Slumdog Millionaire, Score! and Wine lecture

One of the disadvantages of having a blog, was a realisation that I’m a boring person.

I don’t really have anything to write about, because almost everyday of my life looks exactly the same. Wake up, shower, breakfast, cycling to work, work, gym, cycling back, dinner, sleep. Wow, I’ve just summarised last two years of my life in 13 words. I’m not impressed. Suppose that explains why sometimes I need to go to the Score! and get smashed. Most (possibly everyone except me) of the people in there are not PhDs, therefore they not miserable. And besides I’ve been a diligent student during my undergrad, so I haven’t really used my drinking quota. Time to set it right.

So, what have happened this week that makes it different from the others? My research seems to be finally going somewhere, after almost two years. Despite that, I’m not really allowing myself to get excited – there is still thousand of things that may go wrong. My boss, however is not so restrained, his grin when he saw my NMR was probably visible from the moon. He’s even finished my research meeting with him after like 5 minutes, so I could get back to work. Quite unusual, as he always have millions of ideas and those meetings tend to take ages.

On Wednesday I went to see the Slumdog Millionaire. I was pleasantly surprised that in spite of many Oscar® nominations it’s actually a really good movie. As I usually criticise everything, I’m finding it difficult to comment on that movie. I’ve found it really enjoyable, the story is fast and absorbing like in an action movie, but at the same time it’s not a action movie at all. Tragedy is carefully balanced with comedy resulting in really immense experience. Music as well is a strange, but not repulsing mix of traditional Indian music with Indian pop and electronic music. The whole effect is completed by the excellent performance of all the lead actors (three for each character; child, teenager and adult) and the compulsory for Bollywood movie, dancing scene at the end of the movie. The effect it unequivocally (working on my vocabulary) worth seeing. It’s definitely one of the best movies I’ve seen lately.

Thursday brought another excitement, a RSC wine  lecture. As opposed to the usual lectures this one was ticketed event combined with a wine tasting. As I’m not a big fan of wine, I decided to go and see if I can find something up my alley. The lecture started a little slow, but it soon got much more interesting as we got the wines for tasting. Taster volume was only 25 ml but as our postdoc soon discovered, you can pour more if you tilt the bottle so the wine is flowing over the little measuring bulb on the top. Besides some of the academics weren’t ashamed to have a second and third helping of some wines. Hmm, really classy. Surprisingly or not, I’ve found out that I’m not posh too and enjoyed two of the cheapest wines served this evening; Australian Chardonnay 2007 (that was a year ;) ) and German Riesling 2005. The older and fancier wines I must say I’ve found revolting. What a blow; I’m not only boring but also cheap and seedy…

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.