of ligands, chelates and crab rings

my lecturer came up to me to chat quite a few times today. first he asked me if school was winding down for me and when my school was going to allow us to wear casual clothes, he also made some other comments that i didn't quite hear, but i made non-committal expressions anyway - that was one conversation. then i thanked him for sending me the sms abt Sem 1 Chem - he launched on about bugging and calling head of first year chem and asking for results. told me about another student who had the same problem as me as well. rather comical actually.

he also just walked right up and asked who my chem teacher is. told him the name. lecturer didn't know and asked if he was new. nope, he isn't. he's rather young. i did NOT mean to imply that lecturer was old. just... younger in comparison.

at the end of class, i had to ask the lecturer for last week's handouts. told him that i was absent because i was sick. so he said to write a reminder for him on a piece of scrap paper. think i kinda embarrassed myself by quoting exactly what he told me to write. heh.. oh well. just as long as i get those tutorial questions and the other handout.

hm.... aside from that, we found out today how it feels to have a potential Nobel-prize winner be your lecturer.

no i'm not kidding, i'm serious. Mr Lecturer was talking about metal complexes/composition compounds or something or rather. and as usual in those powerpoint slides, there'd be some other not-so-salient information about those chelate rings and aqua ligands. :D there was these two slides, headed Amazing Discovery!, that were not on our printed version of the slides. so while he was just talking through the slide that had a particularly important and complicated metal complex, we saw a name that looked somewhat familiar in the citation. so i said to my friend, "hey, isn't that mr lecturer's name??"

"Yeah, it is!"

and in the background was Mr Lectuere excitedly talking about this metal complex...

Next slide, at the bottom, said, "Potential Nobel-prize winner.... Confirmation letter still pending..."

and Mr Lecturer was explaining how someone else wanted to add his name to the paper they were writing coz his discovery turned out right. eeesh.....

FREAKING HELL!!! STANDING RIGHT BEHIND MY FRIEND AND ME WAS A POTENTIAL NOBEL-PRIZE WINNER...

woah.. history in the making man!!!

how cool is that?????