Lovely Laboratory

Today is her birthday, my Mongolian friend. We are from the same laboratory, Laboratory of Molecular Chemical Biology. I must admit she is a hard worker. During my first year as a newcomer, I saw her very diligent. At around 7 pm when I decided to go home, she was still working up to 9 pm every day. In 6 months, she completed her library data consisted of hundreds of extracted compounds which was not easy. We congratulated her for the success.

Talking about the lab activities, as a master student, I was supervised by a genius professor. I called him genius as his knowledge as well as skills in organic chemistry are extraordinary. As my supervisor, he demanded me for reading a textbook. However, having many classes, a new life doing everything alone (cooking, washing, cleaning, that back then when I stayed with my family, the maid helped me doing everything), labworks, and getting worse as I couldn’t balance them, I had to confess I didn’t read the book frequently. Somehow, he was so understanding so he didn’t blame me for not reading it.

He is also super kind. One day, I did a new reaction, never do it before. I followed my friend’s procedure written in her notebook. However, I followed the step wrongly. Without explaining it in detail, somehow, my reaction exploded. Of course, I was shocked. Knowing the accident, he forbade me to do dangerous reactions without his eyes on me. He blamed himself for not being around me when I did the tricky reaction.

At the time when I was skilled enough for some reactions, he allowed me to do it by myself, but he warned me not to force myself. However, in order to reach my own target, sometimes, I insisted to do some reactions though weekend or already late, but, no worries, I enjoyed it.

Laboratory activities don’t always about experiments, we also had fun. Every month, at least we had 1 party and every year, at least we had 1 vacation. Since half of laboratory members were not Japanese, international students (including me), we had food restrictions. Hence, every party if they did not have any choice for halal meat, they would just serve us vegetables. Personally, I protested for having just vegetables, so for some next parties, I voluntarily brought halal chicken and proceeded it together with my friends like what I did in barbeque party as the example.

Kindly, I had to inform the price of the materials I bought by myself to the student in charge, then she reimbursed the money. I didn’t object to do it for sure. Overall, I would agree to say that I have a lovely laboratory with good work and life balance.

Hints:

Performative verb

Must admit

Congratulate

Demand

Confess

Blame

Warn

Insist

Protest

Have to inform

Object

Would agree