Before I get into the week, I'd like to share this link to help explain my ochem veteran views on the natural food craze: Organic Water
It kind of revives my faith in humanity, or at least in people that aren't chemists by trade who still take the time to look up some definitions. It also reminded me of the chemical free salt from ochem last year.
My days are pretty boring. Since I don't have class before noon until wednesday, I stay up late and sleep in a lot. I have 8 AM water aerobics MWF in a couple of months, so I'll need to change that habit, but it's really hard to get up when there's nothing to do. There's no weekly homework, hardly any reading to do (and only for one class, to be honest; my lit prof doesn't really expect us to read beforehand, which is just as well because I don't like any of the assigned works and we read them out loud in class anyway), and no regularity to my schedule. Last spring was very structured. MWF, I ate in saga with my fellow ochem students, went to ochem, sat in the same seat next to the same every day, ate a piece of gum, spat it into the same garbage can on the same route to german, sat in the same seat every day next to the same people, went up the stairs to writing, sat in as close to the same seat as possible, next to pretty much the same people, had another piece of gum to keep myself awake, then went and got a cheese and tomato six-inch sub on italian herbed bread with olives and mayo in the cafe-thing, then kind of knocked around and did homework and stuff for the rest of the day, sometimes eating dinner in saga, with karate in the evening. TTh, I had a raspberry scone and a small white chocolate mocha for breakfast before arthurian lit, then went either to work or to lab, ate lunch (usually the sandwich described above), did homework, and probably ate dinner in saga. Weekends I went to church and winco and/or walmart. It's a testament to how regular my life was that I can remember exact details seven months later.
Now, I have to write down details of my day to remember what I did. I wake up as late as possible, and haven't gone to bed before 1 AM since time immemorial. When people ask what I did over the weekend, I have to think about it for a really long time.
I'm looking forward to getting a new routine, because eternal vacation isn't all it's cracked up to be.
On monday and tuesday, I didn't do anything of note. On wednesday, however, TWO things happened. First, the university and possibly public transportation had a strike, so I didn't have my history seminar. I'm a little bitter that they went and picked 30 november for the strike. 1 December is just as good of a day to strike. Plus, it would have got me out of my 9-5 class day... Actually, general consensus in the flat was that striking for pensions is kind of a stupid move right now, give the economic state of... everywhere. Would you rather have a pension or a job? This surprised me, frankly, since my flatmates all seem to be more liberal than me. Perhaps as a break from politics, we had english night. Josie made shepherd's pie, which I didn't eat because its base is "mince" (ground beef), and Adam masterminded 'bangers and mash' which is british for sausages and mashed potatoes. We also had peas. Felicity and I had vegetarian, um, 'bangers'. I keep forgetting that I'm not the only vegetarian at our communal dinners now, but I'll get used to it just in time to go live in a house of carnivores. Yay!
Thursday turned out better than I expected, other than accidentally sleeping very late because I couldn't fall asleep until very early. This may be due to my erratic sleep cycle. Sleeping in until after noon the day before was not my best idea. After miraculously finishing the practical lab work very quickly because I was unusually on top of things (I'm never on top of things in lab), we ended up analysing the GC data from last week, which took forever, but the software was incredibly similar to the software that whitworth uses for NMR spectra, which I used almost once a week last year, yay ochem. I think I may have restored some good will between the impossible little frenchman and myself by totally pwning everyone else in that area. Much to my surprise, I'm becoming rather good at the computer aspect of chemistry. Too bad they kept making us do hand graphs for everything else, and this practical isn't even assessed. Grumble.
Friday I made three trips to the post office to mail a package. I ended up mailing two, because one kept being too heavy and potentially costing three times as much as a package weighing 100 grams less. I also went to see Dream House with Freya (my pakistani-british friend from biochem), which I spoiled for myself before going because I really am not that big a fan of movies that bill themselves as "suspense/thriller". It was very good, though, and I didn't really need to spoil it.
Saturday was paintball! Jessi's friend who is now also my friend Keri organised a trip to newcastle's Delta Force paintball course. It was really great, and I had a really good time other than the bit at the end where my team decided that moving forward was not the best option and ended up lurking behind bunkers for the whole ten minutes while the other team stormed our castle in about five minutes and I was a sore loser. I recovered and still recall the whole experience very fondly; just don't put me on a team with a group of people including someone who looks like kim jong il. Yeah, blame the eastern asians. It's funny how much the non-oriental aisans dislike the ones further east, and I've had to amend my definition of "asian" from "formerly called oriental, before that wasn't politically correct" to "everyone who's from the continent of asia" and this causes some paradigm problems. Say "asian" and I think china, and not much west of that. I've got a pakistani friend who describes herself as asian, and I'm sitting there thinking of oriental instead of vaguely arabic. Anyway. I made friends with more internationals: Ramin (Azerbaijan), Hazma (Turkey/Germany), Vincent (France), Jenna (Germany, possibly Turkey), and Ricky (India). Again, my knowledge of everywhere except the western hemisphere plus a small amount of european history and eastern asian cuisine types (I can generally identify the american versions of generic chinese (I don't do regions), japanese, korean, thai, indian, and possibly vietnamese foods) was highlighted. What's the official language of azerbaijan, anyway? At least I've heard of the country, and kind of almost know where it is, so I guess it could have been worse.
I've got some annoying little bruises on my left hand and wrist, my merrills will take some tlc and a lot of water to recover from the mud, and I slept for almost five hours after getting back. In the grand scheme of things, I consider this a success.
Oh, and on monday 5 december I successfully made white sauce without any measuring spoons or cups and had a fairly delicious dinner of spaghetti, garlicky white sauce, and broccoli. For the win!
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