curium with helium in between.

hello! somehow got inspired to blog about -one- of the loves of my life. haha chemistry =D mm i was walking back from synthesis lab just now and was just thinking about the last thing i was doing.. which happened to be recrystallizing a 2,4-DNPH derivative from ethanol. haha as i was adding the ethanol drop by drop i was just thinking that recrystallisation was indeed my favourite chemistry experimental procedure. haha it's not coz it's simple.. but probably coz it's smth i have never really failed at so far & the products of beautiful shiny crystals are just worth it =)

i recall the first time i did recrystallisation properly was during my icho training at NUS with chorngshin and ms teo. before that during scho we were required to do recrystallisation as well during the competition. it was aspirin that we were synthesizing i believe? but whatever it was i remember that i got nothing =p haha in fact that year RJ didn't get a single gold medal for scho =p and i think it was mainly coz the practical killed us all =p mhmm so yeah i remember during the training sessions we were supposed to get nice yellow crystals of smth.. and with the help of the two of them i think we all managed to do it =D haha i was so happy lah when i came back one day later and saw my flask full of crystals.. it's really that "sense of accomplishment" feeling. dunno if every chemist feels that way or maybe it's just me =p haha but nowadays when i see crystals during lab sessions i guess the feeling's more like "phew lucky got product" =p

mm honestly speaking i dunno who or what started my love for chem and when it happened. i guess it had to be secondary school since that's when i was introduced to chemistry.. but i dun really recall much about secondary school chemistry besides two incidents. haha first was sec three chemistry final year exam. mhmm if i remember correctly out of all three GEP classes in RG (ie about 90 people in all) only about 10 got A for that exam. and yah yours truly was one of them =p haha i remember this very well because my dear melho who was sitting behind me totally screwed up in her exam =p haha i still remember her marks lah (coz it was somewhat similar to mine) but nvm i shall not say it here heh =p mhmm so that was one thing i remembered about RG chemistry. another one was in sec four. the first test that tan jenfu gave us. haha it was out of 25 marks and the highest mark was 24.5 which was yah me once again =p and i lost that half a mark because i didn't know how to draw a gas syringe =p haha i remember daphne was sitting next to me and she was looking at my paper & she was quite amused that i didn't get full marks coz of that. i think her gas syringe looked really nice and she got full marks for her diagram that's why =p mhmm so that's another thing i recall.

quite sad right? haha that one of the few things i remember about secondary school chemistry is me doing well for exams. maybe it's my ego haha. mm it might not be good but i guess that one of the reasons why i like chem is coz i do well in it. people say that if you like smth you'd do well in it. mhmm and i think that the vice versa is true too.. in fact i think that rule applies to a lot of things for me. haha i don't do well in physics that's why i don't like it. i never did well in languages and humanities since young that's why i dun like them either. it's not very nice lah but i think that one of the reasons why i like chem is coz i'm good at it. haha oh well. at least it's not like a "fake passion" mhmm now i do know that i love chem. i enjoy lectures.. really. haha at least some of them. i mean like when i learn smth new it really never fails to fascinate me. and things like fireworks & lightsticks haha there's some chemistry behind them that's why i find them pretty amazing too.

mm it's quite amazing how things have come so far actually. i mean like when i was younger i'd never have thought that chem would be my future. even my mum was quite surprised during the icho period. she was like "i always thought you like maths one leh. why suddenly become chemistry?" haha it's strange lah i guess but jc was the time when i realised i've got a flair for chemistry (yes i know i keep going on about how good my chem is but i'm really not showing off here) when i turned out to be the only person to get A for the very first common test. trust me i was shocked to realise that.. haha i remember soh xiao fen was returning the scripts and she said our class had 6 A's and B's. asked around then i found like 5 people with B's then it occurred to me that i was the only one with A. haha was really surprised yeah. guess either i overestimated the class or i underestimated myself =p

haha oh well. so here i am now at imperial college studying chemistry. i hope it's a right decision. having a degree in science is seriously quite restrictive for my future but -shrug- i don't think this will come back to haunt me anytime soon. i don't regret it anyway so it's ok. haha as i mentioned in my personal statement for UCAS and PSC chem is seriously a very very limitless field. i believe i can study chem forever lah. maybe not everything but yeah certain areas of chemistry will just never fail to get me interested. haha my problem is that i keep telling myself must go and read up but i never get down to doing it (i did once haha to find out more about thallium poisoning =p) so there's loads of questions (like what exactly do they use for lightsticks) i still dunno the answers to. haha maybe one day after my synthesis labs is done and my wiki project is complete then i'd devote some time to go read up more about the subject i love. yup so for now it's just me menthol isophorone and methyltriphenylstannate. take care everyone =)

"dividing by zero is like driving on the right side in london. don't do it."