Bicester Village

哈，沒想到牛津竟然離英國規模很大的Outlet很近，坐車只要三十分鐘就到了．　裡面大概有一百多家名牌店，當然少不了Burberry．　大部分的東西都是英國市面原價的一半．　恩，今天有點大失血．．．
現在英國市區街到上或市中心都有掛聖誕燈飾了，果然在英國耶誕氣份就是和夏天的紐西蘭不同！

A day as Homer Simpson

On top of being very thick all the time in the lab, I've been even more like Homer Simpson today. I was working with real radioactive materials! Well, tritiated stuff don't really count. I am using 32P labeled dCTP to generate a hot probe for my Southern blotting. It's a bit scary really. 32P is quite active, and the regulations in the UK are quite strict. I had to work in a bench area shielded with very thick glassy sort of material (can't remember what it's called). I had to use counter that's like a torch attached to a metre to go through the entire work area and stuff that I have used whilst doing the radioactive work, including my hands. And of course I had to be double-gloved. I also have to keep a record of what form (liquid or waste) I have disposed of my radioactive reagents and the quantity.

Today is actually a frenzy day. I was doing all these new methods without being given a precise instruction/protocol as to what to beforehand. I just discovered new things that i needed to do as I went along, and they just ended up overlapping each other. There were like 4 buffers that I had to make up today all of a sudden. I also had a few time-points finishing around the same time, and the post-doc and Peter were telling me what to do here and there. I just didn't know what to do first and who to listen to. It actually annoys me quite a bit that the lab doesn't have a written detailed protocols for various routine experiments. I just hate not being organised and always become ultra stressed when things take longer than I expected.

Sleepy now... Dream of peiking duck, prawn noodles, egg benedict...

Here I come, Switzerland!

Yes, I've booked the ticket to Geneva. After much much deliberation, I decide to take holidays and go to Switzerland with my friends! Yay!

My supervisor was fine with it. I was being quite clever about asking him today before I tell him the major muck up I did with my experiments today...

And another yay for Mr Oh-I'll-be-so-rich's good news! Congratulations and well done. Don't forget about me when you make loads :)

Must sleep now... There's a presentation I'm giving this Friday and I've done little about it... Stress...

The Land of Could Have Been

The trip to Cambridge has left me somewhat speechless. The city itself is so well "planned" with the beautiful River Cam running through the backs of the colleges of Cambridge, and vast fields/parks on both banks. King's College, Trinity College and St John's College, the one that I could have been in now, are just stunning with their spectacular buildings or castles! (Unfortunately my trip didn't allow enough time for me to explore St John's College.) As well as catching up with Graeme (my favourite Pathology lecturer back in Auckland) and my friends from lab last year, I also had the joy of attending an evensong at the world famous King's College Chapel bathed in the harmonic sound of choir echoing through out the building giving me chills down my spine.

King's College

River Cam
Trinity College
A glimpse of St John's College gate (the red building) and the tip of it's tower (on top)

My friend's room also took my breath away. Not only is her room of twice the size of min, it's an en suite. Although the building is of Victorian age, the interior is completely newly refurbished. The general facility in the house is also beyond my belief. The foyer, staircase and kitchen are so spacious that the whole house screams "welcome". Everything is provided for them in that modern kitchen. My friend is able to request for an extra bed to put into her room whenever she has visitors over. Her room is actually big enough to accommodate for two more people! Everything I saw in Cambridge is just what I pictured my life in the UK would be before I arrived. I hoped that my room would be big enough to accommodate friends who come to visit. I hoped that I would be cooking with my housemates. I hoped that the college building would be a castle. Cambridge colleges appear to put so much emphasis on ensuring their students content with their living there. And now look at my life in Oxford. I never get what I want from the college, not even a toaster or kettle. I'm stuck in this house where most of my other housemates can't be bothered using the kitchen because it is so crap and can really only allow one person cooking at any one time.

Life just always seems to be determined by the decision you make, not the effort you put in. I just happen to have always made the wrong one. I know I should be content with what I have now. But having seen the life I could've had, I still can't help feeling regretful and bitter.

At last

I've finally got my debit card today, and it wasn't swallowed!!!!

Touch wood...

However, nothing goes that smoothly for me in the UK. When I used my debit card to check my account, the ATM machine displayed that I've only got 1 pound left! I panicked of course. Well, it turns out that my debit card is on a separate account to my savings account where my money has been transferred into. It's really silly. I never requested for two accounts to be opened in my bank account but the bank just does that without prior notice. And I don't see the difference between my savings account and the debit card account!

Another silly thing with the bank in the UK is that everytime you want to withdraw cash out from the counter, you either have your debit card or bring your cheque book. There are deposit slips, but there is no such thing as withdraw slip for the customers! Before I got my card this evening, I went to the bank near my lab to take cash out, just in case if my debit card wouldn't be there. I've brought along my passport with me to prove that I am the account holder, but the obese guy who received me still wouldn't really let me take money out. It wasn't until about 10 minutes have past after he's spoken to his supervisor that he finally let me do so. It just doesn't make sense. It's not like I'm borrowing money from the bank. When I'm present there and have proven myself to be the right person, why do I have to go through so much trouble to access my own money! It's not like someone would go through the trouble of having a face change to look like me so they could take the tiny amount of savings that I have in my account!

Misty lane

It's been a very foggy day in Oxford today. The fog usually disappears by the afternoon, but when I walked out of my lab at 6:20 pm, it felt like being in the cloud. The visibility was probably just a couple of metres. It gets dark quite early in the UK now, around 5 pm. St John's Street felt like a crime scene in the Sherlock Holme's detective books. The light was dimmed slightly and refracted by the heavy fog, and all of a sudden Jack the ripper would jump out...

Best of luck to Tom for his exams! Ga yu++ (加油)!

One fucked up bank - HSBC UK

I don't usually swear, but I just can't help it today. The debit card I've been waiting for for a month got swallowed by the ATM machine the first time I've ever used it today! Well, to start with, I've been waiting for my debit card ever since I arrived in the UK. When I went to branch in London where my account was opened up, they told me that my debit card was destroyed because it'd been there for more than a month. Fine, I waited for 10 working days for the card to be delivered to the Oxford branch (it was 5 working days to London branch then 5 working days to Oxford). Yes, so 2 weeks ago I finally got it, but I didn't have a PIN number. It comes in an envelop and has to be sent separately from the central branch. The bank person told me to come in in 5 working days to get it. Fine, I went the end of the following week, but then realised that the letter was never ordered by the bank person who received me previously! Alright, waiting for another week! I finally got my PIN number in my pigeon whole yesterday evening. I gave it a try this afternoon on an HSBC ATM machine. I entered the PIN and things were fine. I could even go into the menu of topping my mobile airtime up. But just after I reconfirmed my mobile number and pressed enter, an error message came up all of a sudden for fewer than 2 seconds saying something wrong with my card, then it went back to the 'welcome' menu without ejecting the card! I just couldn't believe that it happened after all the wait that I've been through with the issue initially! I quickly went to the bank (luckily it's open till 7 pm on Thursday although there is no counter to withdraw money from) and reported it. The guy looked up on my bank account profile, and told me that somehow the inhibition that was put on my account before I arrived in the UK, although appeared to have gone through a removal process, was still in place! They couldn't take the card out of the machine (they just didn't bother), so I just have to wait for another card to be issued to me. "Well, the system is frustrating, but that's all I can do," said the bank person. I'm just furious! I went all the way to London to make sure that my account was FULLY activated and I was ensured of that by the banker, and I still managed to have SO MANY troubles! If the inhibition on my account has always been present, I'm sure that people who issue out the card and PIN number, or people who received me before would've noticed if they bothered checking through things properly. There were so many chances of noticing it, but the bank didn't or just didn't bother to let me know. I honestly want to sue the bank. I paid 80 pound in NZ to have it opened up here early, but I turned out to get my debit card later than people who paid nothing although had to wait for 2 weeks to have the account opened. It's just one fucked up bank. Well, pretty much all UK systems are fucked up.

-1~9 degree

It's become really cold all of a sudden over the last two days. I was told that the temperature was only -1~9 degrees today! No wonder my legs felt frozen on the street... I like the cold weather though when I have worn enough clothings. It feels more romantic with coat and scarf walking along the streets with puffs of smoke coming out of your mouth.

I had the very first real British fish and chips for dinner tonight. Unfortunately I still don't feel it's that great even when my lab people and friends' friends highly recommended the one we went to. I got a huge piece of cod and lots of chips for 5 pounds. The fish just didn't have the fresh taste of sweetness in it. I want Auckland snapper and blue cod!

I went to the firework display at St John's College tonight. It started at 9:15 pm, but I remembered it wrong as 9:30 pm. I rushed over when I heard the booming noise, but I managed to catch the last 5 minutes. It was disappointingly small and short. The fireworks around Guy Fawkes (which is on the 5th of November this year) in Oxford seem rather quiet. I haven't found any fireworks for sale in supermarkets as in NZ. Various colleges have firework display on various days throughout the week, but if they're all like the one in St John's, I don't expect to see anything major. Sigh... I miss the crazy time in Mission Bay on the weekend before every Guy Fawkes Night! You just get fireworks in the sky non-stop throughout the night!

I think I'm going to be extremely busy for the next few weeks. My reagents have arrived for this experiment that Peter (my supervisor) has been very excited about. I'm going to have a meeting with him about planning the experiment. I'm a bit screwed since I hardly did any readings the last few weeks. He's going to know that I still don't know much... Stress!