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KUSTEM to be empty come New Year’s Day
Posted on Friday, December 22nd, 2006 by pelf and filed in Life as I see it

Yes, it’s official. It was announced not too long ago though the talk of it becoming empty started wayyyy back.

Ouh well, and since there are people who refused to come to KUSTEM because it is only a “university college” instead of a full-fledge university- naah, you have it NOW. Come and tell me whether this university lives up to your expectation.

And since I’m there, I might as well continue rambling because the chance will pass once the clock strikes 12 midnight this Dec 31st.

What is wrong with a university college anyway?! A university college is so called because it isn’t as BIG as a university should be. Because it doesn’t have a student-and-postgrad enrollment as HIGH as a university should. And it doesn’t have as MANY faculties, institutes and what-other-important centres as a university should.

Apart from that, it IS a university after all! You come here to pursue your tertiary education which your parents think is more important for your future compared to how you think. Or maybe you come here because the society demands you of it. Or maybe because your parents needed to keep you in a place without you creating too much problems for them so they decided to put you among gentlemanly-academicians. I mean, how BAD and ROTTEN can you get among educated people, right?

WRONG.

But I digressed.

I think it’s good to be in a small university. There’s always ample space at the cafeteria. There’s always ample computers to go around in the library, and there’s always more space than we will ever need at the library. You will always get the lecturers’ attention due to the smaller classes. You will never need to camp outside the lecturer’s office just so you could be enrolled in his class because, apparently, your seniors said he IS THE BEST. You will never have to queue forever in the bank because there are less students. And you always get to occupy the whole-freaking-gym because other students prefer football and volleyball and tennis and basketball.

Yea, I think it’s good :)

But now we all have it. Whether or not we like it.

Universiti Malaysia Terengganu (UMT), with effect from Jan 1st, 2007.

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Cute little owl Christmas card
Posted on Wednesday, December 20th, 2006 by pelf and filed in Life as I see it

Got this cute little owl Christmas card from my favourite sexy blogger yesterday :)

Merv said he couldn’t find a turtle Christmas card for me so he got me a “cute” owl card instead.

Ouh well, it’s the thought that counts, right? Merry Christmas, Merv! Cheers!

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The terrapins cried for help
Posted on Tuesday, December 19th, 2006 by pelf and filed in Turtle Talks

Today J and I did something totally incomprehensible.

We bled a lot of terrapins – for the sake of knowledge – the WRONG way. Because we have yet to master the right way :(

I needed the blood for a hematology study, and I needed a lot of them in order for the results to be representative. Simply put, I need a certain number of samples before I can make any conclusions out of the study. But I have never bled a turtle successfully.

These are the 1 cc syringes that we used. I thought the syringes were too small because I never seem to hit it right into the vein. We kept missing the vein and blood gushed out onto the skin instead of being sucked INTO the syringes.

I prepared some of these containers (they’re supposed to be called cuvettes) into which we should store the blood obtained (but only for a short while because reptile blood clots quickly).

Once the blood is filled into the cuvette, I dipped one of these hematocrit tubes into it, and blood will be “sucked in automagically”.

And then I sealed the ends with, you guessed it, plasticine to ensure the (very precious) blood in the hematocrit tube remains IN THE TUBE. After this, the hematocrit tubes were subjected to a “spinning job” in the centrifuge machine at 70 rpm for 5 minutes – I know, this is too technical, even for my own understanding. Will come back to this as soon as I am able to take some pictures of the centrifuge machine and still put on a straight face while everybody else wonders what Pelf is doing.

Next was the blood smear. If you thought dripping a drop of blood onto the glass slide and covering it with a cover slip is an easy job, you are awfully WRONG. And so were we. As it turns out, the terrapin blood clot faster than we could line the glass slides, drip a drop of blood, and make a smear. So we actually really need an additional pair of hands. A friend of mine mastered the “art” of handling it herself after six-freaking-months. GREAT.

We used the cotton wool to drab some alcohol onto the puncture site so that we do not accidentally introduce any foreign objects into the blood stream. But we never GOT into the blood stream, remember?!

Some methanol. The only thing magnificent that the methanol did to me today was to effectively remove my nail colour.

We tried and tried and tried. But J got most of the blood because he was more cruel. I thought it was bad that we had to hurt the terrapins to get some of their blood for some tests only we human beings are interested in. But it was even worse when we had to do over and over again, at the same area because we simply couldn’t puncture the vein! *pulls hair*

So after a morning’s hard work, we managed to collect five-pathetic-hematocrit-tubes of blood samples and six-badly-made smears.

I need to get back to school.

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