Super insanely busy week finally over

YAY~~~~ hehehe today marks the end of my super insanely busy week, actually make that 2 weeks. the next week is also busy, but not superly insanely busy tho. ^___^

So... er.. if you want to know what i've been up to since week 1

• pd proposal
  
• pd proposal orals to the lecturers
• pd proposal orals to the watties ppl (today)
• pd proposal written to lecturers tmr, which i might add is not finished HAHAHA
• conjoint analysis/consumer panel which we needed for the proposal
• organise the group assignment for formulation paper which is due.. next week
• Testing out new formulations for my pectin gels, since i just discovered i've been making it using the wrong method.
  
• Made up 8 samples, each weighing 1.6kg, and since me so bad at controlling stuff, had to er.. re make 2 of the batchs :P, and note each takes 45 mins to make
• Run around to organise everythign i need to make up my samples in pd lab, since.. perviously i was workign in food chem lab. And er.. there are 3 technicians responsible for pd lab, and they keep saying... i dont' have it.. ask xxx, lol
  
• Organise the sensory panel for the lecturer today
• Helped Hui doing experiment on saturday, ended up finishing at like.. 8:30pm. But that poor girl won't be able to do her project otherwise, so, guess it's all worth it.

yea.. i think that's the important ones... had meetings here and there. Kinda glad most of that is over... but then it's not really.. over.. is it.... hahaha oh well.

Anyway.. visited Watties today, it's amazing, a huge company like that you woudl expect all their processes to be completely automated, but it's not, there's a lot of manual labour involved. But I guess it's good that it gives them the flexibility to manufacture whatever product is in bigger demand. Hm.... *shrug* guess i shudn't say too much.

First time ever wearing an overall today ^^ was kinda weird... we all looked like.. wompas from the choc factory :P hehe

Anyway.. incredibly sleepy, spent 4 hours on the van today. Nite ppl

Difference between workign with 2 guys and 3...

OK... see.. when it was just 2. They were nice, listens to me all the time. hahah and then.. the 3rd one comes along, and suddenly their er,, immature guy qualities leaks out. hahaha probabily didn't help that we were in the PD lab roasting nuts for the conjoint analysis. So there was a lot of, er... try to eat nuts after they thrown it in the air, and there were a lot of..er.. bad joke about 'nuts' and... ya... hahhaha guess i am gonna have fun this sem

Scary, but kinda cool~

Had a really, interesting day today.

First up, PD class, got a new member to our group! an indian dude doing food engine! which is great! coz now we can dump all the processing stuff to the expert instead of doign it ourselves :P

Have proposal due next tuesday, then the following monday, we have a fieldtrip to watties, where we are gonna present our proposal to them too. Our lecturer asked me if i also want to present my individual project to Wattie's since it's kinda.. a side project. I don't know, i mean, if this is Emerald Foods! then I'll be all for it, but this is Watties... dotn' get me wrong, nice company, just... situated at Hastings! that's like.. smaller than palmy @_@ guess i'll talk to my supervisor about it on thur.

Then, well, this was really lucky, but the sensory lecturer, i emailed her last week asking for help with project, she said she's gonna be ing palmy (she's from auckland) today and tmr, and i emailed her for time for appointment and stuff and she never replied. So today, after our group meeting, i took a leap of faith and walked around and.. actually.. did manage to find her. HEHEHE and and and, ok, i was gonna use the technicians as my trained panel, since all 4 of them had been on trained panels before. BUT the lecturer said, I can use my samples on her 3rd year food tech students as part of their sensory lab! how cool is that!!! hehehe, tho, now i am totally paranoid, thinking what if my formulations goes wrong, what if the difference between my formulation is not sensorilly detectable. Hm.... better think about that huh~~

Incidently, I have a paper with the 3rd food tech students this sem... so i have a feeling that... they might be wanting my blood after they are made to taste my superly superly sweet jellies (A) OOOOOPS

Little Welly trip to visit Lil' sis

Saturday, Danny and I drove to Wellington to visit Alex, that brave girl moved to Wellington to pursue her dream of being a world class musician!

The trip was sponsored by...Annie for letting us drive her car for the day ^__^ thanks Annie

We left the house at about 8:15, and what greeted us was... well...

a SUPER frost up car!! :P

If you look from the inside, visibility is zero!!!

After heating the car for 10-15 mins, we finally hit the road. The great thing about being this part of North Island, is that you get long stretch of super flat, straight road.!!

Here's a.. not so good example of that, but the snowy scenary is certainly nice!

After about 90mins of driving, we see Wellington on the horizon.

We were there a bit early, ok... more like half an hour early, so we decided to take a little look at the cable car look out first!

I thought the scenery here is just sublime!

And of course, Wellinton's famous cable car!

We met up with Alex after that, found her at her hostel. Guess hostel life is a lot different to flatting, she's living with 12 other people, and well, they have a very organised lifestyel I guess, like everyone rotate to cook for everyone else, etc etc. Her roomates and housemates looks nice, and the bathrooms is just so much better than what I get. But guess I can't complain too much. The house she lived in is over 100 years old though, and somehow with the super high ceiling and stained glass window.. looks.. almost a bit haunted for my liking. But she is thoroughly enjoying it, so I guess it's all good. And omg! her rent is so cheap! $140 all up includign food~~ I have NO idea how they manage to keep it so low, coz her location is real close to the university too.

Got Alex to show us Victoria university for abit. ONly took one foto so..er... yea...

Random pic of victoria uni

The univeristy looks nice, certainly look a lot older and.. well.. more victorian style houses I guess. There's also lots of random piece of artwork floating about.. and when I say floating, i meant it literally. THe randomest thing i found, was er... a block of vines (real ones) in the middle of a building, surrounded by carpet etc. hm...

We had really nice yum char, followed by nice home made ice cream. then er.. Alex felt bad about us paying stuff, so ran and bought bubble tea for each of us... the result.. 3 superly full ppl. LOL

Went and visit Te Papa, which was ok, been there before and the exhibition hasn't change

Danny and I at Te Papa

This was followed by a vist to the beehive/parliament, and looked at the national library. In fact, i didn't even know we had a national library. HAHA but you woudl expect somethign liek that to be open 24/7 right? but no! and not even close! it was closed at 1pm on saturdays :P

Alex and I outside the Beehive.

We had dinner at Cha, which is a taiwanese cruisine place, it's not too bad, but then we were still quite full from lunch, so didn't had much food at all. And that concluded our little trip to Welly.

Hm.. guilt of the day. brought brownies (with chocolate, cashew and walnut) for Alex without knowing that she recently, developed allergies to cashews @___@ and she coudln't er.. resist the temptation of brownies so had some.. I hope shes' ok.!!

^_________________^

Proposal presentation is over and done with ^_____^ OMG~~ I feel like I am flying, I think it went quite well. For our presentation, we were suppose to stand in front after we've done, and listen to ppl's assessment of how we presented the proposal! And that is not really based on the content (for me thats' normally not the problem) but on the presentation style!!! and and and the lecturer coudlnt' really pick out any faults with my presentations!!!!

Ppl know how scared I am with presentations, and how fast i talk at presentations.... i am just..... so happy that at least i seem to be improving. I dont' think I've been ever so happy about my any of my academic performances, even when i got good grades for papers. I guess it's just a sense of achievement...

Just want to thank Danny for listening to my presentation I dont' knwo how many times for 2 days straight ^^ and giving me really good advice and stuff. ^^

Plus I got really good advert for my consumer panel later on this year... ppl acutlaly came and asked to participant!!! YAH!!!! ^___^

only bad thign is.. i kinda.. forgot.. to tell my supervisor that he's suppose to assess me.. verbally too.. and he looked.. quite shocked (A) OOOOOOOOPS

Ants terminator

Yup.. that's me!!! ok.. our lab is... infested with ants! and i can't blame anyone cause I am the one attracting it all (A) hahah ooops. Ok.. can't help it if i need A LOT of sugar to make up my samples. and.. the ants.. they are just too fast @____@ Ok... say I was washing up some stuff at the sink... and didn' treally clean the sink cause I'll need it later. So i walked off to my bench... and saw ants crawling around things that i might've spilled... so i'll clean it up... walk to the sink.. and ants would be gathered around there. @___@

Seriously.. i have come to a point where I'll never leave any experiment over lunch! cause I am just so scared that the ants will find my samples and er... ruining it!! So sometimes I'll have really really late lunches just coz i dont' want to leave stuff lying around. In a sense I kinda feel guilty tho... it's not the ants fault that they are attracted to sugary stuff... I have used...er... about... 4kg of sugar already.. so that's probabily heaven in ant's worlds... but what can I do right?

Hm.... ok.. so I have a problem...I have to put commercial jam in a container without really disturbing the structure... so after consultanting with ppl, i've come up with a plan to cut the bottom off the container, invert it, insert into the jam, then somehow scoop it out from the bottom. Only problem with that is that the jam bottles are quite narrow, so it's quite difficult to do that with spoon. So i went and talk to the technician today and ask if there's somethign with 2 sticks, attack to a hard bottom so i can slide it in and be able to level the jam out. And guess what he said

Technician:" yea.. i have a thought about your problem.. and i think the best way is to crack the glass open"
me: "?!?!?! eh?!?!?!"
Tech:" yea... i mean, you won't need the rest of the jam right? so it's jsut goign to go to waste anyway
me: "but but.. i'll need a lot of samples"
Tech:" that's fine.. just let me know when you are gonna do it, I can give you a hand"
me:" *still stunned... quite speechless by that stage"*
Tech:"it's a messy job... but I think it's the best way for your samples"

Ok... I have to agree.... i can probabily get the least disturbed gel structure.. but imagine the broken glass.... the jam splattering... the ants.... LOL Come to think of it.. Anathoth's jam is not even in glass jar......... hm.....

TWO SECONDS?!?!

Team NZ lost by.... 2 seconds... i couldn't believe it!!! omg!!! we went from 135m behind to 46m ahead!!! then due to that stupid penalty, we lost.. by 2 seconds.... you had no idea.. i was like.. ok ok.. we lost... then the surge of wind came, we led..... then... coz of the stupid penalty, we lost.... It was so close too... oh well~~ better luck in 4 years time ya? Though I think the team performed really well regardless!!

See you!

Hm.... a friend has left NZ for good today, kinda feel almost like a dejavu. Remember when Len left Macleans after 6th form, I feared that what then we called the "Mansfield" group will just dissipated, and it did! It's like, the reason for me to "escape" to Mansfield durign lunch when we weren't suppose to is lost, and i guess for other people too. But at least back then, I know that the year after, we'll all be at one place, and we can again have regular meet ups.

But this is different, this is leaving for good! there's a certain finality to it. It's almost like, if the person want to hide for hence forward, it's so easy to just... loose touch all together. But I really hope that will not be the case... So friend, do drop me a message ok! you had been a really great friend for many many years, and I wish this will not be the end. As for the people who's left behind, I really hope that despite how busy life is... we can still make time to meet up, because soem friends are just too precious to let go.

Back to Reality

Yup.. my holiday is officially over, all the stuff I have to do before sem2 starts now flooding back. HAHA sometimes reality sucks, but I am soooo happy to had such a nice week off. Really, everyone's been so fantastic, makign time to meet up and stuff. Thanks everyone ^___^ look forward to our next meeting.

And here I'll end the entry, short i know. I actually had a lot of blog entries in mind, but then i guess after a few days, the moment is gone. HAHAHA