She’s a WITCH!

I’ve seen some comedy program on BBC recently (well, recently – more like two weeks ago, been planning to write about it sooner but I’m a really slow writer). I don’t really know what it was – I’ve seen only a small fragment during breakfast. One of the sketches made me laugh like a drain and I couldn’t stop laughing for the rest of the day. The skit takes place in a small local shop. Only one till, with bored and  cheesed off saleswoman. Quite a long queue of people with baskets is waiting. The first person in a queue is a man dressed in medieval clothes (no one seems to be noticing anything strange). Cashier bills his shopping (just perfectly normal everyday shopping). Man takes out his wallet and gives her a coupon.

- I’ve got a coupon for the fabric softener.

- We don’t take those.

- Oh, but it says on the coupon.

- We don’t take those.

- But it…

Saleswoman gives him a exasperated look. Poor guy is obviously intimidated, he looks helplessly at other people in the shop, no one seems to be interested. Suddenly he raises his hand, points at the woman and shouts:

- She’s a WITCH!

Immediately angry medieval peasants with forks and torches show up in the shop and take the woman outside, chanting: “She’s a witch, burn the witch!” Man looks at the other customers in the queue and explains:

- I had a coupon.

THE END.

That really made my day. Possibly because it’s so real. Sometimes you’re so helpless that shouting “You’re a witch!” at the unhelpful helpdesk employee or rude bank manager seems to be only option left. Don’t you wish sometimes to be that man. To point and shout “She’s a witch!”?

Because I do.

I do all the time.

I’m not a Jedi

I’ve got an email from Play.com yesterday, apparently they think that I may be interested in purchasing life-sized statue of a Star Wars Storm Trooper. I must admit it’s a bargain, it’s only £999.99 (RRP £1999.99) – so I could have saved a £1000 on this purchase. But somehow I can’t  really find a use for it. Can you?

Suppose, they have to have some use otherwise people wouldn’t sell them (and I don’t think that cloning process is cheap or easy). Maybe some people like to dress-up, attach two buns to their heads and wait until passing by storm trooper saves them.

- Aren’t you a little bit short for a storm trooper?

- Hm? Oh, the uniform. I’m Luke Skywalker, I’m here to rescue you.

(Hot kissing scene)…

Apparently it’ not that rare as I would have though. Quick search using Google has proven that.

But, who am I to criticise them. I sometimes hide in the cupboard under the stairs waiting for a letter from Hogwarts. Duh.

Random drunk post

Sometimes (read, every time i go to the Student’s Union) I wonder why is SU still standing. I mean really, with the amount of cheese they put on, they should be already ate by mice. Especially, remembering that SU is presently just an overgrown tent. And, I suppose Wednesdays are always a special case anyway. Score! – here you can get drunk with the cheapest purple ever and then “enjoy” the crappiest music you’ve ever heard. Every time I go, I promise myself it’s the last time – and then I go again anyway (read, PhD’s life is so sad you have to use every occasion you have to get drunk).

So - what is the “Score!”? – you may ask. Well, every Wednesday  in the Student Union (read, Temporary Entertainment Structure aka. TES aka. Big Tent on a Field) all the sports clubs have an occasion to bond, get drunk and throw up in a spirit of competition (which club will pass out first). The Circles start at 6pm with an happy hour until 7-7.30pm (Purple just £1, but only max. 3 pints per person). So until 8pm everybody is already reasonably intoxicated and lots of people is already far beyond being reasonable. Music doesn’t start until 9pm, which is a good thing, ‘cause at this time you don’t really care anymore. But if you came to the Score! for the music and you’re a fan of Dr. Alban, Las Ketchup, Aqua and Britney Spears that’s the time for you. I’m really not picky when it comes to club music, especially if I’m drunk, but please, have mercy! But… that’s still not the end. If you have survived the happy hour and then two hour of cheesy music, at 11pm SU have another treat for you. Live band! Wow! Today it was S Club 3 (what?! – S Club 3? – I mean, there was S Club 7 in the 90’s, but S Club 3?). Well, if you haven’t heard, after having few No. 1 (whatever) hits in 1999 band has broken apart one by one (I suppose it was S Club 6 for a while, then S Club 5, etc.) Well, after 10 years (gosh, I still can’t believe it’s 2009) it’s only S Club 3 left, meaning that last three members (losers) of the band just couldn’t find anything better to do than to sing to a band of drunk jocks (and cheerleaders) at random student clubs.

What happened next I can’t tell you – because after two songs I couldn’t stand it any longer and I left. Obviously I haven’t drunk enough today (fact I’m writing this and my spelling is actually not that bad, confirms this).

What I can tell you for sure; I’m definitely not going to the next score!

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cause I have a surgery on Thurs :D

Little Asia – Rotavap incident

On popular demand, continuation of my “Little Asia” series (all the publishers wishing to acquire rights for screening purposes are welcome to contact me).

Few weeks ago our department was suffering from dry ice shortage. For three days we were forced to use normal ice and tap water for cooling. That includes rotary evaporators, usually filled with dry ice/acetone.

For those unaware – rotary evaporators are used for removing excess of solvent (water or more likely organic solvents). Most of the rotavaps are cooled using water, but water cooling isn’t really enough to condense low boiling solvents, like DCM or diethyl ether under reduced pressure. That’s why in our lab we’re using cold traps (see picture) filled with cooling mixure. Usually it’s acetone/dry ice, which has a constant temperature of -78°C, or water/ice mixture (0°C).

So for three days cold traps were filled with water/ice. It’s quite obvious that before filling them with with dry ice you have to empty them first, or at least it’s obvious to everyone who has even a little reason.

On the glorious day when our department was finally supplied with dry ice I’ve spotted L. happily filling the cold trap. Perturbed with a vague premonition of danger I’ve asked him what he’s doing.

- Have you emptied the water first?

- What?

- There was water in the trap, have you emptied it first?

- I didn’t know water there.

- There was no dry ice for three day – so we were using water/ice. And there is a post-it note on it saying “water/ice”

- Oh.

- You have to empty it otherwise freezing water will crack the condenser.

- Yes, yes. (Standing there and staring at me with a blank expression on his face)

- You have to do it NOW!

- Yes, yes (Still standing there)

- So why aren’t you doing it? (Lost my nerves – took out the freezing cold trap and  showed it to his hands) You have to do it now and don’t put the dry ice from it in the sink or it will crack the pipes.

Another blank expression – so I took a large beaker from the cupboard and put it in front of him. He turned the trap upside down – but the water already froze. I just told him that he had to get it out and I didn’t really care how and I left. Suppose he managed to get it all out cause the trap survived. Which is pity in a way, because we’d have one more excuse to get rid of him. Really, he’s supposed to be a PhD student, I always assumed that you have to be at least a little bit smart to do that. Obviously I was wrong…

Best wishes

Hope all the readers (all 3 of you) had a great Christmas and a wonderful New Year’s party.

Still in the Christmas mood – My research group in The Ultimate Disco Performance

Christmas SALES and credit crunch

I went to do some shopping today. I had some things I needed to buy and as I got paid earlier – some additional cash to spend. To my surprise I came home almost empty handed (if you know me even a little bit, you know that it’s rather shocking). It seem that credit crunch hit the shop owners more than I thought. Sales this year are much smaller that last year. Most of the things are discounted only a little (or at least, most of the things I wanted to buy). Seriously, discount from £59.99 to £55.99 is not really worth standing in a queue. And you could see the results in most of the shops. Queues to the tills were rather short, most of the people were just browsing, or buying just one thing. Most of the shops weren’t much busier than on normal Saturday. Usually during the Sales time shops are packed, people are loaded with shopping, four shopping bags in each hand and some more shopping stuffed under their arms (that’s often me :D). Today I haven’t seen a single person like that. Some shops didn’t really bother discounting their stuff, they just put the Sale banners up and left the same prices. Only Next seem to have a usual “Everything must go” sale, but even there I didn’t have to queue. Which is a good thing, cuz stuff I bought wasn’t on Sale anyways.

The only thing that stopped that day from being a complete disaster, was my visit in the bookshop (looking for the non-existing discounts – uuuh, 75% off “Aunt Marge’s Cooking Book” how exciting – none of the interesting stuff was discounted though). There, in the middle of the Sci-Fi section, next to “The Asbo Fairy Tales” I’ve found diet book - “I can make you thin”. Putting in SF section isn’t probably the best advertisement, but at least won’t give anyone any delusions.

Little Asia - Crystallisation gambit

If you read my previous post, you know that we have been blessed with two new PhD students this year. One of them – C. doesn’t seem to have any idea about chemistry. At first we’ve thought that maybe it’s the cultural difference and the difficulty in adaptation to the new environment (or at least I thought so, some other members are much less tolerant). But then the crystallisation incident happened and no one had any doubt anymore. C. hasn’t got a clue.

Let’s start from the beginning; The first reaction C. performed was reduction of D-phylglycine to get aminoalcohol. This is a routine reaction in our group, the prep is very easy and has been performed multiple times. Our postdoc L. helped C. to set up the reaction (haven’t seen that, but I suspect that L. set up the reaction for her). Obtained product, if you’re doing it on a small scale, is a white solid, easily recrystallised from hot toluene. At this step L. had already enough (pretty sure I’ve seen steam coming from her ears) and left C. to finish on her own. You think how difficult that can be, crystallisation is something you do in primary school, with kitchen salt. You dissolve it in hot solvent, wait until it cools down and voila… But… it seems that in Malaysia crystallisation is performed in slightly different (possibly revolutionary) way.

Malaysian recrystallisation procedure.

• 1 Round Bottom Flask with your product
• 1 Beaker (larger than the RBF)
• Ice (Dry Ice if necessary)

Place your RBF upside down inside the beaker (your solid shouldn’t fall out – it’s held in there by Malaysian voodoo). Fill the beaker with ice and stare at it for an hour. If your solid is not recrystallising, try topping up the beaker with dry ice.

I’m afraid I don’t know what happens next, because at this stage our supervisor came and showed C. how to do the  recrystallisation in the usual way (read recrystallised her product for her). I’m actually really upset, ‘cause this way he deprived us a chance to learn something new.

Stay tuned for the next episode.