vanity's law: April 2010

Tuesday, April 27, 2010

i should post something right...

Nothing really to talk about. I should do a more emo and chunky post tmr or something.

Thursday, April 22, 2010

Don't abuse my kindness

I was walking home from the MRT station today, and I met something that somewhat pissed me off. But before that, let me tell you about what happened two weeks ago, the same time and place when I was walking home after chem olympiad.

Just when I walked past the elevator to the MRT station, I was immediately approached by this woman who asked me the following sentences, "Hi, you are a student right? Do you believe that ex-criminals should be given a second chance in society? Actually I'm an ex-offender of the law..."

It ends with me donating $2 to the woman.

At first I felt that I did something right by helping an ex-offender. Until now.

I met the same woman at the same place at the same time two weeks later, which is today. She was sitting at the side of the elevator with 2 other people. The moment they saw me, one of them pointed at me and this same woman got up and approached me.

"Hi, you are a student right? Do you believe that ex-criminals should be given a second chance in society? Actually I'm an ex-offender of the law..."

I completely ignored her this time. And I also realised that they only approached students like me.

What is the meaning of all this? Approaching unsuspecting students to get their sympathy? So that they will buy a piece of card for $2? People always say how the people of the new generation seem so cold and uncaring. When the world gets so murky until no one is sure of who is the real people in need, no one will want to be caring anymore.

I may be kind-hearted most of the time, (regardless of my extreme pride) but that does not mean these kind of people should abuse my kind-heartness for their own gain. I can tolerate for a long time, but someday I may just crack. By then I may have lost all emotions.

Btw, todays chem olympiad was hair-tearing. I was going emo by the end of the lessons. If that kind of questions come out for our sec 4 syllabus I would laugh.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

conclusion

So finally my lame polling about which is your most hated lab chemical is over. And I was rather surprised with the result.

Nitric acid: 0

Sodium hydroxide: 0

Aqueous ammonia: 5

Potassium manganate (VII): 1

Potassium dichromate (VI): 0

Silver nitrate: 4

You know I was expecting silver nitrate to win a landslide or something, but in the end it actually got pwned by aqueous ammonia. Ok, let me first explain why I chose these few chemicals.

Firstly, all the above chemicals are very common in a chem lab, especially during QA test.

Nitric acid: oxidising agent, and corrosive. Although most of the time the concentration is dilute so there won't be any immediate effect but still..

Sodium hydroxide: the main problem is with it's soapy feeling, which (in my opinion) is so disgusting. I seriously' don't like the slimy feeling that simply refuses to be washed off. Every time when I got sodium hydroxide on my hand I don't bother to wash it with plain water anymore, simply taking the nearest bottle of acid on the bench and pour. I would rather burn then slime and corrode.

Aqueous ammonia: seriously I don't get why so many people voted for that. It is slimy, yes, but not as slimy as sodium hydroxide and possibly only half as dangerous based on toxicity and corrosion ability. Maybe it's the smell. I know ammonia smells horrible, but then you don't have to stuff your nose into the bottle u noe...

Potassium manganate (VII): when I put down it's name I know that most likely no one will vote for it. Yes, it's a strong oxidising agent, but it's not corrosive, it's not slimy, it's not smelly. The most it can do is to make a temporary brown stain on ur finger that lasts at most a few days. I also dunno what's with the brown stain..Alternatively, it can cause a rather permanent stain on your clothes, and spontaneously burst into flames when glycerol is added to it. Apart from that, nothing interesting.

Potassium dichromate (VI): Ok I don't really hate this chemical, because it's colourful. But I will definitely not get too close to it than I can achieve. Because it contains chromium (VI) ions that are CARCINOGENIC. The last thing I want to bring away from a chem lab is skin cancer or something stupid.

Silver nitrate: The ultimate horror of all chem labs. Due to its original appearance that looks like water, nobody will suspect a colourless puddle on the work bench to be silver nitrate...and thus they will not spam wash their hands after the experiment. And then the ions start working...silver ions combine with oxygen to form oxides of silver, thus the metallic purple stain starts to show up little by little...until 2 hours to 1 day after the incident, the stain is in full bloom. The worst part of it is that there's no way to remove it, except to wait for weeks or even months for it to wear off naturally. If it gets onto your clothes, unless you don't mind that purple stain you can kiss your clothes goodbye (beware further contamination) It is known that even the lab staff in the SRC is afraid of silver nitrate and at least one classmate has developed paranoid of silver nitrate. And I hate it as well.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

random post

Was feeling random, so posting a random post (randomness)

Random story:

One day, greed, lust, gluttony, pride, envy, wrath and sloth went to watch a soccer match.

Upon reaching the entrance to the stadium, they realised that they forgot to bring their tickets. Because greed was too busy counting his money,

lust was too busy seducing men,

gluttony was too busy eating,

pride was too proud to bother about the tickets,

envy was too busy being jealous with random people on the streets,

wrath was too busy throwing a tantrum

while sloth was too lazy to do anything. (they even have to pull sloth along because he's too lazy)

The guards at the entrance absolutely forbid them from entering unless they have a ticket, and thus each of them used their trait to lure the guards into letting them in.

Greed bribed them with wealth and was let in.

Lust seduced them with her erhem and was also let in.

Pride was too proud to bother about them and was still not allowed to go in.

Envy was too envious about the soccer players that he did not care about the guards. sour grape

Wrath managed to intimidate the guards with his, well, wrath.

Sloth was too lazy. He laid down and slept.

So Pride, Envy and Sloth were barred outside the stadium while the others were let in.

The end.

L2/2 - no link lol

Thursday, April 8, 2010

overview

So basically a summary of what happened as of yesterday.

Project's day prelim presentation. I was the student judge of the first 2 hours of the presentation, so my main role is to judge the sec 1s and 2s.

Felt sort of sorry to have failed 2 groups, because I feel that they simply cannot make it. It's like, you have a group that wants to test the concentration of CO, O3 and heavy metal particles in the air of indoor HCI and outdoor HCI, to see if they exceed the healthy concentration.

Now, if the concentration of these toxic substances which I can't seem to find a source in HCI that can actually produce such substances apart from maybe the SRC labs (but I heard they don't even allow students to touch cadmium, not to mention mercury. and ozone requires certain special procedures which the lab staff would surely won't produce it in the first place), could be exceeding the healthy concentration, everyone would have suffered from asthma, bronchitis, heart attack, headache, nausea, vomiting, dizziness, lethargy, kidney and liver damage.

Since no one seems to have such problems, I don't find a point to test for the concentration. That poor group was literally bombarded by Mr Chew during the presentation. I tried to not to comment.

Our own presentation was okay. Passing is certain, I think we got 2x/24, where x is a whole number between 0 and 2. So it was alright.

Maths test tmr, lets mug.

Tuesday, April 6, 2010

pday prelim

We are having project's day prelim tomorrow. And I'm the student judge for 2 hours instead of 1 now, because danny gave his role to me due to his involvement in debates.

I think it would be rather easy to pass prelim (it's PRELIM DAM IT), thus there's not much problem, the only thing I'm scared of is not enough time to present, cus our group never practise for our slides.

CHAOs due tomorrow. My group got selected to represent the school (the better of the 2 groups), together with another group. So I need to finish reading that chunk of research paper that Mr Loh gave me for further info on my chemistry section.

Insight series. We will be showing Mr Siew what we have done until now tomorrow. But at least we did something right..

jy for pday then. Hopefully my group don't screw up (otherwise I would vent my anger by screwing up the sec 1s and 2s projects :P)

Monday, April 5, 2010

insight series = death

We are going to present on insight series tomorrow. And nobody is doing work. That would of course include me. tmr is judgment day. oh gah I dun feel like caring anymore...

was expecting boredom today, but somehow someone added me on msn, and then 'she' started talking about stupid horny crap. ie. tries to seduce me to go to some porn site. in the end i realised 'she' is simply a bot, and thus started tormenting the bot with chem stuff: