Can't believe it's already the last day of 2012. One last day to make this year really count.
Resolutions #1:
Drink no more than 3 alcoholic beverages in one sitting.
It's annoying when I can't recall all the details of the night. It sort of feels like I dreamed it because of all my memory lapses, but I think he made a move over the weekend. I was pretty surprised it happened that way (not too surprised because alcohol really dulled everything).
2000 – Break. It’s tough going back to school and taking an in-class course after a year. I miss sitting in front of my computer doing online courses.0545 – Alarm goes off. My hair’s a mess, but nobody really cares at the lab. Brush teeth, make breakfast, turn on laptop, eat while watching 30 Rock (the episode where Jenna has a new catchphrase, “That’s a dealbreaker!”).
0630 – Is that a spider crawling out of my pillow case?! Oh dear, take a picture of it, and send it out the door with a mile of paper towel.
0704 – Awesome, I’m on time, the bus is on time. Things can’t go wrong.
0715 – Starbucks for coffee. The Pumpkin Spice Latte is back! My order: tall nonfat, half sweet, pumpkin spice latte. Usually I get no whip, but today the barrista was already heaping it on before I could stop her.
0736 – It’s too early to start work (shift officially begins at 8AM), so I sit in the break room and read A Feast for Crows.
0745 – Head down to the lab. Throw on my mud stained lab coat, slip on safety glasses, enter the lab. Immediately get made fun of for “sleeping in”, since the other 2 guys (let’s call them JB and R) I work with start at 6AM. It’s too early to be nice to people, but luckily I had that PSL so I just laugh. I’m told to help one dude with his tests, so I look at the summary of the work to check deadlines. Nothing’s due today… Guess I’ll take it easy for a bit and check my emails.Hopefully no samples come in.
0800 – Still checking emails.
0810 – Finished checking email, make my worksheet for a test for one sample that is due tomorrow, and slowly gather the supplies for it. Oh, but the other team has to use the balance that I need to weigh out their samples first. Guess I’ll have to save the work for after lunch when they’re usually done with the balance. Stand around a bit and watch someone else work. She calls me creepy, so I walk off. I walk around the room a few times, and finally end up back at the beginning… Staring at my summary of work.
0830 – Look for my other samples for another test due tomorrow… Try to waste time by typing slower, walking at a leisurely pace, and double checking every number and letter. Give me something to do!
0900 – I know! I’ll go verify my pipettor! Off to the balance in the other room.
0907 – Well, that was fun.
0930 – Take over weighing dirt and shit for R, so that he can mash up more dirt and shit for other tests. Great, this will help pass the time.
1000 – Dispense water into samples, cap them, give them to R so that he can tumble them. I don’t want to steal your entire test from you. I check my email again, and watch JB work.
1015 – JB is calibrating the pH meter, but it looks like he’s having some trouble getting the correct reading for the standards…
1020 – JB recalibrated the meter, and now it seems to work. He goes for lunch with R, and I am left behind to measure pH for the samples, and pick up the other samples for R after the tumbling.
1120 – Pick up samples from tumbler and bring them over to the centrifuge in the other room.
1130 – NOOOOOooo the centrifuge can’t take all the samples! 2 left over! Guess I’ll have to use the one in the other other room with the creepy looking guy who thinks I’m his friend.
1133 - Calibrate my other pipettor. S comes to ask us to go eat with him, since he doesn’t like sitting in the break room without a friend. Fine, might as well, since I’m getting pretty hungry.
1150 – S leaves for his meeting. Gosh. Leaves me alone with my book.
1200 – E joins me at the table.
1203 – Creepy guy joins us. His food smells really bad. Get awaayyyyy from meeee. Luckily, JJ joins us soon after, and I have a great time showing her my spider photo. She flips out because she’s arachnophobic. I am highly amused. I text the photo to her, and she knows she shouldn’t open the message, but she can’t resist. Once again, she freaks out. At the same time, she’s laughing so hard that tears come out.
1230 – Back to work.
1300-1600 – Work hard. Time flies by.
School starts tomorrow. I’m excited.
Translink really sucks, and I’m not just talking about how busses are never on time.
I walked onto the #27 bus at Rupert Station around 4:30pm, and flashed my new August monthly 2 zone bus pass. Since there were still quite a few people behind me waiting to get on, I walked quickly to the back of the bus and plopped down on a seat to read Game of Thrones #3 (which is really good btw).
Right when I open up my book (bookmark = July bus pass for convenience), the bus driver makes this announcement:
“TO THE LADY WHO JUST TRIED TO GET ON THE BUS WITH A JULY BUS PASS, IT WAS REALLY OBVIOUS.”
I spent an honest, hard-earned $110 on this piece of useless plastic/paper. I do not need to be accused of being a thief. I suppose a lot of people try to sneak onto busses with old bus passes or even with Upasses that aren’t theirs, but there’s no need to assume everybody will do it. Anyways, why make such a big deal about it, Mr. Bus Driver? Translink is making exorbitant amounts of money, and you’re not profiting from any of it, so might as well work together to beat the system.
Maybe the driver wasn’t talking about me, but about another lady. Maybe I’m just too sensitive. Maybe Translink should’ve made August bus passes more distinct from July bus passes. Maybe the bus driver should’ve stopped me right after I walked by him so that I could’ve properly shown him my bus pass instead of making assumptions and announcing lies over the bus intercom. I JUST WANT TO DEFEND MY HONOR.
It could’ve been worse, like the case in Hong Kong years ago:
If the bus wasn’t so packed, I would’ve walked right back up to the front and shoved it in his face. There’s always tomorrow; I take the same bus and see the same bus driver everyday. Tomorrow, I’m going to hold it right in front of his face, and point to the AUG 2012 at the top of the pass. And smile politely.
Picture from Steve Madden’s Instagram. Why didn’t I get these sooner?
Richmond Centre was a mess, could not get into Aberdeen, and driving in Richmond gives me road rage. Got some free swag (notebook and headphones) at the new Steve Madden that opened up in Richmond Centre when I bought the boots:
Woohoo, free stuff!!! Gas is getting cheaper, weather’s improving. I think I can stand the thought of work on Monday.
1. Lunch:
Me: Have you ever spilled your sample?
S: Yeah, of course.
Me: What did you do?
S: Pour it again! It was only 1 or 2 samples. I told the other people in my lab that if I spilled the whole
rack which has about 100 samples, I would just give up and quit.
2. Centrifuge
M: Hey, Don’t take out the sample and then pour it back in like that.
Me: Why not?
M: Homogeneity. You have to swirl the sample again and then remove, because it’s like you’re splitting the sample and resampling again. It won’t be representative if you do that.Later on, waiting for samples…
M: What’s the purpose of mixing up the sample?
Me: Umm… Is it homogeneity… And representativeness of the sample?
M: Yes. Why do we only use samples that are this size?
Me: Not sure.
M: Homogeneity. And representativeness of the sample.
I laughed for a full 60 seconds after this. Oh dear, I’m so immature. I told everybody that I graduated already, and M said that he was surprised because I seem so immature. Then, S thought I was 2 years younger than what I actually am, because I seem immature. I hope I never grow up though.
Made chocolate vodka strwbries in 3 easy steps:
1. Soak strawberries in vodka for at least 12 hours.
2. Dip in melted chocolate.
3. Place on wax paper and cool in refrigerator.
Don’t they look sexy?! Yeah right.
There wasn’t enough chocolate to properly dip them, so they turned out really bumpy. There wasn’t enough chocolate because I burned some of it while melting the first batch. I burned the chocolate using a microwave. I really should not cook…
First week at the new job crawled by. I don’t know how much I can actually disclose, but the job brings me back to my childhood days when I would dig in the gravel field and on the grassy hill behind my elementary school. So much fun playing with mud! There are also a lot more mindless tasks, so I have a lot of time to daydream…
Life is strange, because things happen for a reason. I got a cone of gummy candies, a bag of Lindt chocolate, and a shopping gift card as farewell gifts from my lovely coworkers at Anachemia. There was also pizza from Boston Pizza. It was a good end to the 10 months spent there. The end came right on time, because I was getting grumpier and angrier at the job. The week after the last day went by in a blur, with an interview on Humpday (Wednesday, for all you sickos out there) at Maxxam. (Actually, when I first heard that term, I didn’t realize it meant Wednesday either, and all my coworkers cracked up.)
I almost did not know the answer to “What pH is the water that comes out of your tap?” and “How would the pH change if sodium hydroxide is added to that water?”. Glad I had my thinking cap on.
I ended up with a pretty decent mark for the Forensic Toxicology course at BCIT, probably because everything was open book. After the course ended, I opened another book:
Life is so strange.
Last update was… MARCH?! Wow, lwza, you suck. Lazy, like these pigs…
Seen at Greater Vancouver Zoo in Aldergrove. Pat and I went there last month so that she could get her Tourism Challenge stamp. Perfect weather for the zoo, and for searching for roots in the mud.
We wanted to try out the desserts at True Confections on Broadway and Alma last night, but it was packed and would’ve taken 20 minutes for a table for 3. I was sleep deprived and slightly grumpy from the long ride on the 99 B Line (which was full of obnoxious people with no bus manners), so I really didn’t want to wait (actually, when do I ever want to wait?) So, we took our cheesecakes and trifles to the nearby Almond Park:
Picnic in the dark. Reminded me of summer a few years ago in an alley behind Ebisu. Desserts were delicious.
It’s never a bad day up on Whistler (just like Cypress).
Last time we went to 7th Heaven (the peak of Blackcomb), I could barely see my own hands in front of my face, but check out the same view from today:
My favourite run of the day was Cloud Nine. 
On the Whistler side, at the Peak Express. We tried to make it up a 2nd time, but the chair was closed already. 
The snow was melting near the base of the mountain, which means that Spring is coming. Until next year...
We went to Cypress this Sunday, and got lost not once, but twice, down the same run. There was no escaping the diamonds.
It’s always a good day when I get to go skiing, no matter how tired/stressed/angry/ANYTHING I am. It’s like I’ve entered a whole new world (like Aladdin whisking Jasmine into the air on his magic carpet). On the other hand, I’ve been sighing all day at work. Make the phones stop ringing, and stop sending me emails!
This weekend, I went to La Amigo with some of my oldest friends. Sometimes I question why we’re still friends and how we’ve stuck together after all these years.
I will never get bored of HK style cafes, like La Amigo, but it’d be nice to travel to a place that doesn’t have any.
They start ditching out, not calling/messaging first, not calling/messaging back. Worse yet, something happens (like last year, or the 3.5 years before that), and other than just drifting apart, you’re not even friends anymore. Nobody wants it to happen, but it just does. Then, when you’re put into certain situations, you pretend you’re friends to avoid causing an awkward scene for the rest of your friends.
What’s a girl to do in situations like these? Drink&dance.
At the end of last summer, I went to Le Crocodile for a birthday dinner with 4 others. We treated my then good friend, who was the birthday boy, and I think it was the most expensive dinner I ever ate. They gave us complimentary crocodile chocolates though.
Today, one of the friends who was also at Le Crocodile and I were discussing friendship over a $7 bowl of pho. At what point does a friend become an acquaintance?
Module 9 for FSCT 8240. The assignment involves filling in a chart for each of the drugs above. The headings for the chart include:
-Chemical Properties
-Analytical Considerations
-Uses
-How it works
-Effects on the body
-Toxicity
-Adverse Effects
How it works and effects on the body… Toxicity and adverse effects… Why not clump them in one heading, Rick? Oh well, you’re the boss.
FSCT8240 has officially started!
I still don’t have my books, I barely have time to read all the material that’s posted on the website already, and I have plans for the next few evenings before the 1st assignment is due. Looks easy enough though to write 1-2 pages about the development of Forensic Toxicology…
BCIT bookstore is so useless –.- KEEP MORE BOOKS IN STOCK.
I tried to register for FSCT 8240 Forensic Toxicology 1 at BCIT, but it kept saying I was not approved and would not let me sign up for it. I received a pretty official lookin’ letter from them a few weeks ago, so I thought there’d be no problem. Since the course starts 2 days from today (Jan. 12), I really had to do something. So… I called Cindy again during my lunch break (during which I like to nap), talked to her for about a minute, and she told me I would now be able to register. A few minutes later, I got an email from Cindy saying that I was approved by the Academic Adjudication Committee.
Should probably go pick up the books and custom notes for the course soon… Can’t wait to waste spend $100 on a book.
