so I sorta woke up at 4:30 am, then was unable to sleep again

Things I hate more than waking up early:

1.

Decoding Undergraduate Lab Reports

Are you a TA or unfortunate prof? Do you have to read 60+ lab reports a week? Does the prospect of reading through pages of intentionally dense non-prose to find out exactly where the data-fudging starts make your eyes bleed? In that case, you need my handy-dandy lab report translator!

"In theory, this will result in..." = "Actually, nothing happened, and you're going to have to read five pages of this crap to find out."

"We performed a literature search on the topic." = "I am a keener from the school of MOAR WORDS = MOAR BETTAR. Give me an A or I'll come to your office and cry about medical school."

"Warning: some of the reactants are corrosive to skin and mucous membranes..." = "...which is something I learned firsthand."

"The reaction proceeded vigorously." = "The beaker exploded, dude it was AWESOME, also I'm not allowed in the labs anymore."

"Upon reaction, the mixture had a strong smell." = "I got really, really high. It was insane. I tasted color."

"Further tests could not be conducted due to lack of materials." = "We used up all the deionized water squirting each other while waiting for refluxing."

"Further tests could not be run due to time constraints." = "I was hungover / hungry / bored and didn't want to do any more tests."

"The positive result could not be verified upon retesting." = "I probably fucked up and didn't wash my beakers or something, but I'm going to present it anyway."

"Although the results appear negative at first, statistical analysis reveals..." = "Check out how awesome I am at statistics. You won't even notice where I sneakily divided out half the error. Hee hee!"

"Slightly adjusting the graph can better show..." = "I changed the labels, scale, format, units, and quantity being measured. Also, I changed the best fit line from linear to a power series. Enjoy."

"The source of error is possibly attributable to random error..." = "It didn't work, and it's not my fault..."

"...or even poor experimental setup." = "...and in fact, it's probably YOUR fault."

"Unfortunately, the experiment did not bear out the hypothesis for an unknown reason." = "Read the procedure again, I probably forgot to add the catalyst."

"The experiment should be repeated in the future under different constraints." = "The experiment should be repeated in the future, but not by me."

Uhhh.

Guys. Guys. GUYS.

Star Trek is a gift from GOD HIMSELF, because it will allow us to keep the filthy brown people out of the land of the Chosen People.

If I were to go out and buy a goddamn 20-pound honey-glazed ham and actually carve an actual fist out of it, it would not be more ham-fisted than this guy's attempt to link a random pop-culture topic to KILL THE DIRTY MUSLIMS.

Ireland and Other Places of Note

So Zaheen was (actually still is until Monday) visiting, and we decided we should do something awesome, and what's more awesome than Ireland? (answer: Extreme Ghostbusters)
The whole trip actually cost us around £400 (total), which included staying at a really, REALLY nice hotel, which we later found out we were sharing with a wedding and a famous rugby player. Funnily enough, I didn't recognize him in the slightest despite almost running into him (in uniform no less), until we saw him on TV in tiny, tiny white shorts. (He looks way less like the missing link in person.)

Just a quick note, if you ever decide to fly anywhere, do NOT fly Ryanair-- it's probably the most nerve-wracking experience I've ever had watching the pilot try to land our plane in the middle of a rainstorm, and the descent starts while you're still over the Irish Sea. Then, when you've finally landed and you're just starting to relax from the pilot having apparently landed on one wheel and slowly graduated to two, the most horrible, tinny "burr burr BURR" trumpet noise blares LOUD over the cabin speakers and a pre-recorded Scottish(?!) voice announces that Ryanair has made another on-time landing!! The best record in Europe!!! Let me tell you, it takes a lot to make me wish for a delayed flight... the prospect of not having to hear that goddamn canned trumpet is enough.
Anyway, after resisting the urge to strangle the cabin crew we tottered down the cheap little stairs they'd set up and-- stopped. Ireland, even when seen from a tarmac, soggy with rain and fog, is gorgeous. Where we landed is more or less flat in all directions, with nothing to be seen but rolling green and some gentle hills in the distance. As Zaheen kept asking, why would anybody leave? It's so beautiful, even if there are no potatoes!
One of the first things I noticed getting off the plane was the signs-- all the official signs, as it turns out, are half in Gaelic. Gaelic is an interesting language, in the sense that every Gaelic word seems to exist according to a formula: take first three letters of normal word, add -iaeough to the end. As for the rest it appears to be 50% jumbled ramblings and 50% making it up as you go. (I believe a similar formula is applied in the case of the Cornish language.)
Getting out of the airport, there was conveniently a bus to the hotel driven by a cranky fat man who sweatted a lot and refused to speak in more than grunts. One of the main things we noticed while going through Dublin was that there are a LOT of beer ads. And beer trucks. And pubs. And people drinking beer. By 'a lot' I mean I actually saw a flatbed truck with what appeared to be about a hundred or so kegs of Carlsberg being unloaded into a pub. It was insane. Our first day, we took a bus into Dublin (much like a regular English bus, only dirtier, and with a ruder driver) and wandered around; after several hours, we were unable to find anywhere to eat other than a restaurant called "Captain America's". Being inside that restaurant was the most surreal experience I have ever had. Imagine an Applebee's staffed with Inuits who are completely, completely committed to the idea that they are running a small-town Americana restaurant to the point of having painted 'God Bless America' over the kitchen. Yeah. It was surreal. (Also they charged us something like 3 Euros for a Coke... goddamnit) We discovered later, to our irritation, that all of Dublin shuts down at around 8pm, so we just went back to the hotel to watch Gaelic TV and giggle at Colgate ads with Irish accents.
The next day, we decided to pay Trinity College Dublin a visit. TCD is great as a tourist attraction, but I can't help but feel it would be annoying to go to school there, mainly because of how good a tourist attraction it is-- I took a picture of the line waiting to see the Book of Kells; now imagine it being like that, every day, all the time, while you're trying to go to school there. I'd be annoyed. Next we wandered to St. Stephen's Green, where we sat on the grass for an hour or so, making fun of pidgeons; had lunch in a pub surrounded by old guys eager to watch 'the footy'; and wandered around central Dublin. Yes, I made irritating tourist purchases:

Hell yeah guys

After another night of entertaining Irish television (I believe Zaheen watched a documentary on the Sinn Fein entirely in Gaelic), it was time to pack up and head back to Blighty, and those goddamn canned Ryanair trumpets again.

Zaheen's trip highlight: St. Stephen's Green.
My trip highlight: Chinese cab driver with very, very strong Irish accent. "I hail from Hong Kong, meself!" indeed.

You can view my photos in all their blurry glory here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/27016357@N03/sets/72157617828854519/