Incomplete work

13/01/05

i've just had my dinner - salad from the salad bar in the supermarket. i refuse to cook since i'm exhausted and fuming (not angry fuming but smelly chemical-fuming) from my 9 hour lab today. and besides, i don't have classes tomorrow.. so, i have all the time in the world to dish out anything that would satisfy my palate.

ok, u have to read this.. at 3:30am last night, the fire alarm in my tower went off. it literally made me jump out of bed cos it was so loud. i grabbed my coat and rushed down the stairs, only to find out that it wasn't a real fire. when i got to the lobby, some repulsive british students were singing "happy birthday".. i thought to myself," what in the world is going on.. these pple are crazy.." apparantly some students had just gotten back from a late night out and accidentally triggered the alarm by smashing the glass of the fire alert box. kenneth had warned me that this would definitely happen (and he's experienced it before too) simply because some british students just have nothing better to do. sigh.. what a pity...they think it's funny. Guess it's just the culture but anyhow, something like that would never come across to me as a brilliant idea to have fun. false fire alarms happen all the time - it's like telling someone, "o, i had fish and chips for lunch." we were allowed to enter the tower at 4am after the fire brigade performed their checks. (poor guys, i don't know how many false alarms they've had so far). i wasn't fuming mad but just a little ticked off cos i had a 9 hour lab the next day (i/e today) which started at 9am. i guess this would be an added experience for me, living as a student in the uk. yes yes daddy, if u are reading this, not to worry, i'll definitely rush down the stairs as fast as i can whenever the fire alarm goes off again. i won't "take any chances." haha~ guess what? one of the girls along my corridor actually slept through the whole event. she didn't even hear the alarm (gosh it was really loud!) we (my corridor mates and i) decided that we should bang on her door if something like that were to ever happen again. it's so risky!

i managed to wake up on time for my lab this morning. the labs are similar to the ones in nus but i took sometime to find my way around it (to the apparatus, balances, glassware etc.) lab hours here are from 9am-6pm but there's a one hour lunch break from 1-2pm. in NUS, labs are from 10am-7pm and though there's a lunch break, i (and most other students) skip lunch and work all the way through. supervisors in NUS take turns to go for lunch so that the lab is always under supervision. over here in Lancaster, the british students leave the lab at 1230pm for lunch, return at 2pm and leave for good at 5pm (leaving their incomplete experiment till the next week)! gosh.. i wanted to work through lunch cos i'm used to finishing everything at one go but i wasn't allowed to do so - labs are closed-closed during lunch. and yes, as expected, i was the last to leave the lab in the evening. i wanted to finish the whole experiment and i believe i would have but i was afraid that the lecturer and the lab assistant would start giving me rude glares if i stayed till 6pm. sigh.. leaving my experiment incomplete just gets to me. then again, there's a 1st time for everything. guess i have to get used to brit lifestyle. =)