I've optimised my DVD player to improve the picture quality. Raging Bull is okay, but raison d'etre still strobes a bit. Too much lateral motion. Oh, well.

It's another one of those days hovering between bright and overcast. Cloud covers the whole sky, but it's a pale shade of blue-grey for the most part, and it's not too gloomy.

I've had a grand total of three lessons so far. Classical Prose has been called off due to the Tube strike. It's all going to be Just Fine.

Everywhere around the ULU area is bustling with people from the different colleges. Most of the new arrivals seem to be working on the principle that if they keep moving, they're more likely to bump into wherever it is they're trying to go. When I came down here in the summer, it was like something out of a Western. The streets were devoid of life and the sun bounced back at you from the burning tarmac. Now it's back to the student-packed crowds of termtime, just the way I like it.

SOAS is much the same as ever. For sure, there a few new faces painted on the Common Room mural, even worse than the old ones (I didn't think that was possible, but there you go). As I walked down the stairs into the SU bar for the first time, a wave of familiarity and emotioncame over me. Or maybe it was just the smell. Little, if anything, seems to have been done to the bar, and that includes its smoky, vegetative atmosphere. Also, its clientele are as ever, proving SOAS' dependable and possibly unique ability to be simltaneously global and petty. On one side, clustered around a table are some (literally) wide-eyed first years. A girl breezes through on her way to the cafeteria dressed in clothes appropriated from a culture her ancestors never even heard of. Hey, over there, isn't that that girl who had her picture in the paper as an example of a typical pot-smoking student? The jukebox plays a bizarre mixture of Morricone and Morrisey. Near the bar, an older student waxes lyrical about his Master's thesis, in which he will be writing the definitive study on the acceptance of Billy Ray Cyrus among Kazakh spoon vendors.

This all might sound embittered and cynical, but it isn't. No, really. The fact is that while some (okay, quite a lot) of the people at SOAS can be faintly ridiculous, perhaps unknowingly insulting to the 'cool' cultures they idolise than anything else, there is a genuine enthusiasm and earnestness in all of them. The kids will grow up, the trendies will move on. And I suppose someone has to write about achy-breaky mullet wearers and their continuing impact on Central Asian silverware vendors.

I'm getting closer and closer to actually being signed up for all my courses. My actual undergrad tutors are very hard to get hold of, though, so I'm having to bide my time for their signatures and strike when they least expect it.

Happier times have included, oh, yesterday evening from about six till seven o'clock. Less good was the rest of the night. At six-ish, though, I got a free dinner, courtesy of the Christian Union. Well worth turning up to that, I think. The restaurant was interesting, being a vegetarian curry house. That's not terribly interesting in and of itself. What is weird about the place is all the posters around and about, telling you what a great idea vegetarianism is. I think the placard most likely to sway people towards veggiedom is the one with a big list of celebrities who have chosen to stop eating meat. I mean, if vegetarianism is good enough for William Shatner, it's good enough for the man on the Clapham omnibus. Unfortunately, during the meal I seem to have accidentally offered to maintain the CU website for them. Curses.

After dinner (which, I'd like to point again, was free AND all-you-can-eat), there was a SOAS do at a place call "93 Feet East" on Brick Lane. It was rubbish. Not the venue, but the SOAS party. In fact, if we'd known how poor a showing it was going to be, we'd have gone to the room of the bar that SOAS hadn't booked, instead of shelling out a fiver to get into our party. I should have done what Sam did and tried to make an impromptu drum. For some reason, entry was free if you brought a drum. SOAS, eh?

I got a letter forwarded from Arizona a couple of days ago - it's from Chris Schaller, and contained a money order for $60, my pay for the Heavy Gear books. He'd rounded up from $59.12 for convenience. I don't know what the purchasing power of 88 cents is, but I suppose this means that if I ever actually meet him, I owe him a chocolate bar or something.

My cheque from SJ Games (for the book reviews) had been sent back to me - it hadn't been endorsed on the back. Not being a frequent user of banks, I didn't know it was me who had to endorse, and had anguished visions of having to get another cheque sent out of Austin, with Steven Marsh's squiggly signature on the reverse. As I thought of this possibly, I temporarily entertained the possibility of attempting to forge Steven's signature, but gave up on it. Of course, in the end I didn't have to.

The bank teller was very helpful, but when I asked if there was anything special I had to do about paying in money orders, she replied "You can't pay in money orders."

"Well," I said, "What do you do with them, then?"

"Pass them both through," she replied, and I did so. She arranged Chris' money order above the SJG cheque and stared at them for a while. She didn't say anything.

"I mean, are they sort of like Travellers' Cheques?" I suggested feebly.

She didn't say anything. Then she showed the money order to the teller next to her. The other teller didn't seem to have seen one before either. I began to suspect that neither of them actually worked for HSBC. Were those names just labels stuck onto the badges?

Eventually, the first teller passed both the slips back.

"Sign your name on the back of both of them," she said, "That should work."

On the plus side, I was able to use the same paying-in slip for both, which should minimise the exchange fee.

It's all go around here, it really is.