Spore-adic Searching

Well, that's all folks. The official end to my year at Imperial. It wasn't as I expected: no fireworks, no madness, just me aimlessly wandering around uni hoping to bump into friends, which didn't really happen, at all. I actually missed the exam today because I needed to get my MMR jab and a 'heaf' test done, and I came in so late that there was no-one I knew around! Even the normally phenomenally-long queue at the library cafe had probably relocated to outside a nightclub somewhere. Even though I knew I was leaving a few days after, I did feel some sort of nervousness when I sat the first exam, but still managed to blag my way through the essay questions by letting my imagination do the talking, and by merely guessing the MCQ answers... allow negative marking! Then I left an hour early, chilling, before returning to feel the mood of everyone coming out of the exam. The second day I felt a little more adventurous, drawing little smiley/sad/wiggle faces on the phospholipids I drew, before trying to convey what I thought should be what bacterial spores looked like (dandelion seeds), that grow like hair out of the little bacterium (and I tried to support my theories with pictorial evidence wherever I could), but really, if there was a nuclear apocalypse to happen, you Would want your house to be a spore! I think I conveyed that idea pretty well, as well as them being the reason Domestos can only kill 99.9% of bacteria. Again, I left an hour early, giving a cheeky smile to those stressed-out biochemists who looked up from their sweat-dreanched exam papers.


Anyway, long story short, after the second exam I went to all the pharmacists in South Ken, walked to Knightsbridge (where my phone camera broke... again), in Harrods, through Hyde Park, Oxford Street Boots, then some specialist medical equipment place off Oxford Street... looking for a Helicobacter test kit I was asked to bring in, for this 'heaf test'... no one had it! My mum (after getting pure orange juice, which I also needed for the nurse) asked the local pharmacists next door to the doctor's surgery, said they didn't have it... so I called the surgery; apparently I needed a prescription to get it, got the prescription, got the test kit from the same place they said they didn't have it... problem solved. Or was it?

My third day was planned out quite well in advance, go to nurse, get MMR and heaf test done, go to uni and join in with the post-exam celebrations. That was until my phone broke, so I planned for that to be sent off as well as my occupational health form. So, I went to the nurse, gave her the Helicobacter test kit, and apparently, I didn't need it! After a few hours (and miles) of searching, I discover that a heaf test and Helicobacter test are two different things, the complete opposite of what the reception assured me! But alhamdulillah, I didn't actually need the heaf test in the end, so I sent the form off anyway, and arrived at an almost-empty Imperial late because of the long queue at the post office (which probably belonged at the library cafe). I went to my pigeon-hole and collected the accumulation of marked work I didn't remember doing, before returning my locker key to the nice-ish lab technician lady who earlier in the year caught me going through the lab equipment drawers whilst I supposed to be doing an experiment, and hasn't stopped reminding me/everyone about it since!


As I was using my backup Sony Ericsson phone (the one that had half-destroyed itself during the mountain ordeal), I only took down a few numbers from my LG phone before sending it off and saved the rest on a memory card. I remembered that I'd agreed to meet a friend at Westfield later on, and so I was sure to make note of his number, only to realise that once I was at the shopping centre, it was his house number, and on the other end was a not-so-English-speaking grandmother. So I ended up trawling through Westfield (Europe's largest shopping centre, I think) for about an hour, searching the shops he'd most likely be in, whilst my phone battery decided to die on me. In the end, I went into the Apple shop (where I noticed an HT guy working there, random), charged my phone, and called loads of mates to try and get this friend's number. I finally got my hands on it, and once I called, I discovered he was sitting just opposite the Apple shop, where I met him and we all lived happily ever after. Phew!

And that was my life story for 3 days. What did I learn from those days? That phone numbers (especially the right ones) can really help when you're searching for someone... and that prescriptions are pretty useful things too.


Oh and note to self; remember to empty your locker before returning the key! It saves the embarrassment of having to ask for it back :S