DAY 516-520

Jan 29 - Feb 2

1) And yet a couple of days past. I have been very busy recently. On Monday, I had to travel to the city centre to get a couple of things done. First, I had to withdraw money to exchange for pounds sterling, as I will be going to UK for UKEC's annual flagship event, the 'Projek Amanat Negara' (PAN). This year's conference is to be held in University of Sheffield, from 10-11 Feb 2018. An exciting new approach is in store for PAN XV as the perspective we want to take with the theme “Think Again: A Paradigm Shift” is to explore the impact of the Past on the Present, and onto the Future. We have an exciting lineup of distinguished speakers, and a lot of sessions planned throughout the day. I personally cannot wait for it!

2) Second on the agenda, was to top up my phone for the trip to UK. After confirming that roaming charges incurred would apply only after I used up the 6Gb free data in EU countries, I bought the €20 unlimited data plan from 3 mobile store.

2) Third on the agenda, was to get a haircut. If you've been following along previously, I frequently get my haircut at the Dublin School of Barbering, located near Temple Bar. On this particular day, I was unlucky as the barbershop was closed (for whatever reasons). So on to the next item on my list - to enjoy a nice buffet before returning home. As I had about an hour to spare before buffet service started, I chose to walk along the River Liffey. Along the way, I passed some beautiful bridges (O'Connell, Samuel Backett, Millennium, Ha'Penny, Sean O'Casey) and took some lovely snaps.

3) After whiling away the time exploring Dublin 1 and 2, I returned to have buffet at Jimmy Chung's. All filled up, it was a short walk back to the bus stop at Eden Quay, before taking the 27b bus back home. That has been a summary of a day in my life, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it. Have a nice day, cheers!

The iconic Samuel Beckett Bridge

O'Connell Bridge

Irish Life Centre

Statue of James Connolly, outside Connolly Station

The Custom House Dublin (Irish: Teach an Chustaim)

Pier

UN International Day for the Eradication of Poverty

Samuel Beckett Bridge

The architecture is simply brilliant :))

Sean O'Casey Bridge

Buffet Spread at Jimmy Chung's

DAY 297/ 298

Jun 25 & 26

1) I've been quite busy these past two days. Mostly because I'm packing up to shift houses this Saturday. So yesterday, I met Erika (the exchange student from Hoshi University, Japan) near RCSI and I decided to show her around, as she's only been here for three weeks. So we went on a walking tour to Trinity College Dublin, before walking past the Ha'penny Bridge to Dublin 1. While walking towards the Spire, we made the acquaintance of a fellow student from UCD, Patrick "Paddy" O'Grady.

2) Together, the three of us walked around Dublin 1, passing Penneys and the Ten Thousand World Buffet and The Savoy. As we were about to double back, we met Melvin, who sadly was in a rush to go somewhere. So we continued our way back to the bridge, before walking along the River Liffey to Dublin Castle. That's opposite the Queen of Tarts shop where I bought some lovely pies on my second day here in Dublin. How time flies...

3) But I digress. We found out more about each other, especially Paddy since we had only just met him haha. After spending some time in the St. Stephen's Green Park, it was time for dinner. I brought my friends over to Wok In, and got the beef curry with rice. By this time, it was getting late, so I had to excuse myself to finish my packing at home. That was the gist of my day yesterday :)

4) Today was back to the labs for me. I spent the entire morning and part of the afternoon finishing off the second product (now labelled KC4), only to find out in the end that it wasn't the product that we were looking for! We've now followed two different sets of instructions to synthesize this compound, yet no luck so far. So using Reaxys (a web-based tool for the retrieval of chemistry information and data from published literature), Donal and I found another published article detailing the process. We've set up the experiment as described, and left the intermediate on stirring overnight.

5) Hopefully the product will turn out fine when we finish up tomorrow, as we've run out of the starting material already. Anyway, that's been my day today, and I hope you enjoyed reading about it. Have a great day, cheers!

Me, Erika, and Paddy at Dublin Castle central square

Posing in front of the Spire

(which is completely overexposed haha)

Having dinner at Wok In ^^

Need to filter ppt tomorrow...

Note to self: When they say add SOCl₂ drop by drop, they really do mean that

(case in point the balloon on the right burst because of the pressure build up due to the sulfur dioxide gas produced - gave me the shock of my life!)