T_T vs ^_^

Originally, this entry was going to be an out-pouring of annoyance, as everything has been going wrong work-wise this week. But when I logged into the homepage of my blog I noticed that several of my friends have been very prolific and updated their blogs very frequently this week. Being a nosy person by nature, I spent a little while catching up with their news via the medium of internet blogging. Having done so, I found that my mood had lifted considerably as they all seem optimistic and up-beat. It feels as if a few worries and minor burdens have been lifted off my mind.

My friend once told me that I can be rather presumptous, as I worry a lot when making decisions as to how they might affect other people, yet in reality, what I say or do is not that important. Similarly, I worry too much about friends and don't give them enough credit - they're perfectly capable of looking after themselves! I agree, yet it's something embedded into my nature. Perhaps because in the past I've made a lot of decisions and carried out actions without considering properly the feelings of the people I love, and so now I'm over-cautious. But reading my friends' entries now, I feel much re-assured.

But, back to my original moan - my department is a building site. You can't step out of the lab without having to dodge people hoisting big -80 degree C freezers up (and back down) the stairs, builders in yellow jackets and hard hats, people with clipboards wandering around. The lab water supplies and fume hood ventilators work intermittantly. To get to our growth rooms by the botanic gardens we have to go right round another building site, and the growth rooms themselves keep malfunctioning. My plants are being heated to rainforest conditions or being plunged into darkness for days on end, and retaliating by dying as soon as I let even a whiff of virus near them. The portable equipment keeps going walkies and I have to track them down by wandering lab-to-lab and asking for news. On the rare occasions when nothing's broken down and everything I need is around, I still can't do my own work because those are inevitably the days when I have to supervise the undergraduates working in my lab and I daren't leave them on their own for long.

How am I supposed to finish my PhD?!! Let alone dedicate time to finding a new job. I spend my rare free evenings at the gym when I have the last dregs of energy, and collapsed face down on my bedroom floor when I don't.

And my last cheque came last month. But so did my college bill.

I accept food parcels in lieu of sympathy.