Today has been a mixture of large failures and small victories:

1. I failed to make any friends. The International Student Vegetarian "Buffet" was in fact one home-made pizza and a bowl of salad in a tiny very shabby church hall. There were about 150 students, most still smelling strongly of airoplanes, all competing viciously over one packet of paper plates and a single sixpack of beer. I had a bit of a freakout when I arrived, because I literally walked into a room full of strangers all already ensconced in conversation, but I overcame this after three solitary glasses of Diet Pepsi and spent the whole night following around one Dutch girl who made the mistake of talking to me. When that conversation faltered (after we had jointly encountered about fifty American cheerleader types, all on exchange together, and two Russian girls in white latex zip-up boots) I made a bolt for the bathroom, tried to chat up one normal looking guy in the toilet queue (who totally snubbed me, you can't blame him), and I then totally panicked and fled down the street. It was, all in all, not a resounding success. Also, there were very definite hints of organised religion in the air.

2. I then didn't have the guts to go home and admit my failure to the housemates who were so eagerly barracking for my success, so I sat in a park staring into the distance and contemplating my friend-less future for an hour. Then I found an internet cafe and watched the whole of Scorpio Rising on full volume, thereby alienating the rest of the customers.

3. I guess the above counts as a minor success.