For the first time I've finished my lab report with two days to spare, and won't have to resort to staying up the night before to rush getting it done! This is sorta the first time I've been able to relax slightly in a few weeks.
Going all the way back to two weeks ago when uni started up for the second half of the first semester, I had three tests on the first three days back! I actually thought I had two on the first day back and then one more a couple days later, but after getting an announcement the night before, I realised I was wrong! I swear I did do enough study. The Friday night before the tests I had to organise activity night for youth group though, and because everyone wanted to stay at church I ended up going with one suggestion given to me - a debate! It was kinda cool as people who weren't as keen and confident in public speaking gave it a go.
As for the tests - the tests didn't go too badly, except for maybe the last one which was MEDSCI303. The night before the test I missed my bus home and so instead of watching the Dancing with the Stars Grand Final on TV, I spent those extra hours doing some productive study at the university library!
Anyway back to the test...half of it consisted of calculation-based questions, and the other half were theory questions. I started off with the calculation questions only to discover the calculator Aonghas had lent me wasn't working! I tried thumping and banging it, keeping in mind the environment I was in. Nothing would work, so I decided to do the other half and come back to it. With 20 minutes to go, I still hadn't done much of the calculation section. I decided I might as well try ask one of the guys running the test if he had a spare calculator or else I'd feel stupid if he did and I didn't ask! It turns out he did have one, only I didn't know how to use it and now 10 minutes remained! To end the test, the lights went out and the guy didn't know how to switch them back on, so he just ended the test there!
I've passed two tests so far. As for MEDSCI303, results are still pending..
The following week I had this massive lab report for...you guessed it MEDSCI which was due on Friday. The only thing was I also had two dinners to attend, a birthday dinner with my church Sunday School class for Winston (24th birthday) and his sister Leonie (21st birthday) on Tuesday, and then the 3rd year pharmacy class dinner on the following night. I was having second thoughts on attending the pharmacy dinner, but since I had already paid for it, I decided I might as well attend and eat my money's worth!
The first birthday dinner on Tuesday night was at Bongane Restaurant, this Korean restaurant just down the road from our Sunday School teacher Sherman's student hostel that he runs. We all had to meet up at his hostel at 7pm and we'd walk down to the restaurant together. I only finished a workshop over in Grafton at 5pm though, so I had to walk all the way back into the city and meet up with Hamish. We tried to find a birthday present for them too, but we couldn't come up with anything good!
So we all met as planned and made our way to the restaurant. There was Sherman, my family, Winston and Leonie's family, John and his daughter (he's one of the helper teachers in our class) and Jennifer and her family. Aonghas came late as he had an engineering test that finished at 7.30pm.
The food was pretty good, I had a bowl of rice and chicken with teriyaki sauce. We all tried to have different dishes so we could compare what they were like!
After the dinner we sang Happy Birthday to the birthday boy and girl before eating cake! They brought a cake, but weren't aware that Sherman had brought one too, so we got to have two cakes!
The following night was 3rd year pharmacy dinner at the Turkish Cafe in Newmarket. I heard that some others had pulled out because they were worried about their lab report, and I was about to follow suit but then I didn't want to let my class rep down! So I ended up attending.
I tagged along with my pharmacy friend Edwin and a few others as I didn't know where I was going. I tried searching for the restaurant with Google Streetview and got Burger King! I suppose it was kinda close to the restaurant though...We got there slightly early though and caught up with a few other pharmacy people before going into the neighbouring The Warehouse just to look around to kill time. The girls spent most of the time looking at toddler toys and clothes though, how typical!
We went back to the restaurant to find a full house! It was packed. It took about half an hour for the food to finally come out. We were promised a buffet dinner but they only served big plates of food (maybe big is an exaggeration..) in the middle of our table and we had to scoop our own food onto our plate. Most of it was rice and pita bread. I spent most of the night taking photos of our table. I couldn't really be bothered going to the other side of the restaurant to take photos with others though, as the place was a little short on space!
It was funny when it was time to leave. It seemed as though everyone just got up all at the same time and walked out together! Edwin, the girls we were with and I wandered along the street to the nearest bus stop to catch the bus back into the city. I went to Sky City with Joohee, this Korean girl in pharmacy whose bus stop was there too. I went off to mine just around the corner when I saw my bus go past! At that time I didn't realise it was mine, but I did realise I had no more trips left on my bus pass, so I rushed to the nearest dairy to see if they topped up bus passes. They didn't though, so I crossed the road to the nearest Kiwibank ATM to get money out, only to find they weren't giving out money at that time! I had to go all the way to the bottom of the street to get my bus pass topped up, which is where that crazy racist guy came in (see my previous post!).. I did get home though, just an hour later...not good when you've got a lab report due!
I ended up doing an all-nighter that Thursday night, trying to get my lab report done. I only managed to finish it at 12pm the next day, with a couple hours to spare before the 2pm deadline! I rushed to Grafton to hand it in before heading into the city where I had to meet up with my friend Lisa to show her where a lecture theatre was, and then go off to the chemistry lab for a chemistry LAB TEST! Arrgghhh! Being sleep-deprived was bad enough!
What made the lab test even worse was I started off adding a chemical to the wrong flask and had to start again. Throughout the lab test though I noticed my mixture was different to the people beside me. I was tempted to ask a lab tutor if I was doing the right thing. I asked one lab tutor
"If I ask you a question will I lose marks?"
"Yes"
"OK doesn't matter"
After a while though I gave in and asked this lab tutor if what I got was supposed to be what I got. She gave me this really sarcastic reply, something along the lines of was that supposed to be a question and she couldn't magically make product appear...She gave a similar sarcastic reply to the next person who asked for help. Why can't the lab tutors of CHEM390 be as nice as the past CHEM labs I've attended??!
I ended up with a 6% yield.. that's right only 6%. I barely had enough product to do a tlc, a melting point test and by the time I wanted to get an IR spectrum printed off with that machine I had hardly any product left in my container! The tutor told me scrape it back off the machine and into the container. Because there are a limited number of machines as well, I had to wait in line to get my IR spectrum printed off. By the time I did, I only had a few minutes to analyse it before time was up and I had to hand in my lab report! WORSE LAB EVER!!
Fortunately to end two weeks of hell I got to attend a wedding the next day at our church. To be honest I didn't really know the people who were getting married, but the bride was a daughter of my mum's friend (I think), and so since she was invited, so were her family. I was cool with that. I haven't been to a wedding in years! My brothers and I all dressed in shirts. I wish we wore ties too that would've been cool.
The weddin was supposed to start at 2pm but didn't start for another half an hour. Apparently the bride had problems getting into her dress, or something like that. While we were waiting in the hall, people were being told not to step on the long red carpet that stretched from the door to the front of the church.
We were all waiting for the bride and groom to come in when this random lady came in through the wrong door! She was quickly ushered out.
Once the wedding got underway though it was pretty cool. I maybe didn't feel the love as much as others since the whole procession was in Chinese, but then again love should have no barriers or blablabla...right?? haha
There was a sort of reception in the main hall afterwards which was nice. There was a two-tier cake and some finger food which my brothers, Jireh the pastor's son and I stoked up on before the speeches. We were asked to help with distributing slices of cake to people though, so at least I contributed something to the wedding!
Apparently there are at least another three weddings to be held sometime later this year. I'm hoping I get invited along to a few of those!
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