A big pat behind my own back! For completing my 1st week on the punishing 12hr shift pattern unscathed! Yups I finally started working from 6am to 6pm this week.. it'll be lidat every week from now.. 4 days one week, 3 days the next. I chose to start off with a tuff week, so I'll be working 3 days next week! 4 day long weekend staring at me.. but incredibly I still havent made any plans for it! I thk perhaps the energy in me is abit waning le ba... last time in Newcastle I would've started planning for the coming weekend le! Or maybe it's because of the lack of travel companions? My housemates and close frens are all working normal day shifts, so no chance of them taking Thursdays and Fridays off to travel with me mah... so alone I also dun have much motivation lah..
Anyways time down on the plant passes by really fast, especially when u're on shift! There're things to do, and when u're on your job you get by the day really quickly. Much of my first few days were spent in the Buffer Preparation area where we make the buffers needed for the drug manuf process (Eric fondly calls this Bufferland! and the name has caught on with me!) We work on a few vessels, ranging from big 1000litre ones to small 200litre ones and even smaller plastic storage vessels. WFI (water for injection into the human bloodstream... very pure water lah dat is) is pumped into the vessel, before the components of the buffers are added and mixed. Very simple process actually, but alot of work goes into following SOPs closely for "proper documentation" As dey say... in this line.. no paperwork means u can't sell ur product! So its alot of steps to follow and alot of sampling and testing and resampling and retesting and adjusting... in a very simple process.. Well I'm okie with it though.. learning well till now cos not too much to take in. And especially cos the pple down in plant have been really nice! I have been really fortunate to have a very good bunch of colleagues in purification.. mostly very good-natured and fun people, who are yet serious when it comes to work, and who are never stingy in teaching us.. always so patient and making sure we really understand what they teach us.. thanks to them, I'm really enjoying my time in plant alot... every morning 5.45am step into office bleary eyed, yet still able to last thru the day! Yalor 5.45 wor.. I wake up at 5am each morning.. leave home at 5.25, cycle to Shuhui's house, then (cos she dun have bike mah) she'll walk and I'll cycle behind to keep her company (too early dangerous for her to walk alone mah). Then reach office le... we'll just check email and read for awhile till 6.20am, when the plant leads will assign work locations to everyone (it's been mostly Bufferland for us new starters, apart from the time when they need our help in cleaning elsewhere!). At 6.30am we'll head down to plant to start the long day... normally there'll be a 30min breakie time around 9+, then lunch will be around 1.30pm.. after that it'll be countdown to 6pm le!
There's this very nice plant lead on one of the shifts.. very sincere person ah..not just serious in teaching us knowledge of the processes.. he tries hard to bond with everyone too.. the grandfatherly kind of figure! He even promised to bring his Indian citar (he's Indian mah) on Sunday to perform in Lonza! Even asked us to go set up the stage and get he audience for him.. funny guy ah haha... well I promised to go support him, and there's no way I'm gonna miss his performance! Haha the plant lead performing a musical instrument at the Lonza canteen on a sunday! He said he'll bring samosas for us too.. must go try!
Oh and evidently I just missed the chance to win a impossible amount of money.. the lottery prize for this weekend was a whopping 88million pounds!! We were supposed to go buy yesterday one.. but forgot about it! Wah think about wat I'd do with 88m pounds!! Wah even soccer stars wun get to earn dat much in their careers lor! Wonder who'd be the lucky one to win it... haha but definitely wun be me lah.. cos when I went pass a betting shop just now I saw that the draw was oredi done last nite!
This week has been boring boring boring thus far... Thursday I had an offday from work, and I did nothing apart from sleeping till noon and going to Slough Central to run some errands. Wednesday was soccerday as usual. I thot since I was working more closely with the Purif pple it was better to join their team since they said they needed me, budden during the match they kept rotating amongst the players they oredi had and totally shut me out of the game! Haiz dun wan me to play den dun ask me to join the team mah! Nxt week I'll be going back to the Fermentation team le haha.. at least I get to play there mah.. and I dun thk I'm much worse than them lor haha.. After soccer we went to Elaine's place to bake a brownie.. haha another 1st.. 1st time baking a brownie! Added the ingredients and put it into the oven le.. den waited so long but it just didn't seem done.. till we started to worry abit.. eventually it was finally done, and the end product was not bad at all! I decided to put abit more sugar than the recipe recommended and it made the brownie more chewy in the end! Elaine brot it to Lonza for the Coffee Morning yesterday to raise money for charity, and the brownie got sold out! Oh then we oso tried baking some scones ah! Turned out quite well too! Haha I realised baking ain't really hard too... next time can try baking a cake ba (erm... yup yup I noe I'm way ahead of myself le!)
^ Scenes from the football pitch
^ Eric the cat keeping his fortress safe
^ Eric finally being beaten by a thunderous shot
^ Strange occurrence! I put my appleade into the fridge and this came out. A shell of apple-ice wrapping the remaining liquid!
^ Our family trying to create a box to hold the bicycle Wen Seen is getting a refund for. We had to cut open a few boxes and tape them up to create a new box big enough to hold the bike!
Thursday was cooking day again! This time I decided to take a break from my forays into Western cuisine and go Asian for once! Curry was on the menu, and I knew I couldn't do it myself, so went to recruit reinforcements in the form of Elaine. And she brought Dean the Fermentation trainer along to cook up a storm together! We bought alot of Indian spices from the Londis minimart, then decided to go by my instincts as I've seen Kaleel done. Elaine helped me marinate the chicken, while Dean and I chopped up the garlic, onion, ginger, chilli and potatoes. We threw these in to fry first, followed by the chicken and potatoes. The wok was too small lor... by the time all these had gone in there was no space for the gravy le! So we had to change to another pot before adding the curry powder, chilli powder, tumeric powder, cumin powder and cloves. After simmering till the chicken was cooked, we still felt the curry lacked that something... so we kept trying to throw different things in.. it wasn't salty enough, so we dumped some salt in. Still lacked something, so more curry powder, pepper and even lemon juice went in! I think it was the lemon ba... it adjusted the taste abit, and in the end it was finally ready to be served! Everyone thought it was not bad wor! So thanks to Dean and Elaine, I successfully cooked my first pot of curry. Chatted alot to Dean, and realised he's been in England to work for many years le. Most surprising thing is that... he actually lives just a few minutes walk away from us!! And we din even realise after 2 months!
^ Dean and I in action!
^ Dean frying the onions. He was peeling and chopping them till he was tearing so badly lor... kudos to him!
^ The marinated chicken
^ Potatoes being stirred into the mix
^ The final outcome... tastebud tingling curry!
After Dean and Elaine left, I was faced with the task of cooking one more meal for Friday's lunch! This I had to handle myself le... though I had Wen Seen cutting mushrooms and beating the eggs (and taking photos haha!) for me. I did fried egg with tomatoes and mushrooms, and salmon stir-fried with green peas and sweet corn, and I even threw in some cheese to add extra flavour to the fish! Turned out not bad too, though it lost some of its flavour by the time we ate it on Fri. Cooking test successfully completed for this week... hmmm now wat do I cook next week leh? And I just learnt we're supposed to rotate cooking on Fri nite ah!! And I'll kena nxt week, so I gotta cook 2 days next week ah... jialat sia...
^ Me in action cooking Friday's lunch
^ The salmon dish I came up with!
^ And the egg-tomato-mushroom! I realise after I came here that I actually quite like tomatoes (at least more than many other vggies) and I absolutely love mushrooms!
Alritez... time to enjoy the rest of this boring weekend.. hope you guys are enjoying urselves too!
^ The reduced-to-clear "tiger paws" proved useful in settling my Saturday dinner. 4 for 5p.. prices really go crazily low when things are about to expire. I bought a tin of luncheon meat, a block of cheese and 3 tomatoes as the fillings of my tiger paws and sandwiches for the whole weekend. Out the the oven, this improvised burger is really quite sumptuous!
