Labo* is where I should be spending most of my time working. But it is not properly set up for my experiments yet. There are plenty of things that I need to order in order to have a comfortable working environment.
Some I have already ordered. I have ordered glassware that I need (there is very little - not enough - glassware in the lab) in November. The Talented Postgrad took care of this order and was going to submit it. At the end of December I asked and found out that he had not submitted it till then yet. I have no idea whether it is submitted or not and when it is going to arrive.
The Big Old boss thinks lab in perfect order and that there are excellent working conditions here, because everything is in one building (well, except the deionized water that is still 5min walk away). He says that before the working conditions were "severe" and the previous PhD student had to work in three different places (a few hours away from each other). No wonder that he gave up on his PhD and refused to submit it.
Yesterday we had a team of plumbers here, about 6-7 people, installing the deionized water system. They made a lot of mess and noise (drilling is the most annoying, especially when you have a headache) and they left things unfinished, because they brought the wrong fuse for the equipment that they were installing. I thought that these things happen to Italian or Scottish plumbers, but now I know that Japan is no different. They will come back in a month time to finish off installation of out water system. In a month!
Meanwhile, the Big Old boss is impatient for me to start experiments. He wants results. He wants someone to be using our special technique of studying meteorites. The machine was so expensive, it started running in the summer and it is not even all set up. He is paying the costs of running it and would like someone to use it as soon as possible.
I would also like to be using it. And I do not even have bottles to prepare and store my buffers in! I am not be starting in the lab until I finish with the orders for the things that I already know that I need. The boss is putting me under pressure of his impatience. I am beginning to get stressed again. I could not fall asleep yesterday. Oh, the sleepless nights delights, here we go again,
* in Japanese language there is no words that end with consonants, so they add "o" or "u" to the words that they borrow from English
Tuesday, 20 January 2009
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