School

The second year of university (at least for imperial college) is widely believed to be the toughest year faced by any and all students; where stress levels and drop-out rates are high. But so far, its been quite relaxed. At least when compared to last year (or so i feel). Or maybe, with half a term left to go before the easter break, the terror is yet to come. Let me explain, I now have 4.5 weeks left, and based on my scheduled labs, I will have 5 more lab reports left to do, plus a pump project design/costings report and will probably have to start thinking about the pump project poster. I.e. i will average about 1.5 reports a week??. Haha... looks like things are going to heat up! But so far, life has been good and stress-free. The days are also getting longer and brighter and less gloomy. I can't wait for spring!

About the pump project, well, i am please to say that my group's pump has finished manufacturing!! and with weeks to spare too!! But i can't take any credit for it since the making of the pump was done by two other group members. But still, it feels quite surreal to have designed and made a working water pump as a group. Ok, i am not too sure if it will work since the pump performance testing will be carried out next term, which also means yet another report. There will of course be a trial testing before the actual performance test for us to fix any leaks/problems but i can't remember when it will be. Anyway, this is what engineering is about, creating stuff. And I like it. It makes mech eng so much more fun and relevant.

Crashed a medic lecture, and immediately drowned in a sea of multi-syllable words. With so many medical terms, learning medicine is practically learning a new language, or a few new languages. One of them being latin of course. Haha... i think i will stick to using the greek alphabet and other funny symbols as an engineer. Anyway, the medics really should learn from us engineers by harnessing the power of the computer. Why can't someone do the good work and program a program that inputs symptoms and outputs diseases. I am sure the first one to do it will become filthy rich. Or upload it online as an open-source shareware and render general practitioners around the globe useless. Haha, just joking, i doubt life is that simple anyway. Still, such a program will definitely be a great tool for medicine. Food for thought.

Anyway, i managed to learn a new word"metaplasia" (out of the many) and no, it is not a country. metaplasia is a process where an adult cell experiences an identity crisis and decides to change into another cell type. This occurrence is fairly common and is all well and good, except the fact that it may, but not always, lead to cancerous cell development. Which is bad news. Haha... Just something to enrich your knowledge. Hopefully it will aid in watching the tv series House, which i highly recommend.

Cheers,
Ben