What colour is Monday?

Shades of Happy Orange...

Heater

I finally went to Argos on Saturday to buy a mini oil radiator to put under my desk. My freezing days are finally over!!

LSO

Thanks to YS, I got to attend a LSO concert in Barbican on Saturday. It's a pity that the performance was the last of the Beethoven series or I would have attended them all. The orchestra played the technically demanding Trio Concerto and the Symphony No.6 so perfectly and beautifully that I felt it surpassed any of the RPO concerts I have been to. If this was not world class performance, I don't know what else is. Frankly speaking, the acoustics of the Barbican concert hall was much better than the Royal Albert Hall where I go for most concerts, so I will have to catch a RPO concert at Barbican as well in order to make a fair judgement.

Right on!

When buying presents and cards for one another, there are bound to be hits and misses and some in-betweens. Last week MX really surprised me by getting me something that I like totally and absolutely. A 100% Hit! It's just a hand phone trinket that he picked out on the recent trip but the size, colour, symbolism, practicality... everything was perfect. Well, accompanying it were a pair of black and red tinkling squashy demons that are more HIS TYPE of toys but they do look quite cute hanging side by side on my partition. They shall be my stress relievers. I've got permission to torture them and that's what I'm going to do when I'm mad.... bish-bash-grrrrr...



Blues....

No Cooling water

My machine tripped again this morning because there was no water supply to the lab. There used to be 4 pumps, but the building management decided to have only 2 to cut costs. The main pump was overworked and retired months ago and since then we were running on the backup pump. This poor thing had to supply water not only to half of our building but also service the new faculty building as well. It has been tripping so regularly that the maintenance guy was able to 'assure' me in a factual tone that "Oh, this is absolutely normal. It happens once or twice every week". Nice. Hmm... does anyone realise that NORMAL water pumps do NOT quit on a weekly basis.

The Blame Game

Some weeks ago I went over to another department to do some C-scans. The person in charge was very kind as to show me how to use it and also helped me change the probe when I had problems with the resolution on thicker panels. When he was operating the equipment to test if the new probe works, something loose fell into the tank and broke the glass panel. He got his fingers cut when he reached into the tank to pick up the fallen object and I felt really sorry for him then. Today, I got an email from my supervisor asking for the details of that accident. Apparently, my lab tech received an email requesting payment for the broken glass panel...

" have to inform you that a Mech Eng student has, albeit by accident, has caused the glass plate in the bottom of the c-scan tank to crack/break."

Why not ask me or my supervisor directly for compensation if it was my fault? Why not just name me directly? Why try explain for me... err... "albeit by accident"? That's really very kind, thank you.

I have given my supervisor the details and I am leaving it to him to handle this. Maybe I am being defensive and can't see the full picture right now but I have been pondering over this question the whole morning:

If the demonstrator broke something when showing the new user how to operate an equipment, who should pay for the damage?

I feel that we should not be paying for the damage at all as I did not cause the glass to break. But since it was my panels being scanned, and in order not to sour relations, I suppose it may be fair to pay for half the cost of the glass pane, but not the entire pane. I am unhappy because I feel that just because I am a student, I have been made a convenient scapegoat. It's just money that they want for replacing the panel. Ask or get money by charging us for the use of the c-scan. Please be fair and don't accuse me of something I did not do.