i wouldn't be taking organic chemistry lab...

Friday, October 19, 2007

if i didn't have to.

i will be ranting about o chem lab in this post, so beware... if organic chemistry is the love of your life, and you just want to spend every single waking hour in the organic chemistry lab, steer clear...

I don't like o chem lab at all. EVery single thing about the lab is so intimidating. From the solvents in the fume hoods to the glassware. In retrospect, analytical chem lab wasn't that bad. The only good point about organic chemistry lab is that you don't have to spend a whole lot of effort washing your glassware. Just use Acetone. and everything (i think) in you flask will dissolve and can be poured out. spick and span glassware in less than 5 mins. I remember the days of having to wash analytical chemistry glassware with microcleaning solution.. but oh well, those were the days...

Besides the above, everything isn't good. Firstly, the chemicals are volatile. Using the fume hood doesn't help a lot because once you take the compound out, the vapor gets to you. What's more? Sometimes, we have to heat organic solvents. Congratulations! Imagine the amount of hexanes you will be breathing in... And these tend to give you a bad headache, and god knows what else they do to you...

Plus the machines we have to use - people are generally not familiar with how to use them. So for the simplest task of determining the refractive index, which sounds hard but really isn't, people can take a whole 10 mins! My gosh. I don't know how they can spend 10 mins looking through the eye piece to determine the RI! it's not like as if its a kaleidoscope -_-"
Plus those gas chromatography machines that we have to use are really 'lao pok'. They have 3 machines to be shared among 64 students. 2 of the machines are not working. So you can imagine the queue that starts to build up, and it's really frustrating.

Oh man.. i really dread O chem lab... Every monday and wednesday, I will just get super nervous, anxious and frustrated. i know because I feel my heart racing each time I step into the lab... i hope this will get better ove rthe next 8 weeks...

my stats professor is super cool

ok... my stats professor is really funny. oh my goodness! he tries to be funny in lecture ALL the time. plus it's always so subtle and when you least expect it. it takes awhile to realize the joke, then it's just uncontrollable laughter... I guess these are the things that make the 1hr 15min lecture bearable...

so he told us to calculate the standard deviation to a problem. someone shouted "0.22". For some reason, he kept hearing it as 0.23, 0.32. anything but 0.22. So the person kept repeating "two two. two two." he finally heard it as 0.22. He went "oh! two two..." wrote the answer on the board, and then after a pause, guess what he said, "you know ballet tutu?".. then he did the classic ballerina pose. My goodness!

and then he was explaining this problem where a researcher counted dendrites in 35 neurons obtained from 7 guinea pigs. He was trying to illustarate why the 35 neurons were not totally random and independent variables. Well, basically it just takes a little bit of common sense to figure that out - the 35 neurons should have been obtained from 35 guinea pigs. But he went on about how a guinea pig can be an Einstein guinea pig or an idiot guinea pig and that the Einstein guinea pig would have more dendrites in a neuron.
seriously! einstein guinea pigs having more dendrites in their neurons?! that's the most absurd thing i've heard!

Plus, what does it take for someone to wake up in the morning, and decide he had to shoot the first squirrel he saw outside his window? Hah! and proudly flaunt his kill to the class... and he claims that his GPA was 0.65 in his freshman year. HAHA! how do you ever do get that?

6 weeks down, 9 more to go!

Monday, October 15, 2007

this semester is going way too fast!

it is starting to get cold in madison now and the sun is rising later and setting earlier. I guess it was gradual process, but I was probably too busy to notice. It was only on saturday that i realized it was already dark outside when it was only 630pm!

Yup, I should probably stop complaining about the weather. Before the temperature dropped, i was complaining about the heat. now, i am dreading the cold. Oh man! I want it to be 18 degrees celsius all year round! but that's not being realistic... anyways... i am not looing forward to experiencing winter in wisconsin all over again. I heard from a senior that winters in madison have been getting milder (yes, -28 degrees celsius is mild by mid-west standards). i hope that winter this year will be even milder! Should we be thanking global warming?! HAHA...
i watched Ratatouille. A really good movie, filled with humor and wit! my goodness! i was laughing throughout... It was for nearly 2 hours? But time flew by...

Anton Ego to Linguini " you're slow for someone in the fast lane."
Linguini's retort " you're thin for someone who loves food."

Gusteau "You know what I say. Anyone can cook."
Remy "Yeah, anyone can cook. That doesn't mean that anyone should."

Gusteau "What can I do? I am a figment of your imagination..."

i need an excuse to get a new school bag

Thursday, October 11, 2007

My school bag is almost 3 years old! I want it to spoil, but it just refuses to!! AHH!


Once in a while, i stuff in so much barang that it will weigh more than 7kg. But it refuses to give way... What more can I do? Plus, it doesn't receive the best treatment - I throw it around on the floor, and i expose it to rain and shine... But it refuses to spoil. Oh man... how how how? I want that north face borealis... hmph... help me think of a good reason to justify getting a new bag... lol

cooking

I have always wondered why chefs are inevitably men... it's only when you try cooking for yourself then you know the reason why.
The wok, by itself, is heavy. Imagine it with meat and whatever you are supposed to cook. it becomes REALLY heavy. ok, at least to me. if you cannot even lift the wok up, how are you supposed to be tossing food in it as you cook?
what about cooking stuff in 'cauldrons'?? firstly, you need to make the broth, which means you have to move buckets of water. then you need to stir. Wahh. don't play play and think that stirring is simple. you need to overcome the viscosity of the broth ok...
cooking is not as simple as it seems.
i have a newfound respect for chefs

a good saturday to make up for the week

Sunday, October 07, 2007

yup! saturday was a blast! i wish that every single weekend in Madison could be like that...

on saturday morning, we drove to Cave of the Mounds, in Blue Mounds, WI. It was a short drive away, but it felt really good to be away from it all. The cave is a growing limestone cave, so water was dripping from the stalagtites and all... I really liked the cave bacon, a limestone formation just like the stalagmites. They really look like breakfast bacons, trust me... and there's something truly amazing in this cave - a formation that really looks like a parrot. and guess what? Polly the parrot is a stalagmite growing on a stalagtite. Figure that out! apparently, when water was still flwing through the cave, the force of its flow actually knocked off the stalagtite from the ceiling...

then it was Mt Horeb, the troll capital of the America... there weren't that many trolls after all.... we saw llamas though. haha.. just an aside.. i was horrified at myself for mispelling "llama" as i captioned my photos... i guess it was pretty late at night then... so when I was typing this entry this morning, I remembered that llama is spelled with a double "L". oh man!

plus hotpot dinner at xuejiao's placE!:)

one week passed, just like that

Saturday, October 06, 2007

i am in utter disbelief that one week has flown by, just like that... papers, work, lab, exams, quizzes and lectures... and the cycle repeats itself every week...
this week was a really really bad week. many things happened.
for one, lab. well, my experiments have been working well so far, as compared to last semester where i spent the entire semester trying to transform bacteria, to no avail. But still, i cannot spend as much time in the lab as I would like to. And somehow, I feel that my mentor isn't very pleased... sigh. oh well... i'm really worried. but there's nothing much i can do about it, except wish that i had 36 hours (yes, again!) in a day...
then exams - i was surprised that i even managed to get through 90% of the material i needed to cover... i overslept and i had to skip my bacteriology lecture to make up for lost time...
then the horrible english paper i submitted on monday, which i did not even have time to proof read. I don't think my arguments were very coherent. and i am seriously worried... crying over spilt milk, i know...
but whatever... whatever is done is done. the weekend is finally here!:)

haha.. one week has passed, just like that
i'm getting better at moving on as time passes me by...
pretending that i don't care when it matters the world to me

stupidity

Monday, October 01, 2007

sometimes, i wonder why I don't learn from my mistakes.
I wonder why I make decisions that I end up regretting.
Then hopelessly wish I could turn back time.

I only have myself to blame...