Exhale

We are reminded once again by E.Seah that our lab skills are atrocious.

E. Seah: *deadpans* "I marked your practical books....they are atrocious."

And she's still on her campaign to weed out those "unfit" to do pure chem :|

Then she got irritated because we didn't know how to record proper observations for the experiment with Lead Iodide yesterday. Supposedly only 2 people in the class got the correct observation - Golden crystals formed - and all the other "jokers" wrote funny stuff like "Glittery things appear in the test tube upon cooling"

And apparently someone went to count the number of "Glittery things" too. [5 of them!]

But I liked the glittery things/crystals. They're so pretty! Yueyou and I stole some out of the lab after practical and stoppered the test tube with filter paper.

But I lost interest after I shook my test tube and all the crystals disappeared underneath the yellow ppt. Filtered it out into a papercup, ooh-ed and ahh-ed a bit and tossed it aside.
Unfortunately, Yueyou's test tube got smashed at the bus stop because the wind blew the whole thing over.
She was really devastated.
But Syaz mixed another batch of Potassium iodide and Lead Nitrate for her today so she's just got to heat it now to obtain the crystals. [I want more too!]
Lead Chloride crystals next!

Back to today's practical.

E. Seah: *evil look* "...if anyone else adds aqueous Ammonia to the unknown...and then heat it and tell me that Ammonia gas is formed and therefore the unknown contains Ammonium ions...even though you clearly put the Ammonia in yourself...I'm going to make that person sit next to me and smell aqueous ammonia for the whole lesson..."

Ouch.

November 1991 QA was a disaster. Practically no one managed to sniff out the ethanoic acid for the last test.

E. Seah: "...Did you not notice the sour smell? Didn't you notice the lab smelt like you people after your mass run?"

I got a sweet smell! I think I got an ester. So I guess its good to follow instructions and put a few drops of ethanol and not put it in excess.

Esters smell like starwberries :D

Everyone started testing for gas when there wasn't even any gas evolved.

E. Seah lost it again.

No one suspected Chromate ions.

Anj got pissed. Ann started to freak out.

Deliberating over the anion in class.

I think we're going get more sarcastic remarks when she finishes marking our books. And red crosses everywhere with "SEE ME WITHOUT FAIL!" in the margins.

...And I maintain it was a white precipitate in green solution >.<

We had, possibly, the first, proper CME lesson in the entire year. Topic was Globalization..typical NE stuff to coincide with National Day. Quite interesting.

Started talking about immigration. Gwen has really warped logic.

Dorai: Gwen, why do you want to go overseas?
Gwen: Oh....to see
Dorai: See what?
Gwen:....To see...you know...To prevent myself from becoming like..uh...a toad in a well.
"What?"
"Its a Chinese idiom."
"Oh."
Dorai: But why to that country in particular?
Gwen: I have relatives over there.
Dorai: So what have they told you about the country?
Gwen: Oh. *pause* They discriminate alot there. *starts laughing*
Dorai: *flabbergasted* And you want to go there to see yourself get discriminated against?
Gwen:...Yea but I have relatives there...so we can stick together.
Dorai: *still flabbergasted*...and get discriminated against together?

Hah Gwen you're funny sometimes.

Then we started talking a bit more about discrimination and Amanda took the oppotunity to voice her grievances about the PRC scholars :|

Ms Dorai told us a very interesting story about the incident in the Italian restaurant and the drunk foreigners. Hah. She's cool after all.

posted by Jeanne @ 1:13 AM