Carlos, Saj and I are the biomaterials students in our year, and during one of our many lunch-dates, someone (I can’t remember who) dubbed us the Golden Trio. Ha.

Lunch outside the QTR in the FREEZING cold.

Pipetting in the lab.

I love these guys. They are making fourth year good.

Statement made: evidence to back it up.

Last week, Nic came round for dinner and ended up staying the night because he was very tired and didn’t want to cycle home. I offered to take him home and put his bike in my car, but he refused my offer because he didn’t think it would fit in the car.

To cut a long story short, yesterday afternoon John and I went to High Street Ken to pick up his bike, where it was hiding after it got a puncture the other day. He got it all sorted out, but was running late for a train, so I persuaded him to try fit the bike in the car. The look on his face when I said “It will fit, I promise” was priceless (one of those moments where I wish my camera wasn’t currently suffering from major splodges on the screen).

The fact that this is one of the major achievements in my life tells you something about how well the last few weeks of basic silence have been going. I’m getting my friends to revoke my Facebook access, have a pile of samples taller than my combined lab books and lecture notes to analyse, and am counting down the days to the end of my degree in terms of “how long does it take to write up this lecture, how long will it take to memorise this list of facts”. The word “panic” doesn’t quite sum it up succinctly enough.

I don’t think I’m really panicking about exams/coursework/deadlines so much, though. It’s more, The End. What happens next? Who knows. You’ll be lucky enough to find out what happens at the end of a degree in the next few months. Watch this space!

(One of my other achievements has been writing an article for Felix. This brings me up to three!)

Mmmm, yummy potatoes.

1. You don’t have to measure out ingredients to the fourth decimal place. In fact, sometimes, the more rough you are, the better the result.

2. You don’t have to wear safety gear; you don’t run the risk of killing your lungs with silica vapour, or accidentally inhaling too many fumes from the acetone dried samples. The worst thing you could do is burn yourself, or cut your finger – and let’s face it, I’ve done that and it wasn’t too bad.

3. You don’t have to lock other people out of your kitchen. You can socialise and listen to music. You don’t end up in the place that time forgot.

4. You don’t have to wash dishes five times – first with detergent, then with water, then with acid, then with water, then with de-ionised water. You don’t have to rewash something which has a watermark on it.

5. You don’t have to record every little step you took while you were cooking.

6. It doesn’t take four weeks to cook a meal. Once the meal is made, no further effort – apart from mastication – is required.

7. The fruits of your labours are edible, hopefully delicious, and don’t have to be stored in little sample containers that take over your life.

8. If you don’t want to add a certain ingredient, you don’t have to.

9. Your future success does not depend on the outcome of each meal, and your ability to critically analyse the results.

10. You don’t have to have specialised equipment to make good food.