Metal salt in ether? I should have known better!!

Today I was preparing for a reaction that requires the use of Rieke's Zinc, so since this morning I have been preping for it. First you flame dry your flask a few times and then you add your usual lithium and naphthalene then THF to make lithium naphthalite (this is a cool reaction). After you let the reaction stir at room temp. for 2 hours or until lithium completely dissolved (this is hard to see since the mixture is in dark dark green colour) you then add your zinc salt. In the paper where I got the procedure from they said to add zinc bromide in 1M ether solution to the lithium naphthlite solution. At first I thought, hmmm metal salt in ether interesting... so I blindly went along with it. Zinc bromide turned out to be as soluble in ether as my freaking toilet paper in water, I sonicated it, heat it, but it would not go completely into solution. I then realize I have committed one of the cardinal sin of being an organic grad student- I trusted the paper too much. I somehow had forgotten all those times when I do not even remotely get the result "suggested" in the papers. My own knowledge told me metal salts don't dissolve in ether that well, THF is a better solvent. I was right, zinc bromide dissolved up in THF faster than I can say Horshit, problem solved. Lesson of the day, ALWAYS trust your own knowledge.

Happy Father's Day, Dad

So, it is Father's Day in Taiwan, and I would like to wish my dad a Happy Father's Day even though my dad probably does not know the existance of this web-blog. My dad is spending this Father's Day in Japan with my brother An-Chou (who sometimes called himself Peter,?? Peter, why Peter? weird)

I somehow managed to leave my lab early today, after loitering around for most of the morning. I think this early is fully justified, after all, I was working until 11:00pm last night trying to get some radical reactions to go. Much to my dismay, the reaction did not go AT ALL after 8 hours of intensive irradiation. My early prognosis is the glassware, without digging into the scientific nidy gridy basically the glassware I use "pyrex" has a certain wavelength cut off due to the grade of the glass it is made out of and my radical initiator just so happened to need wavelength of the cut-off range to be "excited" enough to form a radical. In Leyman's term, NO REACTION due to technical difficulties. While it is nice to learn that my glasswares are totally useless in running this large scale photo-reaction, I can't help but feeling cheated. No one in the lab told me this is not gonna work, granted most people do not work with photo initiators (I wonder why?), but the girl who worked on this project before me also failed to cautioned me of this technical difficulty. In fact she failed to mention jack to me, while now she is on her danddy way out of the school with her premature Master's degree, I am left hacking away the crappy project she had left half done and half-assedly recorded. There are many times late in the night I just want to strangle her. Her notebook is as good as a third grader's science class notebook, with no useful information what-so-ever, no TLC, no NMR data, no nothing, just a simple line "sample checked by GC...pure". What the hell is that? what does "pure" mean? and how did she find out it is "pure". Her experimental procedure consisted lines like "mixing solution A and B and "stir for a while"..." how long is "a while" damn it. The good thing is I am at the near end of this project and I have had a good hack at it with some meaningful results. The bad thing is, all the freaking exploring without a proper guide probably left me looking like an idiot to my advisor and my fellow lab mates... oh well who cares.

Ok, that's enough of my diatribe, just venting some frustration from work. Horshit!!

Lab babes, myth or truth?

So guess where I am at the moment, yes my lab. Don't be alarmed I am just running some C13NMR, which would be a bitch to do during the week when everyone wants to use the NMR machine (thy mighty NMR as I call it whenI sign up to use it). So I am a workaholic and consciously ignoring God's command to rest on Sundays, hmmm well, what I am doing is not really working anyway.

So, back to the main topic as suggested by the title. Lab babes, this was a termed used years ago by a good friend of mine(Brandon, where the hell are you now?) back at Queen's University, Canada. I personly have not seen a "hot" girl working in a lab. Not to feed into stereotyping of female scientists but most of the females I have seen working in labs are your typical nerdy girls. Now, if you think I drew my conclusion from working in one place you'd be wrong, I have worked in 5 different institutes and 7 different labs. I know it's not a large sample group but it's all I have right now (besides, that's more than most PhD students have). Not to put my female colleagues down, there are some decent looking females in the lab (7-8/10) but just not your hollywood type (hot scientist). This is really the question of the day, just for my curiosity, do anyone actually know any 10/10 drop dead gorgeous babe working in chemistry?

Actually, I do know one, but I think she is an anomaly anyway. I don't think I will drop her name here in case one day I will meet her in conferences but most people in Chemistry would know a sizzling hot babe working at U of U (what the hell is a hot scientist working in morman country anyway?)

Am I weird?

So, it's about 9:10 pm on a Friday night and I am still in my lab working on cleaning one of my radical reactions that contains hexabutyl-ditin (nasty stuff-so I have heard). I really enjoy working in a lab setting and on reactions. Although I probably could just leave it until either tomorrow or Monday, I choose not to. Now some of you might think that my 'boring' Friday night was a product of my lack of social skills, you would be wrong. I know I am a sociable person, and do have friends, BUT I really prefer to be by my solitude with a reaction or two going. I enjoy the company of hazardeous chemicals more than people... do I really? I really think I do, and it really bothers me.

Not too long ago I was dating this girl, who was really nice and many people would consider her quit a catch. For me, I really would rather watch my reaction refluxing in toluene than going to see a movie with her or doing some other couplely activities. She tried to accomodate my obsession a few times by hanging out in my lab, and honestly I did enjoy my time with both her and my chemicals ( I don't think it was a nice time for her, even though she did not show). There is even one when we were getting busy in the sac (you know what I mean), all I could think about were my precious Pd-catalysed amination reactions and how wonderfully it worked. I was paying no attention to what I was doing, it stills bothers me. Am I "Chemosexual"?

I don't think I have always been this way, in fact, 3-4 years ago when I was still in college, I was every bit a frat boy as frat boy would be (my college in Canada outlawed frat houses). I was on the school rugby team and partied almost 5 nights a week. I was rather permiscuous and non-studious at all. How the hell did I become the me today, I really don't know. My best explanation was, back then I was not working in a lab so I was not seduced by the hazardeous chemicals. Was that a good enough explanation to my behaviour today or merely an excuse for a more deep-seeded psychological problem. The good thing is I am fully aware of this odd behaviour and I am getting some work done, but seriously, at the end of the day I really would rather it be this way than being sociable out there. Very strange indeed...

Reflection

It is 4:00 am but I am having trouble falling back asleep after falling off my bed and hitting my head on the bookself two hours earlier. Apart from my aching head, I think I will be fine. Seriously, this is the second time I have fallen off my bed since switching to a real bed instead of a futon... maybe I am not meant to sleep above ground, hmmm something to think about.

However, this new found insomia has allowed me to really reflect upon my life at this point in time. I have been working at a new school for a month and a half now, and so far I have really enjoyed it. In fact I am in a bliss. I absolutely love the way I am treated in which I am paid on time (sometimes earlier) and the resources are abundant for us to use (not free of charge but at least it is there). Compare what I have now to just a couple of month ago at my previous institute, there is a world of difference and I am still adjusting to my new found luck. Here, we can order from Sigma-Aldrich, and there is dry-ice and liquid nitrogen at the chem shop. There are also more pages in the chem shop inventory and the staff there are nice. Hmmm I am in awe, I am in such a bliss, how could I be so lucky to be working in such a wonderful environment, I hope it's not a dream, don't wake me up.

First day of my blogging life

so I was contacted by a good friend of mine regarding this blog site. In his usual sarcastic mannor he said "hey man, you do know you are supposed to blog when you set up a blog site. And by the way, I think you have a few spelling mistakes in your title". YES, Sammy, I know I am supposed to write things on this blog and I know I CANNOT spell to save my life, nor can I write, so what. I set up this website in the midst of my new found boredom a month ago, I am not so bored any more.

Since this is the first blog, I will make it extra exciting. It will all be downhill from here. Here is a little about myself, my name is Dysleximus and I am just starting my PhD in Organic Chemistry. I am not gonna give you my life story because it will be too long, but in short, I am originally from Taiwan (but was born in Osaka, Japan) but have travelled and lived all over the world (chasing skirts along the way). I enjoy organic chemistry and and the fine aroma of acetone and ethyl acetate. I also enjoy reading publications in organic chemistry related topics so there will be occassional organic chemistry related posts (mostly rants and senseless rambles) appearing in this blog. For all you English majors and competent writers out there... STOP trying to correct my "run-down" sentances and phonetic based spellings. I can't write and that's why I am not doing a PhD in writing. Anyway, I think that's all I want to say for this opening post, thanks for reading.