This week was hectic-

I am extremely sorry for my absence on the site ;;-;; I was trying to sneak a peek but my brain couldn't absorb everything I read after office hours so I just opted to sleep as soon as I ate dinner because I had to wake up earlier last week because of the sample overloads.

So what happened to me this week?

Well, I went to the arcade with my sisters after 2-3 years of not doing so. It was exhilarating and I missed the recoil from these guns though they can't really compare to the real thing. Hopefully this year I can talk them into going to a shooting range with me because I miss holding a real gun and the smell of gunpowder in the air 😅 I used to be good with. Ayun back when we had military training in college. I was pretty good with an m-16 too.

Anyways, aside from that, I got myself a tablet that would function as my laptop and drawing pad. It frustrated me to no end that my sister broke her laptop again and she was using mine for classes so I couldn't draw anything for a while. And it frustrated me more that I had to beg her to just let me finish a few drawings that were due for art park or for my commission sideline.

So yeah, whenever I have the free time, I try to learn how to use medibang, ibis paint and sketchbook and I've come to conclude that medibang works the best with my art style and for a week now, I've been trying to finish that girl in the tablet but I'm getting impatient too so I might just leave her as a work in progress and start on something new.

I also got 3 accessories for it so it can function as a laptop and a drawing tablet and I'm still impatiently waiting for them to arrive. It's been a struggle to draw on the tablet with the current protective screen it came with because it's extremely slippery and extremely reflective so I mostly see white spots and not what I'm drawing. Hopefully the protective paperlike film will arrive today, my keyboard case and my stylus with arrive maybe tomorrow or on Monday.

This week, I also saw new samples arrive in the lab. It was a first to see high copper ores and who knew they were so pretty

I know people usually see copper in metal form already but for me, copper has so many forms. So when it's in ore form, copper ore is usually extracted as a blackish rock. It's sent to us as a fine black powder very similar to ore. Then when you start the analysis, you melt it down with acid (nitric acid) and it gives you this blue solution (copper nitrate) and that's what makes my work harder because I have to make sure all that blue is removed so that I can work on the iron smoothly. I'll write about this another time but for now, this is all I can share 😅

For the first 2 days of my week, the ores are all the samples I had to work with since they only have a 3 day testing period. The 3rd day should be for result finalization.

After the ores... It was just pure stress for me. I think that was when Russia lost it and tried to claim Ukraine. From that point of the week, coal samples came flooding in like crazy-

Since US (I think?) Stopped getting petroleum and coal supply from Russia, other countries have started coal exploration at a faster rate and I swear- every day since Wednesday, it was like 50+ coal samples a day running on full analysis and I cannot even stress the rush we were all given by the sales team.

Trying to finish all the analysis under 3 days for 50+ coal samples was crazy and I have never been that stressed with my workload before.

And by Monday ;;-;; I'll be expecting more. Even our supervisor announced that we might get nothing but coal for the week. And if Russia cuts off metal exports too, nickel will surely flood the laboratory doors next.

That's why my goal for the weekends is to relax as much as I can because I have no idea how I'll cope up with the samples next week. Like yesterday, I went to this urban garden cafe with my sister and the place was beautiful! Plants and fresh air everywhere! Also cats! Because they apparently let the stray cats sleep in the cafe to give them shelter.

Anyways, I'm not all that excited to start work on Monday again. There were days I forgot to eat because of the stress and if our supervisor hadn't reminded us to eat, none of us probably would have. He's also working on a few of the analysis now too on top of checking the final reports and handing them to the sales team.

Hopefully this entire thing dies down and the coal samples, as well as the gas and oil prices go down too because it's always a domino effect that when oil prices increase, so does everything else EXCEPT the worker salary.

On a lighter note though, they found my missing lab gown UwU so I won't need to wear the black one they lent me

And I also learned how to engrave on glass. It was a need because our beakers were running out and with the amount of workload we're expecting, we needed more glasswares. So yeah, all my waiting time goes into labeling the glasswares

Anyways, that's all from me 😊 thank you for riding along my train of thoughts