Deteriorating Instincts or Just Plain Weird?

Last Tuesday in my microbiology lab, I was doing a bacterial spread plates with my group mates. Basically you have this small glass hockey-stick-look-a-like thingie that you dip into flamming alcohol and flame it with the bunsen burner to sterilise it before using that to spread the bacterial culture on the petri dish (hockey stick + flamming + spreading = naughty thoughts... hehe).

While I was doing that, one of my group mates suddenly told me that she smells something burning and so did I. We thought that I burned something, maybe the hockey stick etc. However, we later realized that it came from a burning tissue paper on top of the table near a bunsen burner at the row in front of us. Whats more surprising is this guy (classmate from another group) was staring at the burning tissue paper, which is only about 6 inches away from him, and rubbing his chin at the same time, DOING NOTHING TO PUT OUT THE FIRE!

My group mate was like "What is he doing? Why is he not dousing the fire?" which is exactly what baffles me. Then to our amazement, he seems to loose interest of the burning tissue paper and ignore it by rotating his chair away with his back facing the fire!! Even when my other group mates was asking him to put out the fire, he just turned back towards the fire without doing anything at all!! WTH!!

After a couple of seconds, more students begin to realized about the fire and alerted the lab demonstrators who try to put the fire out by hitting it with the bottom of a small empty bottle. I was telling her to cover the fire with the bottle instead but she didn't seem to hear me. Another lab demonstrator finally doused the fire with water from a nearby pipe.

Luckily, it was just a small fire. Imagine a large fire on the table or if the whole lab is burning. I think the weird guy wouldn't even give a damn. However, the weird guy's group mates are smart enough to (1) turn off the bunsen burner once she saw the fire and (2) search for a fire blanket although the fire was doused before she returned with it.

Question is, what was he thinking? Where is his instincts? Study too much till lost his instincts already kah? (Oh, he is supposingly a very very intelligent guy who scores very well in exams.)

Bottomline:
I would not want to be caught in a lab with that guy nor do I wanna be in the same group with him next sem (sembah, sembah). I don't want to die so young (choi choi, touchwood).

P.S. One of my group mates was kind of traumatized of how the guy just stared at the fire and just ignored it like that. She is now scarred for life (well, sort of... haha).


Btw, Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World's End is visually stunning, amazingly nice, and expectedly hilarious and witty. Ok.... now back to sleep... goodnight... Zzzzzzz.