A two month international holiday break in the name of internship ! I think the neverending wait for the visa is worth it. Absolutely! A new country, new surroundings, new people, newer experiences always worth it :)
The university in which I am currently interning is in a small town called St Andrews in Scotland. It is a university town with a population of a mere 15000. The fact that Prince William and Kate Middleton are the univ's alumni makes it more interesting. There are wedding pics all over in the university and some parts in the town ! One can feel their love and romance everywhere in the whole town! Love-is-in-the air kinda feel :)
Now about my project. There is already some research going on in the university (school of chemistry to be precise) on a new proposed design of a fuel cell which is called as a SOFCroll made using tape casting and screen printing. The interesting thing about this new design is that it is supposedly more efficient and material savings hence the cost reduction. But there are disadvantages too that the design itself has to be exact for proper performance of the cell and also the crossover of the electrolyte and mixing of the hydrogen and oxygen gases lessening the output voltage. My work involves to find out ways to avoid the crossover and try to increase(sumhow :P) the output voltage and also test some already prepared fuel cells. It sounds quite interesting but I have to know a lot of stuff bfore I can be anywhere close to that :P. Since a week, I have been reading stuff and getting to know the labs here and my labbies :)
Now this may seem weird but its true! The people here are really mad about safety. REALLY MAD! There are fire alarms and fire exits almost everywhere in the department!! There are safety handbooks and lectures about health and safety frequently which are compulsory! and the most weirest part , there is a fire alarm check and a drill (which is really annoying :P) every wednesday 4 pm( I dont know whats with the specific time :P) the insanely annoying alarm runs unecessarily for 1 minute in which the people in the dept should evacuate and ACT as if there is a fire :P and the fire dept etc etc come to the scene etc etc ... damn drill ! ... seemed infy weird the first time! anyways ...all I can say is 'safety first' paranoid people :P !
Apart from fire alarms and fuel cells, its infinitely cold here ! 10 degrees maxx and too windy. Though there are heaters everywhere, it is shivery ! The town is quite picturesque :) too much greenery, 2 beaches West sands and the East sands, A Castle and a Cathedral which add to the ancientness of the town. The town has a nice british stone feel to it. TESCO supermarket is AWESUM ! The people are quite friendly and helpful and infy mannerful.
I wish there were some more people around :P ... Overall till now, it has been a nice experience. Looking forward to the rest of the internship :)
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