Just another puny day

"How are you?" is the question some people like to ask when they meet you. Well, my answer today would have been "How would you feel knowing you needed to redo the same experiment you failed for the past 3 times next June?". Besides that I did manage to get results on two shorter experiments today, so maybe I just shouldn't be such a negative here.

Tomorrow evening will be great because we're going to a party organised by Permai. There we'll be having a very nice dinner, while we're enjoying the best of what the Indonesian dancing culture has to offer.

Saturday I'll get my new phone. From then on I'll be able to use that phone to make photo's of events and instantaneously send them to this blog!

Nerd Test

I did a nerd test on the Internet and found out that I was a:

Joe Normal
34 % Nerd, 8% Geek, 17% Dork

The site self tends to explain the results by saying:

A Nerd is someone who is passionate about learning/being smart/academia.
A Geek is someone who is passionate about some particular area or subject, often an obscure or difficult one.
A Dork is someone who has difficulty with common social expectations/interactions.
You scored less than half in all three, earning you the title of: Joe Normal.

This is not to say that you don't have some Nerd, Geek or Dork inside of you--we all do, and you can see the percentages you have right above. This is just to say that none of those qualities stand out so much as to define you. Sure, you enjoy an episode of Star Trek now and again, and yeah, you kinda enjoyed a few classes back in the day. And, once in a while, you stumble while walking down the street even though there was nothing there to cause you to trip. But, for the most part, you look and act fairly typically, and aren't much of an outcast.

I'd say there's a fair chance someone asked you to take this test. In any event, fairly normal.

Well, I guess I'm very happy with the results. Seems like I'm more normal than I thought. You could also take the test!

Volleyball tournament at night

Last night I went to the volleyball tournament with 6 more CDL members. First we needed to travel to Groningen in the north of the Netherlands. There we had to face other chemically oriented associations. After we won the first 3 matches there was a beer drinking contest. After losing this miserably we went on with this losing spree and managed to lose another 2 volleyball matches. After the tournament was over we went home and had to face another 2,5 hour trip.

Another day of 'science'

Today was a day full of disappointments. Half of the experiments I did didn't work. And next to that I also need to improve all the reports I made for the previous experiments. Just small things like melting point had to be noted in a slightly different way. So there is some work to be done for me tonight.

What I hate most about those days in the lab is that we didn't do any research. We're just only trying to do something that was done by hundreds of people before us and the only thing we need to do is to follow the instructions. It's just like we're making dinner from a recipe.

Science Cafe

Science Cafe was very interesting. A lot of so called experts promoting their way of helping patients to have a better life. Emphasis was clearly on making sure patients had a happier life, and not a longer. Quite a shame then that when the subject of healing illnesses came to speak, the student who was making the enquiry was made ridiculous. Nevertheless I still think that Science Cafe Leiden is a nice opportunity to get to know something about subjects you don't really focus on. Next time the subject will be 'Spelling'.

Ancient Babylon

Another Google Video today. It's a documentairy made by Discovery Civilizations. Always wanted to know what the first real civilization was? Check out this video and see if it was Babylon.

Removal and Science Cafe

Moving the stuff in the old CDL room was really easy. We were done moving things at 10.30, but after moving the next problem appeared: no Internet. Because of the strict security on the university network our computers will not work until the outlet numbers are correctly entered in the database by the help desk. And until now no such thing happened, so the computers in our new room are still quite useless.

Tonight I'll be going to the second edition of Science Cafe Leiden. That's a debate about science in a cafe in downtown Leiden. Tonight's edition will be about alternative ways of healing people. Is this a waste of time and money, or are we spending to less attention to it.