Bad Week

It has been a lousy week.

First, purification of a reaction mixture by flash column chromatography took almost 12 hours. Well, it’s called “flash” chromatography not for no good reason. The process is supposed to be fast, like in a flash, not 12 hours. The previous time it took about a couple of hours. Somehow, this time round the compounds started eluting from the column only at a very high polarity solvent system.

Then just when I see some light at the end of the tunnel, I ran out of solvents. I had to decide to use the remaining solvents at ultra high polarity but risk flushing out the compounds together and put my day’s efforts to waste, or continue with the current solvent system and risk losing my compounds. It’s a matter of which is the lesser of the evils. Life seems to enjoy giving us situations like this.

Failed experiments. NMR showed no traces of the desired product for one set of experiments. I have repeated this experiment many times using different reaction conditions and still nothing works. As much as they say research is 99% failure most of the time, I am still, but a human being, and failures after failures are not very motivating.

For no good reason, I tripped and fell, on a path that I take everyday going to lunch. Tore my pants, had a bad bruise on my thigh and bleeding from an open wound on my knee. Sigh, I don’t like knee injuries. They take forever to heal and they leave bad scars…

Candlelight Dinner

Crescent moon in a clear starry sky. I thought the stars looked extra bright tonight. In the darkness of the streets, they sparkle like diamonds in the sky.

Soon I came to realize that even the houses are not lighted up. It’s a blackout, a scheduled power shutdown. It was pitch dark as I went up to my room. Paramjeet lighted some candles and brought in a battery operated lamp.

In darkness, I had my shower in refreshing cold water, followed by dinner by the candle light. What a romantic evening…

Paramjeet’s Special

It was a rare occasion, the whole family was away to attend a wedding, the maid went back to her hometown for vacation and the only persons left in the house were the guest from Singapore and the caretaker.

Wanted to bring Paramjeet out for a special dinner, since “Madam” and whole family is away to attend wedding in Mysore. With my little bit of Hindi plus alot of non-verbal language, he somehow managed to understand my intentions. He went into his room and came out 5 minutes later, all nicely dressed up. On the way, we dropped by the laundry shop. Since he only knew Hindi, he kept replying me in Hindi when I tried to talk to him in half-Hindi-half-English. Strangely enough, despite that, we somehow managed to understand one another.

He stopped just before we reached the restaurant. Then he told me he’s not eating as he already had his food and will wait below for me. I was totally confused. He kept asking me to go ahead, I insisted he come. He insisted he is full and not eating, I kept asking him to come along. I told if he doesn't like Chinese food, we can always go to the Indian restaurant down the road. This went on below the restaurant for at least 10 minutes.

By then, I don't feel like eating anymore. Furthermore, I don't want to eat in the restaurant alone. So I told him we shall head for home. We left the place but he led me into the neighbourhood, stopped by a couple of stores where he bought some stuffs. “Food for dinner”, he told. On reaching home, he swiftly cooked up a dish and made some roti. As he served dinner, he told me not to let “Madam” know as he drew his finger across his throat.

Paramjeet’s special tonight was chicken curry.