Still at lab?

There were many times in school where I wondered what life would be like outside of school, where summer vacations didn't exist and days wouldn't end till 5 pm. To me in school these thoughts were inconcievable-- I couldn't believe that I could live in a world without summer vacations and long days.

Before coming to Japan, I heard about lab life at the particular lab I was going to. I got an e-mail back from an American guy telling me that it wasn't uncommon for people to come in at about 9 am and not leave till 10 pm. Before coming to Japan, I thought I would be in for some serious hell when I started lab life here. Back at my old job where I worked at some really boring satellite imaging company (my job was pretty much manual labour for fixing satellite pictures!), I dreaded going to work everyday. I couldn't wait until lunch time to take my 30 minute break and then for the clock to hit 5 pm to jet out of the office. Staying for a second more would have been unbearable.

It is now 3:30 am... I slept in till 11:00 am today after staying up late with my roomies, oh and Cindy is visiting too! I didn't have classes at all today, but I've been running around handing in paper work for my internship program, fixing up an article that will be submitted for publication in a magazine (in Japanese... after much editing), teaching for 3.5 hours how to use a silicon wafer cutting machine then coming back to start studying for my fluid mechanics test "tomorrow," where I started studying at about 10:00 pm today. I'm not really keen on how the material was taught, but I was just introduced into Electro and Magneto hydrodynamics which are very cool topics after doing some searching on the internet. But anyways...

I never thought I would be living the life I would be right now with these kinds of hours but the funny thing is that I've gotten used to it. The one thing that's really nice about doing a master's is that you work at your own pace. I have on several occasions came home to take a nap and found myself programming until the wee hours of the evening because I thought what I was doing was interesting. Because, that is what really counts.

I should go home sometime...