Jury Service.

After being cancelled twice (and causing a lot of grief trying to reorganise things around) I finally went and did my jury service on Friday.

To sum it up in one word: interesting. I'd never been to the law courts before, and for jury service you have to go to the county court, which is a new building, so it has a modern interior design. After battling the rain and the automatic revolving door, you have to walk through metal detector and get your belongings checked out - like when you go to the airport and you're walking through all the various check in points. Obviously security is important.

Once you've checked in, you go through "Jury service orientation" where the process of being selected for a jury is explained. Then its just a lot of waiting around with about 100 other people, and all the tea and coffee you can drink. There were only two trials (a 4 day and a 10 day trial) running that day, and out of those, only one required a jury, which I wasn't selected for. When they let you go, you get your cheque (which is $36 per day for the first 7 days, then $72 per day after that). It was good to get it out of the way - when I first got the questionaire, I really wanted to be on a jury, but I was really hoping I wouldn't get picked, as it would seriously stuff up all the things I had planned for the next fortnight. (cue a lot of stressed out rearranging...)

After leaving the county court, I headed back to the lab because we were going to go and see a movie. But when I got there, I found out that everyone who was going had something else...so its back to the drawing board and we'll have to choose another day. So I went down to the pub instead where Ryan was celebrating "the completion of his journal review (well the first draft)" and then after that, Chris and I went and saw "The Inside Man" which was fun. And I ended up seeing a movie after all! :)