pelf

WARNING: Lengthy post ahead. Proceed ONLY IF you do not mind (a) seeing pictures of me plastered all over the post AND (b) the sub-standard quality of the pictures. I do not have a scanner so I took pictures of the pictures instead.

Feli asked me the other day, whether the wardrobe in the hostel was big. I went through my photo album but could not find any pictures of the hostel room. But I “found” the following pictures, tucked nicely in the album, collecting dust. Hence the decision to let you take a peep into my Bachelor days. Bachelor, as in, Bachelor degree la..

This is the photo album I got for myself. I have seen how my seniors tucked their photos into a shoebox and I made a mental note that I must NOT do that. So I bought an album, and I chose one that looked like what I was doing..

So, one of the earlier pictures I had was this, which was taken at Sekayu Waterfall. It was our first sampling trip, and I did not know what to expect, what to bring, what NOT to bring.

The only thing we knew was that we were going to do water samplings. We were expected to collect water samples from the waterfall, from the reservoir, channel the lake water through a series of sieves (pic), collect samples in the specimen bottles and bring them back to the lab for further analyses.

In my first semester, we were all requested to take up an extra-curricular activity, which was worth 1 credit hour. And since I had no prior swimming lessons, I took that up. The person in the picture was my roommate from Penang. For those who didn’t already know, the girls’ and the boys’ pools were separated (I think they still are).

One of the earliest trips to the islands was to Kapas Island, organized by the Christian Fellowship. But some smart-a$$ed guy pushed me into the boat, and I sprained my ankle..

.. And was teased.. :(

The first time I was introduced to the turtles was when a lady lecturer (now my Supervisor) invited us the “new kids” to release about a hundred green turtle hatchlings. I remember going to the campus at night, unaware of what to expect. We have a little bridge on campus that connects the campus to the sea, and there is a gate in the middle of the bridge to prohibit access to the other side. The gate was locked and guards who were “safe-guarding” the keys did not seem to be around, so this lady lecturer led us to climb over the gate. I was like, “WOW, this is cool!” So we climbed over to the other side and released a bucket full of hatchlings..

The pair of hands on the left was the lady lecturer’s and on the right, mine :))

The first time the entire course “buka puasa beramai-ramai”, we went to this place called Sutra Beach Resort. The resort is located about 15 minutes from campus, and we all dressed up and had good dinner, after a couple of months eating crappy Malay food. After dinner, we proceeded to one of the “air buah” stalls and challenged ourselves to the gigantic orange + pineapple juice (pic).

Another picture to show how humungous it was. Apparently, if ONE person could finish that by himself/herself, the drink would be on the shop. Otherwise, we would have to pay for it, and it cost RM 35! There was a time when we had to pass the gigantic glass around and everybody had to sip a mouthful of it. And by the time we went back to the hostel, one of the Malay girls ran straight-away to the toilet and puked!

During the holidays, a couple of us went to Langkawi Underwater World for a self-initiated Industrial Training. The one in the picture was my other roommate from KL. We learned about the filtration systems behind the beatifully-decorated glass cases and we learned to bake food for all the animals on display – certain animals preferred certain sizes of food, and of certain colours..

In my second year, I initiated another training at the Turtle Sanctuary in Masjid Tanah, Melaka. And this time around, I brought my sister with me. We helped cleaned the big water tank that was housing a green and a hawksbill turtle, separated by a steel fence.

I celebrated my birthday in Pizza Hut, surrounded by (mostly) guys.. I seem to have more guy friends than girlfriends, at least in the university..

The above picture was taken at the end of our Planktonology (the study of planktons) classes. Somebody suggested that we take a group picture with the well-liked lecturer :) Note that during my time, there were only 20 students who came to do Marine Biology. But the numbers have been increasing since then. And our course was the only course where the non-Muslim students out-numbered the Muslim students..

In my third year, we still had field trips to go to. The picture above was taken at Tumpat, Kelantan, when we were there for a 5D4N field trip (I know the picture is not clear, but I have warned you, no?). We had to come up with an inventory of the mangrove trees in the area, measure the diameter-breast-height (DBH) of the trees, estimate the cover of the trees etc. And we had to plant 1,000 mangrove trees before we came home!

During my final year, I attended a workshop at the WorldFish Centre in Penang, and met a lot of scientists who kind-of encouraged me to carry on working on my final year project, which by the way, required me to go to the sea on full and new moons, deploy a few self-made plastic traps with artificial lightings and hopefully those traps would attract fish larvae/zooplanktons.

I also went to a Brackish Water Field Station in Gelang Patah, Johor, to test my light trap. I know, the light trap looks very funny and incapable of doing anything but that was only one of the challenges we had to face – namely lack of funds to support each Final Year Student’s project, lack of resources, and lack of time to experiment on different stuff.

There came a time when we attended our course nights organized by our juniors, instead of us organizing it. It felt great to be a senior, I realized, provided that the juniors treated you as one :) But juniors these days are really… *shakes head*

Last but not least, one of our last field trips was made to Kuala Ibai to collect specimens that dwell on muddy bottoms. When we got back, we were required to simulate the natural habitat and display our specimens in their “natural habitat”. And this was what my group came up with (pic).

And in case you are not YET convinced why I should stay in this line to save the turtles that are already critically-endangered, here’s why..

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.