Day 6: Walex’s Rainy Birthday
Today we started with the usual routine - breakfast at Trinity and then the short trek to the lab. Organic pracs today! The first one involved the synthesis of a conjugated chemical and the second involved the complexing/precipitation and then analysis of amino acids (found in proteins). While we were a bit rushed for time, we did the best with the time possible. Although, there were some minor casualties in contamination: the lab reeking of almond biscuits, the explosion of hydrogen gas during cleanup, Daren spilt some fluoro-yellow chemicals into the fume cupboard: all said, it was some good fun! We cleaned up early, with Alex cracking the whip (it’s not every day you turn 24!), and then headed off for some lunch with Trent’s friend Liz from Cambridge. The greatest part about it was the pub had free refills on the drinks, which was taken advantage of!
We took our time to saviour the remaining time we had left in Cambridge - we all did some individual tourist shopping. We bough ties, jerseys, hats, notebooks and even a ‘Newton’s cradle’. We kicked ack for a bit of swiss icecream and then returned to college for some fun analytical chemistry. Alex was back - with a vengeance! We looked at some redox chemistry problems, and learnt some shortcuts for calculations. We were all getting a bit tired but Andy G rocked up and we went out for traditional Spanish Tapas! I can’t remember how much food we ordered but it was probably far too much, nevertheless is was great to thank Andrew for all his help for the time we’ve been in Cambridge. We gave him a nice bottle of wine and a thank you from all of us.
But the highlight of the day was yet to come! On the way back from dinner we plucked up the courage to ask his holy fellowship Andy G if he could take us across the lawns of Cambridge (as only Fellows of the college are allowed to walk on the grass!). He immediately said, in a swift British accent: ‘Right, that’s it lets go. We’ll do a fat diagonal across the grass.’ Apparently even when it’s pouring with rain, some Fellows will still walk straight across the grass, because they can! As you can imagine, we felt quite dignified walking across, and honoured to be offered the opportunity.
After a quick bash (at 10.30pm) of one of Dustin’s hardcore formula-crunching problems, we brought the man himself, head mentor Alex Wong, his ceremonial birthday cake. After round two of happy birthday, we ate it with smiles on our faces and returned to our rooms, collapsing into another night’s good sleep.
That’s all for another day!
Team Oz ‘08
Will filtering his product.
Dustin helping Will and Alex helping Daren.
Daren’s carcinogenic dumping ground!
Yufeng and his product.
Elaine being dextrous!
