Day 7

Bob brought donuts this morning, which was quite nice of him; just to elicit feelings of guilt, one donut contains 260 Calories of heat, about the amount burnt by half an hour of running (not much at all, I know, right?)

Since Joe was out for a family trip, Cici and I edited our abstract for a while after the morning meeting. At ten, Emily, Cici, and I  went to a Masters thesis defense. It was about analyzing nutrient composition of grapes, especially concentration of Boron, Carbon, Zinc, Phosphorus, and Magnesium. The audience asked quite a few challenging questions, but the presenter (Grant, I think) answered them all quite satisfactorily, despite appearing a bit nervous. Uninterested in business, finance, and economy as I was, I still thought it was a fairly good presentation; I almost asked a question about sampling method, but then I saw a statistics professor (whom I met at an RIT math award ceremony) was present. If he saw no problem with the data collection method, maybe I, with only AP Stats under my belt, shouldn't embarrass myself and fellow interns by asking elementary questions.

All interns went to Global Village for lunch at around 11:30. Forgetting we were to eating at Global Village together, I brought my own lunch (see, I wasn't lying when I talked about my incompetence). What's more, I was rather full (thank you, 260 Calories), and decided only to drink the Pepsi (when will that taste even half as good as Coke?) I brought (just to add a Corollary to Captain's quote, I not only can drink Coke all day, but also all night).  However, I was affirmed that I really was to bring chips. Faith in my memory (partially, shakily, and temporarily) restored.

In the afternoon, we scanned the last pigment left, and adjusted data points so that the scale was appropriate and the graphs were superposed well. While playing around with the Excel graphs, I, somewhat, heck, totally unwisely, chose to listen to a few salty Hong Kong songs. Since I couldn't understand Cantonese by listening, at first it was fine. However, as soon as I read the lyrics (I could read Cantonese), the salt contained in the songs totally overwhelmed me. For a few hours, I wasn't quite myself, since my salt ran out (but, apparently, I have refilled my salt jar by now).

Madi, Allyse, and Emily came downstairs to visit our lab in the afternoon; they said our lab was the coolest (true that). Cici and I scanned ultramarine to show them how an EPR spectrum was obtained.

There will be a cookout tomorrow (see, there's at least something that I remember); I'm quite looking forward to that.