New Zealanders sure love their public holidays. They go extra hard for Easter as from Good Friday to Easter Monday, most Kiwi businesses were closed. Then Thursday was ANZAC day, a public holiday that remembers fallen Australian and New Zealander soldiers. Christchurch had some public ANZAC services and processions that day, and later in the afternoon, the city welcomed Prince William for his visit.
Essentially, New Zealand only had three work days this week. I never thought that I was so capitalist but thinking, “This would not fly in America,” has made me realize that I would probably be the villain in Charlie Chaplin’s “Modern Times.” That’s not to say that I didn’t enjoy the days off. On Monday, I was able to sleep in, with no alarm set and later that evening, Lizzie and I went to two ChCh bars: the OGB and Fat Eddie’s. Apparently, the OGB is an infamous institution, known for being the happy-hour watering hole for politicians and businessmen alike. Lizzie and I enjoyed the old-timey aesthetic of the OGB, and it was nice to dress up since it’s been so long.
Thursday’s ANZAC day, I met up with Chloe, an Auckland native who flew down to Christchurch for the weekend. We went to The Caffeine Laboratory, and I guess I’ve missed Nashville a little as I ordered the Nashville Hot Chicken for lunch. While the dish was good, the chicken was definitely NOT spicy enough—I had to ask for extra hot sauce! I’m just saying, Hattie B’s chicken would have stolen Christchurch chicken’s lunch money. The rest of the day, I had to work on a genetics assignment that was due.
The lab flowsheet was so hard to figure out. So a flowsheet is basically a visualization of all of the steps that you are supposed to do in the lab that day. Because you’re supposed to conduct multiple lab experiments with certain waiting/incubation times in the 3-hour period, your flowsheet has to show how you’re navigating the experiments to complete all of them in one day.
Do you know that feeling where it feels like everyone else knows a secret language except you? And no matter how hard you try to figure out the secret, you can’t and you just feel more and more dumb the longer you try in vain? Yeah, that was my entire day Thursday. So after a 6-hour mental roadblock and 2 phone-a-friends, I decided to go back to the basics. I did some basic lab math problems and looked over examples of my flatmate’s old flowsheets. I guess I just needed to warm up my brain, because after figuring out the first step, I slowly but surely finished the rest of the flowsheet around 9 pm that evening! Shoutout to Lizzie who answered annoying question after question even though she had her own maths assignment to complete. You’re a real one, Lizzie! Now just two more flowsheets this semester, and I’ll never have to do one again, thank goodness.
What I’ve learned:
- Spicy food doesn’t exist here in Christchurch :(
- Sometimes you need to go back to the basics before tackling the more complex problem.
What I need to learn:
- How to say no to people and their invitations in a nice way
- How to work in small time slots consistently instead of cramming
