Taking a break from work

So what's up with my life lately? I just celebrated my birthday last Saturday and got an awesome Nintendo Gameboy SP from my mom. My sis gave me this cool Rin Tosaka action figure from the Anime Fate Stay Night. It's just a shame that I'm not able to fully enjoy those gifts since I've been cramming my 200 hours of OJT time in just a span of a few weeks. I need to finish it in time before the school starts. I'm working at the Quality Assurance Laboratory of Pure Foods, by the way. The plant is located in Marikina City which is convenient since I know that place like the back of my hand. The QA department normally hires licensed chemists and engineers but I think a person with a MAC degree is qualified as well. Although there might be some restrictions to what such a graduate can do since they are not licensed to sign forms and make recommendations.

It's too bad I cannot bring a camera inside the plant and take pictures of my workplace. I was really overwhelmed at the number of sophisticated equipment like automated distillation units, heavy-duty furnaces, rotary evaporators, digestion units and digital dispensers. With all those advanced machines, I realized that some of the things I learned in school turned out to be either useless or outdated. It's fun working inside the lab of a food manufacturing company. The place is fully air conditioned, it smells like cored beef, hot dogs and ham every morning, and the best part is that you get to eat the surplus food samples! And when it's the 12:00 break time, the QA crew takes a nap. But this is no ordinary nap where you rest your head on the table. They either lay down cardboard mattresses and sleep on the floor or stack up the empty boxes and sleep on them. Some employees even sleep inside the chemical stockroom. Beside them are bottles of benzene, petroleum ether and other volatile solvents. Talk about taking breaks seriously.

Testing food samples may be often messy but it's not as harmful as working in a paint or petroleum plant where there are risks of fires and explosions. Probably the worst thing you can experience is an acid burn. (I accidentally burned my arm with sulfuric acid and it hurt like $#!t!). In terms of physical injury, chances in the lab are relatively low. The only bad thing about QA is that oftentimes, the samples arrive faster that we can test them so the lab quickly turns into a warehouse of meat products. If a person has a weak tolerance to pressure and has extreme difficulty in time management, he can go insane in no time. We'll that's all time I have for tonight. I better catch some z's. I still have work even on Saturdays and it starts at 7am!