The Lord of Labelling - Now Showing

Genre
Laboratory Drama

Runtime
6 Months

Cast
Amelie: An honours student who will stay in the lab for 10 months.
Louis: A 3rd year postgraduate and Amelie’s mentor.
Zack: A 3rd year postgraduate. Together with Louis, they are in charge of the purchasing and maintaining lab supplies.
Janice: A foreign postgraduate who comes to the lab for an 5-month exchange programme.
Dr Boss: The principal investigator of the lab.

Synopsis
Set in a professor’s laboratory in a university, the story is about one postgraduate who keeps common lab items to himself and how this act affects the progress of other lab members.

After 4 months of working in the lab, Amelie notices that Louis keeps many common-use reagents and lab consumables to himself and does not share them with anyone else even when the supplies are low. He even labels several machines with his name and disallows others to use them. Consequently, Zack and Janice’s experiment progress are suspended for 3 months, and they become unhappy with the situation.

When Amelie tries talking to him, he angrily claims that it is other lab members’ fault for not maintaining the lab supplies. Amelie is also afraid that if she tells Dr Boss directly about the problem, Louis may treat her bad revengefully in the remaining months.

How should Amelie deal with the situation to make things better for everyone?

Review
In this story, the main possible cause may be that Louis is so concerned of his own experiment progress that he ignores the needs of other lab members. He may also be excessively worried about not having enough lab supplies for his experiment. On the other hand, neither Louis nor Zack makes frequent purchases for their experiments and therefore, lab supplies often run low.

Drama Rating
3/5 stars

Learning to seam

Effective communication is a need. It is like temporarily seaming the thoughts of two minds together, where both people achieve a common understanding of each other's ideas. As human beings live in packs, it is an important skill for people to achieve their basic needs of life and also what they want.

How is effective communication important to the main aspects my life?

1. Work
We need to work and to gain money in order to fulfill our basic survival needs like food, stay, transport and clothings. Convincing resumes and interviews may land you in a job you prefer. Articulate speaking and active listening allow teams to accomplish their tasks in a shorter time without too many mistakes. Achieving the right balance between active socializing and silence may lessen the effects of office politics.

2. Relationships
According to a survey of 18,000 undergraduates in 39 countries, the most important factor in happiness is good interpersonal relations--with friends, family, lovers, etc (1). If the next thing we want to achieve in our life other than fulfilling survival needs is happiness, then this is it. People gather together to have fun together and to be loved. Even if we can't express our love directly, at least avoid creating more misunderstandings between our loved ones.

3. Learning
Of course, we learn throughout our life. In schools, to be able to catch key points during classes save us time from the need to revise textbooks or watch webcasts again. Group projects is a common assignment, where we are required to work with people we don't know. No one likes to be sarcastically teased for his/her own shortcomings, but would rather welcome a warm and encouraging advice.

Needing to survive, wanting happiness, I guess I just have to continue learning. *grin*

Reference
1. John Reich and Ed Diener. The Road to Happiness. Psychology Today. Jul/Aug 94. Last reviewed 30 Aug 2004. Accessed 22 Aug 2008. http://psychologytoday.com/articles/index.php?term=19940701-000025&page=1