Today was what counts for a tulmultous day for me, at least working wise. Yesterday, some TA forgot to check the gas are switched off and left one station on. So this morning the students walked into a room full of gas. Soon they began to act "giddy, faint, all other weird behaviors", according to the TA who was there. A good thing no one tried to use the bunsen burner, could have blown the building to cinders! Perhaps that TA inhaled too much gas, as her long long email was pretty incoherent and mid-way she began to apologize to me for grading quizzes during lectures, something she thought I disapproves. And I thought she really lost it when she referred to my "leadership" as the Head TA.

On top of that, the Lab Director is on the war path about the gas leak thing and laid-back way we conduct this class. Our TA meetings are usually informal, relaxed. But with her participation, I feel the urge to snap my arm in salute, "Ja wol, Mein Commandant!" For a while now she had wanted to take over a larger part of the running of the class. And in today's meeting, I watched with some amusement and apprehension a tense power-struggle between the her and the professor who teach the class. One thing she insisted on was the control of the master-copy grade sheet. And this, weirdly, reminded me of Stalin's gaining control of Party personnel files when he became General Secretary, a crucial move that later helped him to cement his absolute power. In the end she insinuated that we are bunch of haphazard slobs, and the professor insinuated that she should really just butt out. I've never met anyone so fervently devoted to protocol. This person had completed two post-doctoral fellowships in immunology research and then decided research isn't her thing. Perhaps her single-mindedness is a attempt to inject more substance to her current, relatively humble post.

If you haven't heard of animatrix, you should check it out. They are pretty impressive anime shorts about stories set in the Matrix universe.