Hi, I'm Matias del Hoyo from Buenos Aires and I wonder if someone could help me by giving some reference about the following. If 2Cat is the category of (strict) 2-categories and (strict) 2-functors, and Lax is the category of (strict) 2-categories and (normal) lax functors, then I guess that the inclusion 2cat --> Lax admits a left adjoint, namely for a 2-category C there is another FC and a lax functor i:C --> FC such that for every lax functor v:C --> D there exists a unique 2-functor u:FC --> D satisfying v=ui. In my thesis I constructed FC in the case C is a category (2-category with trivial 2-cells) by using subdivision of small categories. This was enough for my purpose (a version of Quillen's Thm A for lax functors), but the general case might be of interest and it should be well known. Thanks in advance! Matias del Hoyo [For admin and other information see: http://www.mta.ca/~cat-dist/ ]