Part 5 – Evolution, Marie Curie & Llamas

Since I left you last the manky monstrosity of our oven has been somewhat rectified. The following is an account of part of the titanic struggle that will one day pass into legends of antiquity.

Firstly, do you remember PokéMon? If you do not, then kindly proceed to Option 1. If even the mention of PokéMon subjects you to a euphoric invasion of nostalgia then read on to Option 2.

Option 1:

 

Option 2

If you do, do Muk and Grimer awaken childhood memories? Yes? Well this is how it went…

A wild MUK appeared!

MUK used SLUDGE!

It wasn’t very effective!

GRAHAM used CLEANING PRODUCTS!

It was super effective!

MUK used POISON GAS!

But it failed!

GRAHAM used DISPOSAL!

It was super effective!

MUK fainted!

GRAHAM reached Level 41! What? GRAHAM is evolving!

 *cheesy and repetitive Japanese game music*

Congratulations! Your GRAHAM evolved into AN EVEN FILTHIER BEING THAN HE ALREADY WAS!

Credit to Chris Milne

Oh PokéMon games and their one dimensional punctuation…

With part of that gargantuan task complete I’ve decided to take the train back to Elgin for a last visit home before going abroad. The only thing more predictable than Scotrail’s (Read: ScotFail’s) atronomical beverage overpricing and grumpy, soulless staff on the trip was my meeting of a weirdo. I’m not sure whether during the last couple of years, due to government austerity measures, if the Glasgow to Elgin train line has been transformed into a looney bin on rails or not but I always seem to meet some colourful characters on the locomotive.

• The Earl of Thurso’s son, with whom, from all the kingdom of beverages, I drunk Buckfast.
• An American actress who had a tiny part in the film “The Day After Tomorrow”
• A woman whose great-grandfather in Paris had water poured over his head by Marie Curie, the Nobel Prize winner
• An American whose father invented the plastic formica

Anyway today’s character was an American from Minnesota named Brie. Yes, like the cheese. However, after having an ex whose first names were Panacea and Reality I would probably have been rendered incapable of feeling any surprise even if she’d introduced herself as Duchess Pippington Dustbin Childtoucher.  She also had a pet llama. So I spent my journey learning about llamas. Standard.

Makes you realise how practically everyone in the world has some strange story or claim to fame. Not surprisingly considering how often we interact with people on a daily basis. It’s just a statistical outcome that we’ll meet these people.  Everyone has a tale to tell, if you’re prepared to excavate their consciousness a little. So, my advice to all of you, next time you’re on the train talk to that person across from you, they may well be most interesting person you’ll ever meet*.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Mr Andrew Milne takes no responsibility if the character’s “interesting” trait turns out be that they are: a murderer; terrorist; molester etc.

 [DAS ENDE]

Part 4 – Death, His Steed & That Funny Greek Alphabet

Image courtesy of: http://aboutcoolness.com/

Exam time, as strange as this may sound, is often one of the best times as a student. This is simply because you can justify, legitimately or not, deprioritising every single responsibility you have in favour of studying.

• Am I eating too much junk food? Who cares, need to study.
• Should we do the washing up since the dishes have now reached a state that resembles a putrid game of Jenga? Nope, don’t have time, must study.
• Should I care that a horde of Genghis Khan’s Mongol warriors has arrived through some portal in time and space in my kitchen? Not important, the Second Law of Thermodynamics on the other hand…

This is because, as a student, there are only two real responsibilities.

1.   Don’t get into so much debt that you, or a kind parent, has to sell a kidney to regain financial liquidity
2.   Don’t fail

This is one of the reasons that being a student is so good. If you were to graphically plot responsibility and independence against time one would decrease, the other increase. And that perfect intersection when life is easiest would be the time when you’re a student. Apologies for the mathematical analogy, a further example of how studying has turned my brain into a thick mathematical soup of graphs and that funny Greek alphabet…

Fortunately, or unfortunately, I have extra pressure on my exams this year. Mainly that my exchange place at a Singaporean university depends on my passing everything. In tandem with circa £2000 worth of plane tickets to and from Singapore twice, already purchased. Failure is not an option, meaning that I have even more reason to become a study monster than usual and relegate all other non-essential responsibilities.

Saying this, one household task has emerged recently, that even we, as a flat, cannot ignore.

Cleaning the oven, a task for no mortal man.

Staring into it is to stare into a frightening, black, chemical abyss. We fear the grease may have gained sentience. Thankfully we have a champion equal to this Herculean task, the world’s most frightening oven cleaner. A succinct summary of the advice on the back: “Extremely flammable, causes severe burns, may damage the respiratory system, extremely corrosive, wear protective clothing while administering”

I’m fully expecting Death himself to come charging out of the can on his Steed of Darkness whenever we use it, it sounds that evil.  So if this is my last post, rest assured that Death himself has probably taken my soul as an evil trophy for his mantelpiece or a gift for mother’s day. Or, more likely, we forgot to turn the oven off before using “extremely flammable” oven cleaner…

[DAS ENDE]

Part 3 – Transformers, Biological Warfare & The Art of Spin

Sometime during my first year in Glasgow the three of us, pictured above, decided to live together. Left to right is: myself; Justice and Graham. Yes his name, well surname, actually is “Justice”. We think he should’ve studied law instead of engineering so in court he’d be “Lord Justice Justice” in a “Major Major” Catch-22 farce of titles. He also wants to do a PhD after undergrad meaning that he’d be Doctor Justice. With a name like that it’s almost a moral obligation to become a Bond Villain or Superhero.

Anyway, we did move in together but with my moving abroad to Germany and Singapore this is coming to an end. It’s quite easy to forget what you’re leaving behind when moving abroad, getting caught up in all the excitement and preparation. So here goes, a  few of the escapades of Maule Drive.

 Moving In

This is from the first day we’d moved in. After having a few friends round for drinks we decided to play a prank on a friend, Greg, by filling his shoes with water and freezing them. This taught me two things.

1. This prank works surprisingly well. Greg’s shock when he tried to put his feet in his shoes was hilarious.
2. Don’t fuck with plumbers. Remember what your friends do for a profession. Greg is a plumber and hence knows more about the intricacies and intimacies of my home than I ever will, meaning his revenge will always be infinitely better.

Davie (L) Me (R)

After a few drinks Davie and I also decided that we wanted to be transformers. Hence “Carling-tron” and “Mecha-coors” were born.

Christmas Dinner

This was the setting for our Xmas meal. Being poor students we didn’t have a dining table…or a dining room for that matter… Instead we just put down blankets in the hallway and called it a “Xmas Picnic”. An act of spin that I think even Malcolm Tucker or Alistair Campbell would be proud of! Graham and I managed to somehow cook a 3 course meal for 12 people in probably the world’s smallest kitchen. And no one suffered from food poisoning. Andrew and Graham: 1 , Salmonella: 0. We were also supposed to have a Xmas tree  but obtaining one turned out to be harder than a microscopic game of Where’s Wally. Hence the baubles we’d already bought were used as projectiles as we all descended into bauble warfare. Like normal battles, but more “christmassy”.

Who’s That Hot Bird?

A group photo from Xmas dinner. This is also, probably, the tidiest Graham’s room has ever been. While I am no saint when it comes to the mysterious art of cleanliness, Graham is next level. You get the feeling when you see it sometimes that it’s contravening a NATO treaty on biochemical warfare somewhere. Also some of the stuff Justice and I have found in there is probably more furry and hairy than Graham himself. To put this into perspective; Graham’s nickname is Chewbacca, from Star Wars.

Miscellaneous Others

Generally the three of us have what you might call a dysfunctional relationship, where giving each other abuse is everyday. I remember meeting a Canadian in Edinburgh last summer who was amazed at how mean us Scots were to each other. To us it’s just second nature. Graham and Justice’s two favourite points of attack for myself are that I’m an old bastard and that I’m from northern, more rural [read: sheep shagging], Scotland.”Are you so old that you shit Werther’s Originals?” I think is Graham’s quote of the week about my age. Abusing Justice is often a lot less subtle even than that. Above is a picture just after I got back after Xmas, where Graham and I ambushed Justice and wrapped him completely in a few rolls of clingfilm.

While out with Greg one night we met some absolute psychos from the army. During the evening one of them told me that I looked like Willy Wonka out of Charlie & The Chocolate Factory. Graham then decided to mock up this picture and post it on Facebook. I’ll leave it  to you, the reader, to decide on the quality of the resemblance.

A group photo from my 20th birthday. Many thanks to Francesca and Catherine for the fantastic cake you can see.

Graham broke the bin lid, this was the solution. As he put it afterward; “Strathclyde University engineering education at its finest!”

[DAS ENDE]

Part 2 – Sexual Deviancy & Explosions

I’ll start with some, pretty funny, tips in German.

“Ich bin warm” – literally: I am warm. However this actually means “I am gay” – No doubt Joseph and/or Graham will say I’ll need this one a lot…

Ok you say, I’ll just say “I’m hot” instead to be safe… Y’know, the beauty of synonyms.

Idiomatic Trap No. 2: The literal translation for that is “Ich bin heiß”. This means “I’m horny”. Turns out you can’t say much in German without sounding like a sexual deviant.

So what will I be doing in Germany, apart from trying to avoid ending up on a register? If you’re a nerd keep reading. If you’re not; skip to the TL:DR version!

• The full title of the project I’m helping is: Dehyrogenation of Cycloalkanes in Microreactors. My incomprehension is probably almost as great as yours. Basically, from the little I know, it’s finding a way to make hydrogen a viable energy source. One of the teeny weeny, inconvenient problems, of course, is that it has a tendency to go BANG! Meaning it has to be stored at cryogenic temperatures and high pressure. Not sure about you, but if I had to drive behind a lorry of what is basically explosives I’d be shitting bricks. One of the ways to circumvent hydrogen’s inconsiderate explosive tendencies is to react to form a more stable compound and then unreact it later. Unfortunately this tends to be thermodynamically unfavourable as this requires energy itself. So the energy from hydrogen released must be greater than the energy to extract it. This is why microreactors are used as they, having such high surface area:volume ratios that heat transfer is rapid. Personally I’m just terrified I’m going to muck up someone’s life’s work by trying over a cable or something.

TL:DR Version

Consider the following exchange from the last time Ashleigh and I baked a cake

•  AM: Can you smell smoke? [wearing oven gloves]
• AJ: Andrew! Your oven gloves are on fire!
• AM: Oh shit!

Now transpose this situation onto Germany and the explosive tendencies of hydrogen…

• AM: Can you smell smoke?
• PhD: Andrew! You……

BANG!

[DAS ENDE]

Part 1 – A Scottish Idiot Abroad (ASIA)

“This is a story all about how, my life got turned upside down”  – Some of the infinite wisdom of The Fresh Prince of Belair, as well as a fitting introduction. The central conceits of this aforementioned story of mine are:

• In little under 4 weeks I will be living in Germany.
• In little under 3 months I will be living in Singapore

One, is a country who’s language I barely speak where I will be working with technology I, most likely, will not understand. The other is a country whose ethos and climate are as far removed from Scotland as the concept of salad. Though, as my friend Joseph reassured me, moving to Singapore will be just like moving to Glasgow, except they’ll speak better English than us Scots!

Tomorrow morning is my second round of immunisations for life in the Orient. During the first round I felt a character from the Scottish film Trainspotting, carrying around several hundred quid in cash with the desired end product being someone injecting me. Unfortunately, it wasn’t for a high but for a defence against my brain swelling to the size of a beachball from some, no doubt fascinating, oriental disease.

I’ve decided that the goal over the next year will be to visit 10 countries. One I’m quite set on is Cambodia, to see the Angkor Wat. I think the picture will be able to express my desire more eloquently than myself. And with that I will drift off to the Land of Nodd, I’ve heard it’s lovely this time of night. Gute Nacht jedermann.

[DAS ENDE]