Sadly I feel the need to start this blog with a flood of apologies for taking such a long time to sit my derrière down and dedicate a few minutes to some serious blog making. Secondly I apologise for this having so few photos, and probably some of the ones I've used are arguably (definitely) completely irrelevant to the text. OK so flood was a bit of an exaggeration, perhaps a trickle of apologies would be more appropriate?
So where were we last time.... Ah yes, your adventurous protagonist had just traversed a continent in a little yellow car with a tarantula.
I arrived on a Friday night and had little time to prepare for my first day at university, the following Wednesday. I read every document, brochure and leaflet, but all I could find was that I needed to be in building 2 for a welcome breakfast at 9:30am...
Wednesday morning arrived far faster than I expected. I awoke early and donned a t-shirt that I'd prepared specifically for my 1st day. As you can see I have fear in my eyes and butterflies in my tummy. The bag in the background is Sascha's and I didn't take it with me (although I imagine it would have made a bit of an impression).
Sadly I don't have any photos of my first day at uni, I spent it mainly with a map in hand and a confused look on my face. When I arrived I found out that the buildings were not necessarily in any logical order and all looked remarkably similar. Each building was branded with a greeting card sized number located on one side. I therefore found myself walking up to a building, circumnavigating it until I found it's number and then, finding it wasn't my desires destination, I'd make a bee-line to whatever building was closest and wandering around that.
Eventually I found building 2. I'd be lying if I said there wasn't the slightest bubble of uncertainty uncomfortably rising in my stomach.
I've learned that generally all Danish gatherings (that don't contain alcohol) involve vast quantities of coffee, occasionally accompanied by dense rye bread and smelly cheese. This welcome breakfast was no exception. I pored myself a coffee and looked on as my fellow students sank enough coffee to get their heartbeats to Olympian levels.
There was then shouts for order, followed by the inevitable housekeeping announcements. my heart sank as about 75% of these were only in Danish. I began to worry that a degree in a non-English speaking country might be beyond me.
Luckily your intrepid narrator resisted the urge to jump onto the next train to København lufthavns and jump on the next plane to Blighty.
In the afternoon I was ushered to a lab safety lecture, mandatory for any science based subject. The lecture was a full 3 hours long. Highlights were few, but luckily there, otherwise I'd have nodded off as I was experiencing a "coffee crash" following the mornings caffeine binge.
We had to watch a video highlighting the potential dangers of work in a laboratory. The video was in Danish, but a resourceful lecturer had come up with the bright idea of creating a powerpoint demonstration for English subtitles. This was amazingly confusing. The TV had approximately a 28" screen and was stood on a waist high stand. The powerpoint demonstration was projected onto a cinema sized (and I mean the size of a cinema not a cinema screen) pull down white screen. Each word of the subtitles dwarfed the television screen.
The preposterous set up was nothing compared to the video however; in one scene a lady was busy pipetting liquids from one tube to another (almost exactly like the background of every sciency news report) when a colleague pushed past her, causing her to stab herself in the hand with the pipette. Liquid was splashed everywhere. Some landed on the floor causing another person to slip up and some splashed over an open sandwich which was placed conspicuously on a desk in the corner of the frame. The video was shot in a 999 lifesavers style with the victims giving awkward interviews to camera, interspersed with the stunt filled re-enactment. All the while a lecturer was trying to duck under the projected subtitles on the wall to click the powerpoint demonstration on after each line of dialogue.
The other moment of respite came when Chemistry professor talked to us about the dangers of fire in a lab. After recounting a grizzly tale of how he once was set alight, but had failed to register where the fire-extinguishers were in the lab and was forced to run from corner to corner ablaze; he proceeded to poor ethanol into a bin and set it alight. He nonchalantly walked in front of the bin and muttered something about needing a fireman. All the students looked on in confusion. His murmuring eventually grew more urgent and one bright student realised the fireman he was asking for was, in fact, one of us. They grabbed the nearest fire-extinguisher, pulled the pin and discharged a cataclysm of carbon dioxide in the general direction of the bin. However, no sooner as the flames were abated the professor struck a match and re-ignited the inferno. Again he mumbled about a fireman. This process was repeated until all except one student had fought the fire.
The professor looked at this student and confidently flicked a match into the bin, it was getting very hot now so he was standing quite far away. Sure enough fire began to lick the air above the bin. "fireman, fireman, where are you?" he muttered. The girl then stood up... she was 6 months pregnant, she explained that if the room was on fire she would probably just leave, and that tackling any dangerous situation was probably beyond her. The professor agreed courteously. He then seemed to turn around and see the, now quite substantial flames; "fireman, fireman, where are you?" however we had all had our turn, so all the students looked at each other. A full 2 or 3 minutes past with us all looking around, too shy to make a move and him repeating "fireman, fireman, where are you?" By now the flames were several feet above the mouth of the bin, the student closest started to look genuinely concerned. He leapt up and discharged what seemed like an entire extinguisher full of carbon dioxide into the room. The sound was deafening and I instinctively flinched, closing my eyes. The air was cold. As I opened my eyes shafts of light pieced the thick smoke, for a second I felt I had awoken in the video for Baker Street.
This isn't actually a photo of the lab after the fire-extinguisher incident, this is pilfered from google images. I'd of thought it would be obvious that a lab probably wouldn't have had a saxophonist in it.
I went that home that evening and slumped in front of the TV... I was exhausted. Imagine my shock when I saw this advert for the Danish electronics and white-goods store Elgiganten.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v7_kwijDswc
(I'm sorry but you're going to have to copy and paste this into your browser, I unfortunately am not good enough at blogging to make this know that that's a link, sorry - maybe a flood of apologies was right?)
Thoroughly strange.
Any how I'm going to call that a night right now, I'm sorry that this hasn't brought you totally up to speed, I still need to tell you all about Ikea and moving house and meeting new people and things, but I'm going to save that for next time (this is like the next time on Hu's blog...) so you all have to keep reading!
