It's been a week in the lab now and ive yet to blow up anything, which is a good sign. Am still pretty impressed at how hi-tech the stuff is, even with a service team just to help take more complicated NMRs and simple IRs. and there's even an in-situ IR machine too! even for the simple 1H NMRs its an automated process (read: no shimming etc) and it can just be queued and then read overnight. amazing! The only thing is guess is that the solvent (triethylamine) stinks! omg and that is an understatement of the year. bleah, for those of you who know. 150 ml of that stuff is no laughing matter...


anyway, this afternoon Germany played Serbia in the Weltmeister and the whole lab took the half day off to watch the match in Horsaal West. of course the results were disappointing but i was still amazed at how seriously they take the game or how 爽快 they are on a Friday afternoon, however you choose to see it. Even though I dont normally follow soccer, since the day off was for that, that's exactly what i did - watch the game like eveyone else. It was a little weird when the crowd reacted to all of Serbia's attempts at shooting and all of Germany's failed attempts at scoring. For me it was like: ok yes the ball went into the goal. no, the ball bounced off the pole. no scheisse no swearing, more like yes, that happened or no, that didnt happen. in fact, it felt rather surreal, like somehow im just observing an event. i still dun understand how people get so emotionally caught up in something that occurs 1000s of miles away, on one football field. oh well, but that's just me. i think i have a problem communicating with people and i acknowledge that. like its always very difficult to sustain any conversation beyond 3 lines. i just dont know what to talk about and dont want to bore anyone with the trite "how are you" opener which invariably gets the "im fine thank you" reply. oh wells.


nothing to do on a weekend. might be meeting sh to get the bike from him but i heard he's having exams soon so not too nice to take up too much of his time. thankfully there are plans to go Stuttgart for steamboat on Sunday so at least there's more than research papers to read this Wochenende. yay.