The phrase "loss leading product" really came to a head this weekend. My partner likes the Muller Corner yoghurts (far too sweet for me - I'm hippyish enough to by pro-bio yoghurts, and cheap enough to buy the Sainsbury's basics version at 28p/4 yogs) and we went to Morrisons this weekend. In the shop front was a big POS (point of sale, not piece of . . . ahem) saying 2 for £2 on 6 packs. For those who don't buy them, they are usually around £3.80 ish for 6. I figured that the POS was wrong and that it was intended for another product. But lo and behold, at the yoghurts section, the offer is emblazoned all over the products there. Truly a loss leader - almost half the price for twice as much! By contrast, Sainsbury's has an "offer" of 2 packs for £5. Not to be complaining too much, we bought 2 packs and double- and triple-checked the receipt.
Another close loss-leader this month was my college bill for residence charges, who tried to charge me almost £1000 for accommodation that I have already paid. Thankfully the finance lot here are easy to deal with and it was refunded straight away. If only multiphase flows were as simple to resolve . . .
This is the time of year when the first year PhD students give a 20 minute presentation and complete a CPGS essay about their work so far in order to progress into the second year as a fully-fledged PhD student. I missed the presentation sessions last week to meet both of my supervisors (you can count the days in the year when they are both free on one hand) and I shall miss next week's one due to an exam invigilation meeting. I shall make tomorrow's one and my own one (of course) - hopefully the talks will be interesting, and there won't be too much biotechnology!
All the Chemical Engineering departments around the country now seem to be incorporating biotechnology / biochemical engineering (trojan horse word I think to let them into the Chem Eng world!) and it's all a little odd. Here in Cambridge they have their own building so they don't really incorporate themselves that much - I always thought it made more sense to merge with either biochemistry or biology. Cambridge has a very large school of biology so I figured that it would merge that way. Thankfully with me being over in the Engineering building I avoid bio stuff for the most part - I was somewhat shocked at having to do 3 biology courses during my undergraduate years as a chemical engineer, especially since I had last picked up a bio textbook at the age of 16!
Although apparently, to do Chem Eng you just need to do maths + a science at A levels. I graduated from the University of Sheffield and I was fairly shocked to see people with only biology as their science - I presumed that physics was pretty much a given for any engineering subject, and that chemistry was the natural second science to take for Chemical Engineering! 1 chemistry module and 3 biology modules later spoke differently in the end though . . .
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