop studying, to be precise). I've mostly been crunching the stuff revolving around quantum physics, i.e. bits of my maths course, the quantum mechanics course, and the atomic and molecular physics course. For the former two, I can follow the arguments and derivations, but the challenge is in stepping back and seeing everything as a harmonious whole, which is not easy. It requires a complete divorce from the 'common sense' of what we intuitively feel things work. As Niels Bohr apparently stated, if one is not confused by quantum physics, then one does not understand it. I certainly got plenty of confusion, but it's still arguable if that has anything to do with understanding it!

For my Atomic & Molecular course, I am faced with a nightmare situation: crap lecturer. He has an enormous reluctance of actually writing things down on the board while teaching, so we often have to scribble stuff down while he talks without pause. Even his online notes make little sense, and are (I have since discovered) riddled with mistakes. The course is badly structured as well, although this may not be his fault...what he taught us was a lot of results without the underlying derivations and concepts, which makes it easy to memorise but difficult to understand. I spent over 16 hours in the past couple of days trying to piece together information from the reference books which might lend some sense to what he gave in his notes. And I'm still only half-way through. This is a real pity, because the subject matter of the course is something that truly interests me. Even when I was trawling through the books, trying to make head and tail of things, there was a part of me that was truly fascinated as well.

I just wish I didn't have to put up with lecturers like this. For quantum mech, we're lucky to get Andy Fisher. He makes the subject so clear and lucid, which is important because its a foundation for many fields of physics. He is incredibly knowledgeable, yet he's the only lecturer who's ever been brave enough to say "I don't the answer to that, but I'll think about it and tell you tommorow". When I become a lecturer, I can only hope that I'll be half as good as Fisher is.

On Monday morning, I dragged myself out of bed early because I had to go to the US embassy to apply for my visa. Despite getting slightly lost, I still got to the place about 10 minutes before my scheduled 9 am time...as I got close, a enormous queue of visa-applicants indicated where the embassy was, and banished any illusions of actually getting any applying done at 9 am. The embassy itself was in Grosvenor Sq. near Oxford St., and two sides of the square were taken up by the US embassy buildings, with the main one a large and magnificent complex with a statue of a golden eagle topping it. Statues of Eisenhower and Roosevelt were placed in the square it self. Apt surroundings to represent the New Empire, where the Old Empire once reigned from.

There were hundreds of people in the queueing up to get in the embassy, and it was a cold morning. I had a book with me, but nevertheless it wasn't fun because my fingers were threathening to freeze off. After inching a bit closer to the head of the queue, it was clear that the queue was for the x-ray/metal detector procedure. After over an hour, when I actually got into the building, I had to pick up a number and wait some more! This was starting to feel sneakingly like trying to apply for a new IC at the JPN. When finally my number came up after over 3 hours of cumulative waiting time, I went to the Counter 5, where a fairly old lady, impressively, managed to avoid looking bored while flipping through my passport. As my 'interview', she asked me a grand total of FIVE questions: "What are you studying?" "What are you going to be doing in the United States?" "When are you planning to fly there?" (Looking at the list of my educational institutions...) "At what age were you in high school?" "Where did you do your elementary school?". After less than five minutes, she said, "We'll need to do some administrative things before we can confirm your visa...", and told me how to send my passport over to get the visa stamp, hopefully in two weeks time. That concluded, I took my passport with me and left. FIVE minutes of service from the Unites States Government after over THREE hours of waiting. Somehow I felt cheated.

I went for my lesson at Carlos' house in Highgate, and we went through my lack of finesse in my control. After I told him my situation of having to cram for my exams, he told me that the best thing to do is not to practise when I pick up the guitar, but rather just play simple pieces for pleasure. He also told me that he had just finished recording ALL the 80 exam pieces for the Trinity College of Music music exams, from Grade 1-8! ("Ok Carlos, that's 60 pieces done...only 20 more to go...", "GROAN....").

At night, rather than force myself to study physics, I decided to read about a physicist! I'm reading a biography of Andrei Sakharov, a Soviet physicist who went from being the 'Father of the Soviet H-Bomb' to a dissident who later got exiled from his country. It's a really interesting narrative of the circumstances in which he lived...born soon after the revolution, lived through Stalin's purges, got thrown into the turmoil of the Second World War. But what really interested me was the fact that even though he created doomsday weapons, he believed that it was to defend his country He was extremely concerned about the effects that the fallout from nuclear tests would have, and went to loggerheads with Kruschev to reduce the number of tests. Later on, he started to write in underground publications in criticism of the communist government.

An interesting thing is that his criticism of his government would not have had carried as much weight if he was not already reknowned for his work in nuclear weapons. This has a resonance in my current situation: I have been in turmoil over the ethics of doing something I am passionate about when there is so much trouble in the world. Perhaps this is some message that I should concentrate on science, build up a reputation and THEN only use that reputation to write and try to influence things? Of course, this pre-supposes that I am talented and brilliant enough to achieve a reputation of any sort. It is a field saturated with geniuses, and I don't know if I can make significant contributions.

Nevertheless, my biggest talent does seem to be in this field, and if I want to make a difference in the world at large, I should try to follow my talent first. Which means I'd better go back to my books now...

Today, after cramming for the whole day (with surprisingly little actually done in the end, quantitatively at least...), I decided to get some practise, as I have a lesson with Carlos tomorrow. Maybe it's the fact that I've been practising very little in the recent months (hell, I've been practising little over the past YEAR), but I'm hitting the musical doldrums. My fingers are not producing the notes they are supposed to, and I realised just how little control I have over my playing. I've heard people say that spruce guitars are more difficult to play than cedar ones, and as I develop the more I realise this is true. I have a choice: to slowly take in the nuances of guitar, push my playing to a level where it can do her justice; or continue making a travesty of my instrument and the music. I have a friend who said that the more he plays the guitar, the more he realises quite how difficult it is. I think this reality is hitting me like cold water on a winter day.

I don't care when people say that I am a good guitarist. I know that I am not doing justice to the music I am playing. A few years ago, I was delusional enough to think I can be a professional guitarist, and that gig I had in the Swiss Garden only reinforced my folly. I don't want to be a guitarist, I want to be a musician. I do not ask for much, I do not want to travel around the world performing in great concert halls. I do not want to be exalted by critics and aficionados alike. I just to be able to use the guitar as a vehicle for my own expression.

As I sat alone in the empty auditorium, with my guitar in my lap, my fingers sore from my tense playing and poor stamina, I seethed in frustration at my lack of talent. Everything is going wrong, I cannot even play relatively easy stuff comfortably. I reflected on the years I have been playing, of the hundreds of hours I have poured into this. It would be so easy to just give it up. Why do I keep coming back? I have sacrificed what vestige of a social life I had for it. I hardly even play much for people, and when I do I get praise which I feel borders on the facile, for they praise me for the finger gymnastics I can do. I will never be a musician until the day I actually touch someone inside with my playing, which is something I don't think I have been able to do up to now. Yet, with my glaring lack of talent and ability, I can't even get the notes right, let alone get into the nuances of the music.

I don't know. I may complain and rant and despair now, but there are days when I just sit with my guitar, and we will produce music. There would be absolutely no one within earshot, but my entire being would be lost in the music flowing out. It's almost like a torrid love affair. If this analogy holds true, I hope that there's a happily ever after.

And I just discovered today that yesterday's run has caused a recurrence of my old ankle injury. Joy.

It was a lovely spring day. The sun was shining radiantly in a cloudless blue sky, suffusing everything in a beautiful golden sheen. The flowers were starting to bloom, dotting the roadsides with pastel colours, even as teeming humanity rushed pass on their business, carrying out the mundane in a day that was anything but. A cool wind was blowing, making the tree leaves rustle amidst the hubbub of the greatest city on Earth (one of them, at any rate). It was perhaps slightly unfortunate, then, that I spent most of my day at a little desk within the dark depths of the DMS Watson Science Library, trying to coerce my brain into letting in the intricacies of statistical mechanics. Yup, spring is here, but cramming season is here too!

On my way home, I miraculously managed to find a seat on the no. 13 bus. I took out my library copy of Joseph Conrad's Nostromo (superb book so far), and kept myself occupied. As the bus passed through St. John's Wood, I raised my head from the pages of the book and looked at a building along the road. Something, something suddenly clicked inside me. I realised: I pass through this place on my way to uni almost every day, and I never noticed that building has round windows!

I started to look out the window and see. Certainly, I've lived in the area for almost a year, taken the same bus routes for scores of times, and the images of most of the things around there would have passed through my retinas many times. Yet, my eyes were open, but they did not see.
How often do we really use our senses? We can taste, but most of the food we eat is hurriedly shoved into our mouth and swallowed. We can hear, but most sounds, even music, is ignored in the bustle of our daily lives.

We go through the daily motions of life, in a cycle of days and nights, but most of the time we keep our perceptions reigned in. Perhaps one cannot always be in a state of constant wonder (in one of Terry Pratchett's books, there is a character - I can't remember his name - who's suffix is 'the Perpetually Surprised', expressing wonder at the most mundane things)....experience is the raw matter of life, certainly, but one needs introspection as well.

I've heard it said that the world is an ugly place. One thing I've noticed is that we often notice the ugly, but not the beautiful. We automatically shun the beggar on the streets, but how many of us notice the laughter of a toddler, and hear his giggles?

I was in the newspaper room reading the drivel in the Daily Telegraph @ the Daily Torygraph (alas, the Guardian isn't published on Sundays). Yeah, so I WAS supposed to be studying, but there's a world outside as well, y'know...

While I was snorting at the right-wing nonsense, a new resident I haven't met yet came in and started reading the papers as well. After a few minutes, he asked me in a very strong American drawl, "Do you know who 'Gan Lee' is?". I raised my eyebrows, "That's probably me. I'm KHEE Gan". "Oh, I saw your guitar in the lounge and I was wondering whose it was...". The 'I-know-you, you-know-me' atmosphere of Netherhall House makes it probably the only place in the world apart from my house back in KL I would leave my guitar lying about, albeit in its case tagged with my name.

When he found out that I was from UCL, he suddenly said, "Wait, you're a friend of Taha's right? He mentioned to me that there was this guy in his corridor who could play classical guitar really well". Yes, I was in the same corridor as Taha last year. I mentally wondered how he managed to make such a tenuous connection. Admittedly there aren't that many classical guitarists around, but it's still one hell of a conclusion to link the fact that I could play CG to Taha. "I think I've seen you play before...Taha once brought me to a recital in which you played". Ah, that explains it.

We continued chatting, and I learnt that Nima was not only not an American, he was ironically an Iranian. When I mentioned the fact that I am Malaysian, he said, "You've got some pretty good universities in Malaysia, don't you?". I was momentarily stunned, for it's the first time I've ever heard anyone describe such esteemed institutions as UM and UKM as 'good'. I then remembered that a lot of students from the Middle-East and other 3rd World countries consider Malaysia as a destination for higher education. "Yeah, well, we do have colleges in which you can get twinning degrees from universities in the US or UK, but I wouldn't really regard them as more than degree mills", I said. We had a pretty interesting discussion about higher education. Basically, I hold the perhaps slightly idealistic view that higher education should involve more intellectual work and research than merely churning out fodder for the job market. He, on the hand, thought that even a less cerebral education still has plenty of merits.

He then talked me into letting him watch me practise, so I grabbed my guitar from the lounge and we went to the auditorium (yes, we have one in the residence). After hearing me play for a couple of minutes, he said, "One of the first things that I noticed when I heard you play last year was that you breathe rather heavily when you play...". I was torn between surprise and embarrassment. A couple of years back, in a masterclass, an American guitarist called Michael Chapdelaine had mentioned this exact same point about my playing. Michael had described my breathing as "as if you're in labour". Nima, rather more charitably, described it as "It's as if you're trying to breathe the music into yourself". It's something that I do sub-consciously, I told him, and I never actually notice it when I play.

He's pretty interested in the classical and flamenco styles, and he's a self-professed beginner. Yet, the comments and questions he posed to me showed that he was actually listening to my playing, and he showed a remarkable sense of musical insight. After I played him my current work-in-progress, Regondi's Reverie Nocturne, I mentioned to him that the composer was obscure even among classical guitarists. He said, "I think you are playing a lot of music from more obscure composers, why's that?". I prefer to avoid music that's being played a lot, because there's a lot less scope for discovery, and I prefer going down paths which are less well trod. "Have you tried playing nuevo flamenco music like Paco de Lucia? How about improvising or composing your own music?". I think that to improvise and compose, one has to feel inspiration, and that is something I have never had. I would compare myself to a landscape artist, who tries to paint his own interpretation of something that is already there.

"Look man, I've got to go now, but I think you rock, man! Keep up with it". When he left the room, I felt as if I was the one who just received inspiration. That conversation dredged up to the surface the things that has kept me going back to my instrument in the face of a million other commitments, but which I've never consciously been aware of. It's been an interesting day.

I was in the newspaper room reading the drivel in the Daily Telegraph @ the Daily Torygraph (alas, the Guardian isn't published on Sundays). Yeah, so I WAS supposed to be studying, but there's a world outside as well, y'know...

While I was snorting at the right-wing nonsense, a new resident I haven't met yet came in and started reading the papers as well. After a few minutes, he asked me in a very strong American drawl, "Do you know who 'Gan Lee' is?". I raised my eyebrows, "That's probably me. I'm KHEE Gan". "Oh, I saw your guitar in the lounge and I was wondering whose it was...". The 'I-know-you, you-know-me' atmosphere of Netherhall House makes it probably the only place in the world apart from my house back in KL I would leave my guitar lying about, albeit in its case tagged with my name.

When he found out that I was from UCL, he suddenly said, "Wait, you're a friend of Taha's right? He mentioned to me that there was this guy in his corridor who could play classical guitar really well". Yes, I was in the same corridor as Taha last year. I mentally wondered how he managed to make such a tenuous connection. Admittedly there aren't that many classical guitarists around, but it's still one hell of a conclusion to link the fact that I could play CG to Taha. "I think I've seen you play before...Taha once brought me to a recital in which you played". Ah, that explains it.

We continued chatting, and I learnt that Nima was not only not an American, he was ironically an Iranian. When I mentioned the fact that I am Malaysian, he said, "You've got some pretty good universities in Malaysia, don't you?". I was momentarily stunned, for it's the first time I've ever heard anyone describe such esteemed institutions as UM and UKM as 'good'. I then remembered that a lot of students from the Middle-East and other 3rd World countries consider Malaysia as a destination for higher education. "Yeah, well, we do have colleges in which you can get twinning degrees from universities in the US or UK, but I wouldn't really regard them as more than degree mills", I said. We had a pretty interesting discussion about higher education. Basically, I hold the perhaps slightly idealistic view that higher education should involve more intellectual work and research than merely churning out fodder for the job market. He, on the hand, thought that even a less cerebral education still has plenty of merits.

He then talked me into letting him watch me practise, so I grabbed my guitar from the lounge and we went to the auditorium (yes, we have one in the residence). After hearing me play for a couple of minutes, he said, "One of the first things that I noticed when I heard you play last year was that you breathe rather heavily when you play...". I was torn between surprise and embarrassment. A couple of years back, in a masterclass, an American guitarist called Michael Chapdelaine had mentioned this exact same point about my playing. Michael had described my breathing as "as if you're in labour". Nima, rather more charitably, described it as "It's as if you're trying to breathe the music into yourself". It's something that I do sub-consciously, I told him, and I never actually notice it when I play.

He's pretty interested in the classical and flamenco styles, and he's a self-professed beginner. Yet, the comments and questions he posed to me showed that he was actually listening to my playing, and he showed a remarkable sense of musical insight. After I played him my current work-in-progress, Regondi's Reverie Nocturne, I mentioned to him that the composer was obscure even among classical guitarists. He said, "I think you are playing a lot of music from more obscure composers, why's that?". I prefer to avoid music that's being played a lot, because there's a lot less scope for discovery, and I prefer going down paths which are less well trod. "Have you tried playing nuevo flamenco music like Paco de Lucia? How about improvising or composing your own music?". I think that to improvise and compose, one has to feel inspiration, and that is something I have never had. I would compare myself to a landscape artist, who tries to paint his own interpretation of something that is already there.

"Look man, I've got to go now, but I think you rock, man! Keep up with it". When he left the room, I felt as if I was the one who just received inspiration. That conversation dredged up to the surface the things that has kept me going back to my instrument in the face of a million other commitments, but which I've never consciously been aware of. It's been an interesting day.

Woke up at noon, and decided to study for an hour before going to get my lunch at the dining hall. At 1pm I went over to the dining hall, and to my mild surprise, there was only Alvaro and Jason outside the dining hall, when there should be a horde of starving students waiting to get their chow. I stood by while they were discussing about procuring some new musical instruments for the hall (trivia: the cheapest pipe organ (!) you can get costs around £10-20,000). After waiting outside the dining hall for 10 minutes, I distinctly felt something was wrong. I asked Alvaro for the time, and he said '2.10'. My jaw flung open, and I realised: I FORGOT TO TURN MY CLOCKS TO SUMMER TIME. When they realised my gaffe, I was treated to uproarious laughter from Alvaro and Jason. So off I stalked to ruminate on my own stupidity.

Now it's about 4pm (British Summer Time, not Kheegan's Time), and all I've had all day was a cereal bar, a packet of nuts, some hot chocolate and a large helping of quantum mechanics stuffed down my own throat. Will probably go out for a jog....as I burn about 70kcal per km (7 x 70 ~ 500kcal, DEFINITELY more than what I've had to eat so far), that means that I'll probably be running (no pun intended) on a energy deficit until I get dinner.

I'm considering hitting Chinatown for dinner, and then popping down to the Royal Festival Hall to catch a concert by the Philharmonia Orchestra and some pianist I've never heard of. The centrepiece is Chopin's 2nd concerto, which I don't like as much as the 1st, but I haven't been to an orchestral concert in ages, and anyway I've somehow managed not to see the Philharmonia playing yet...