wow. this afternoon has to be the most intense 3 hours in a long while.

today was part ii of the Cambridge Science Festival, where I decided to volunteer my time to help out. looking at the photos from previous years (as below), it kinda looked manageable. We were basically helping kids build these dragster "race vehicles" which has a propeller wound with a rubber band, or one of the balloon driven vehicles as shown in the picture below. fair enough, the task isn't supposed to be hard (although the dragster is somewhat much more complicated than the balloon one).

we started setting up around 11am and then the festival started around 2pm. And initally i was wondering, oh, i don't think many people are gonna be here anyway - it's so out of the way and I don't really think it's a big thing. And I was sooo wrong. The crowd starts POURING in around 2.15pm. literally POURING in. kids and their parents just kept milling into the lab. and then 3 hours just went by, and i only a 30-second kit-kat break and a orange juice breather and that was it.

But looking back i really did enjoy it, although i'd wished that i had the time to explore the rest of the grounds, having seen nothing but the two things i was working on, and that i had time to take some photos.

a photo from last year - i bet this was right at the beginning, when there weren't a lot of people. not very representative of the chaos we had. ;p Oh, and the yellow t-shirt and food was well worth the effort though. :)

And daylight saving time tonight. I'm gonna lose one hour of sleep cos of that. :(