after a long and arduous -

this reminds me of an incident way back in secondary school. i am blessed with numerous and varied talents. an understanding of chemistry, however, is not one of those talents.

i remember having to conduct an experiment in the chemistry lab. and i would at this point like to momentarily depart from my departure by pointing out that there is a serious flaw in calling the exercise an experiment when the victim (student) is told exactly what steps to take, is instructed that there is only one correct outcome, and is expected to be able to explain the entire scientific rationale behind everything that is to transpire.

anyhow. i further remember having to fill in a chemistry assignment relating to that experiment. this assignment, as chemistry assignments are wont to do, asked any number of befuddling and poorly drafted questions peppered with unintelligible symbols. exacerbating the difficulty i faced was the fact that, although i had spent the afternoon engaged in productive activity, i had done so in the true spirit of experimentation. read : mixing random chemicals together over the bunsen burner in genuine anticipation and sticking heated test tubes under cold running water so as to justify the chemistry department's presumably over-inflated budget. not as if they were doing any real work that needed spending on.

for some reason i cannot recall, i didn't have anyone's worksheet to copy answers off that particular day. a rare and unpleasant occurance. thus, i was left to fill in answers as best i could, improvising when unsure. unfortunately, i wasn't very sure of anything at all, any time at all. it all got rather frustrating, and so when this question popped up towards the end asking me to describe the processes involved in the so-called-experiment, i decided to pen a mini treatise. it went something along the lines of "this was a long and arduous process, that involved the application of substantial quantities of heat and agitation to a combination of different chemicals, each of a varying molecular composition..." that went on until i ran out of space.

i cannot emphasise enough my deeply-held conviction that, as a general principle, the duty of educators should be to reward students who give factually irreprochable responses that answer the question posed. my chemistry teacher, though, was thoroughly unprincipled. amongst other characteristics i shall not mention. i think i got 0 for that assignment.

but back to the topic.

- after a long and arduous process that i was intending to detail, but now lack the time to elaborate upon because of my lengthy and pointless digression (not to mention my even more pointless digression within the digression), i have finally decided on a template.

with the very kind help of a colleague, i've also managed to tweak it somewhat - minor changes like eradicating the capital letter from the template. i am pleased.