Stressed out Ɛ>(T.T)<3

JMay says "try to take A1 and A2, or the basket one -they're the easiest"

easiest my foot la.

imagine this:

you are instructed to travel across a dense jungle

and on the way you are to pick up fruits along the path you are following

the fruits will appear only at a certain time,

and will quickly rot after that if they are not picked up

you have to reach your destination in exactly 4 hours

(so you cannot travel too quickly nor slowly)

and you are told that on the way, you have policemen to guide you on the right path

just before you enter the jungle,

you meet a policeman and you ask which sort of fruit you should be picking

and he tells you "you must pick apples"
"apples? are you sure?", you ask
"absolutely."

as you go along your merry way, all is well

and you think you know where you're going.

suddenly when you see the first apples, and start to pick it,

you find that some are stuck on the tree

and some are rotting even as you hold them.

what should you do?
"oh, perhaps you can be forgiven for a few rotten apples," you think.
"after all, it can't be helped. I'm already trying my best."


about 2 hours into your journey, 
you meet another policeman
and he says he'd like to follow you for a while,
just to make sure you're doing everything right


as you reach out your hand to pick the next apple you come across,
he exclaims "what are you doing?!"
like it's a crime against humanity to be picking apples
"why are you picking apples?!"
"er, because the first policeman told me to?"
"NO NO NO that is wrong! you should be picking oranges!"   
"WHAT?! but I was just following his instructions!" 
"that is absolutely unacceptable. you must have heard him wrongly. you will be penalised for this." 
WHAT?! but but but... that's not fair!"
"it's too bad that you heard him wrongly. you're supposed to be picking oranges"
"so... what do i do now?  it's too late to turn back and start picking oranges. I wont have enough time!"
"just continue with oranges"

so you heave a big sigh, shrug your shoulders and trudge on

feeling rather downcast, but determined to finish nonetheless

and then suddenly, the second policeman appears out of nowhere

and says "why do you have mandarins in there with your oranges?"

and you go "what? i do?"

"yes, and that is unacceptable. you should only have oranges in there."

"but if i throw away the mandarins, i wont have enough fruits to fulfill the quota!" 

"also, i just picked what was there... the tree gave me mandarins instead of oranges!"

"it's too bad. you should have looked carefully to see if it was a mandarin or orange tree"

"but it's the only tree that was there!"

"then you should have told the policemen!" 

AAARGH!  

and at the end of it all

you finally reach the destination

with half a basket of apples, 

and another half of oranges (with some mandarins)

confused, annoyed, exhausted and dishevelled.

and then you are told that you are to present the fruits to the Queen

who wants to know exactly why there is such an interesting mix of fruits

and after telling her in extreme detail

you finally collapse in exhaustion. 

so that was a description of my day in the lab

and really, no thanks to the policemen PhD students who were assholes such pains and provided contradictory instructions which didn't really help at all.

AAARGHHHHHHHHHH!