Industrial training

working has been really tiring... it's not really the work that tires me but more of the journey to and from work as well as sitting around trying to figure out what to do next. i'm doing my industrial training in Permulab and i've been placed in the water analysis lab. i've to admit that i didn't do my research thoroughly when i applied to this lab, so now i'm stuck doing chemistry lab work (which is not really related to biochemistry, but on the other hand will help very much in improving my lab skills)

from my experience in working at the kindergarten and this lab, i've found that there are good days and there are bad ones. i don't know what makes them good or bad, it just happens. in the kindergarten, the children could be devils one day and and angels the next. in this lab, things would go smoothly one day and terribly tiring the next day. perhaps it could be me... my mood or something... but somehow, i've never really experienced this in school or uni.

my first day was pretty good... my supervisor came in late, so i didn't get to speak to him until the end of the day. however one of the chemist taught me some stuff... basically i helped him to prepare stuff... not the real sample analysis. the next day, he was on leave so i really had almost nothing to do... sitting around wasting time... it was a bad day. i thought my third day would be the same but then my supervisor saw me with nothing to do and so he let me read up the manual on free chlorine testing and later try to do the spectrophotometer calibration. so that turned out to be quite a good day. my fourth day was so-so, i spent half a day pouring samples into plastic centrifugation tubes for the aforesaid chemist (who was back from his leave) and the other half calibrating the older spectrophotometer. the fifth day started out good with me calibrating the newer machine but after showing the results to my supervisor, i had to repeat some steps a couple of times. after which the results were still not satisfactory and i had to try calibrating on the older machine. i kind of felt like i was in the way of some of the lab technicians... my day ended by helping the chemist to pound some solid samples into powder form and helping him do some other miscelleneous stuff. (sometimes i get the feeling that the chemist is just using me to help him do stuff... but i guess that's what a trainee is for right? so i must abolish that thought!!!)

i have no idea what's in store for me this week... which starts tomorrow...