amieheidi

Happy Birthday Ihsan!

Since she did it arh her blog when it was my birthday last year, it’s time to return the favour. So Happy Birthday Ihsan! Since you are all the way in UK, and I haven’t been baking, so nada cookies or brownies for you, hehe, but insyaAllah, if I find a cute card, I’ll send you one, it will be belated though.

This will be done in malay: moga diberkati umur and dimurahkan rezeki.

Hope I see you soon (see as in physically, not limited to MSN).

Languages again

There are times that I am glad I am born in Brunei, where Brunei malay is what I speak at home, and a mix of Brunei Malay and English is used to speak with my friends, and totally English when I speak with a few other friends and my lecturers.

Lapsing in Malay after speaking in English comes naturally. It’s not forced, and it’s just part of speaking. Though, there are times when I envy those who can speak in more than one language, those who are multilingual.

Despite learning a bit of French, and a bit of Japanese, I can’t call myself a multilingual since I have yet to master those languages. I was supposed to be mastering French already, but thanks to my own lack of commitment towards the language (and the lack of person to speak it with), I have to go back to basics. Aside from the numbers, and a few words, I can’t really speak French fluently yet. I left Japanese after form 5, never quite going back to it except for watching JDramas and animes, up to a point that I even forgot how to spell my name in Katakana, well, I thought I remembered, until a Japanese corrected my spelling.

I want to learn Arabic, though, it’s one of the languages that I felt I should master. Ironic that once upon a time, I don’t see the point in mastering it. Now, I think it’s the highest priority followed by French and Japanese or Japanese and French.

Lab Projects or Field Projects?

This is post #400. I missed posts #100 - #300.

I signed up for a lab project because I couldn’t stand the field, that was the main reason why I decide on a lab project at the first place, and then, the joy of doing microbiological work in the lab for the microbiology course, made me realise how I enjoy microbiology, at least in the practical aspect, gave me the reason to continue to do a microbiology project.

I really enjoyed the practical side of my project though, the media preparation, the spread plating of the fish on the media, incubating the media, the bacteria count, the gram stain, I really liked it. The fact that I’m working on sharks, whose odour may be unpleasant to many is challenging to me, as I’ve to endure the terrible shark odour.

I then went on to work at the chemistry lab for the fat and protein analyses, just like the first part of the project, having to extract the shark oil using soxhlet and determine the protein content via kjehldahl was something that I haven’t done before, for the past two years of studying chemistry as a minor, I never come across kjehldahl, and extracting the oil using soxhlet is not something that I’ve done before doing my project.

It was the waiting period that makes the job a bore, though. Waiting for the agar to boil before autoclaving, waiting for the autoclave to end before plating, waiting for the plates to cool before storing it in the fridge before use. I did use the waiting period to read research papers and do my assignments, though, so it’s not really wasting time.

But, I’ve to admit, it was during the waiting period which makes me ponder the lingering question in my head. Why in the world did I choose a lab project at the first place? Most of my friends took field projects and they seem to be enjoying it. One of them actually went to the sea for her coral project, another worked with flowers at the nearby Bukit Shahbandar. One of these field people remarked that, whenever they feel bored, they can just view the scenery, breath the fresh air, and then, after the boredom subsides, continue work.

What did I do when I felt bored in the lab? I remembered going online by nicking the LAN wire of the lab’s computer and connecting it to my laptop, using the university’s internet connection through the proxy using my username and password, I remembered feeling that I might go crazy soon, I remembered screaming to myself when I’m alone. When I have companions in the lab, we chatted to relieve the boredom in ourselves, but we couldn’t really chat all that much, fearing that we might contaminate our samples with the bacteria in our breath, even though we were wearing face masks. Half the time, we were shivering because the lab was not at 25 degrees Celcius as it was supposed to be.

The year before I started on my project, I helped my senior do his project at certain times. That was when I decided to do a microbiology project, because I enjoyed helping him.

When I had to do the field course last year in Merimbun, I chose a plant project instead of an animal project, simply because plants don’t move. You’ll just have to search for it. The then project supervisor, Dr. Shegun, asked each of us why we want to work with plants rather than with frogs with Dr. Ulmar. I don’t remember the answers of the others, even my answer, now that I think of it. Dr. Shegun said that most of us are choosing between two evils, and we chose the better of the two evils.

I chose my final year project before I even start my field course. Yes, the field course was very tiring, but I did enjoy it. I have to admit though, I didn’t understand half of what we were doing, because I haven’t taken the tropical forest ecology course at that time.

Some of my friends who took biology overseas did not have a choice, some had to take lab projects because they took human biology. I actually had a choice between lab or field. If I were to think more carefully, would I have chosen a field project? Perhaps, or maybe not. It is in the past, and I couldn’t really erase or rewind it.

Please bear in mind that I did not write this to discourage you from taking lab projects. I did not write this to undermine lab projects. Most of all, I did not write this to undermine microbiology. I was just talking about my experience and I found that though at times I did enjoy it, but at another time, I wished I was outdoors, be among the trees. Ironically, that’s what I felt when I helped the seniors do their field project once upon a time, I wish I was in the air-conditioned lab, wearing my spanking clean labcoat and my facemask.

Heart of Borneo Challenge

Received this in my email from HSBC. I am of course, not paid to post this over the blog, but since it involves the Heart of Borneo (HoB) which is a conservation project that other conservationists including myself totally agree on, I decided to post this here as part of supporting the cause.

The Much Missed Merimbun Part 2

On the wild goose chase, err quest to find Shawn’s tree, Dactylocladus stenostachys or its various names in Brunei: Medang tabak, in Belait: resangan, in Dusun & Tutong (my dad’s two mother tongues): teranjangan and in Iban: jongkong or merabong (names found in Professor Ashton and Dr. Hjh Kamariah’s book: Field Guide To The Forest Trees of Brunei Darussalam, which I bought from Dr. Kam last year for Plant Taxonomy, who knows that I actually use it for blogging?), two of the officers in Merimbun (one of which is a local to the area) brought us up to one of the islands that are present in the middle of the lake, called Pulau Silat (if I’m not mistaken).

It is not the first time for me to take a boat ride on the lake, as I did spend about five days commuting between the research lab to the field site last year plus the Conservation trip two years ago, but the thrill of boat rides at Merimbun was something that one could never get enough of.

I find boat trips in Merimbun to be the highlight of a Merimbun trip, see how pretty the lake is?

Anyway, went to Pulau Silat to find the tree, but we couldn’t find it. The tree was there though, once upon a time.

We didn’t find the tree, but I found this beautiful view of the lake.

I’m loving Merimbun,

Ignorance is Bliss and Curiosity kills the cat

Ignorance is bliss, true, but then, curiosity creeps the best of me, even though curiosity is said to have killed the cat. I don’t have cats (except the stray ones who love to sleep at my car’s hood, so not really mine), so I don’t really mind killing the cat to satisfy my curiosity. Don’t take it literally, of course. Why would I kill a cute feline even though cat fur is something that I am very allergic to.

That person who refreshes the page about five times minimum, I’m very curious of your identity. Are you a boy or a girl? Do I know you outside the blogosphere? Do I know you in real life? I figured I must have known you in real life, as a stranger wouldn’t have refreshed my blog that often, considering this is a personal blog.  It would be nice for you to leave a comment, give me feedbacks on the topics I discussed in each blog entry (even though some of them are totally random), or drop a tag in the tagboard and give me a clue of your identity aside from your ip address which shows that you are located in the University of Essex, Colchester, Essex.

Well, I do hope you will still visit the blog even after I made this entry. It is very flattering to have somebody willing to read the posts that I wrote, and refreshes often to see if I’ve made a new post. This entry is not intended to make you stop entering my blog, merely to satisfy my curiosity of your identity. So yeah, please don’t stop visiting this humble blog of mine.

Ah, how I came to know of you coming in a few times? Statcounter, the most essential tool of every blogger, at least for me. :D. Hope you don’t mind.

I don’t particularly like puzzles except for Sudoku and a couple other word puzzles like Scrabble, so please do give me easy hints, if you want to give me easy hints on who you are.

Edit: I think I just killed the cat, whoops.

Stop eating those fever-inducing food

Please do stop eating these for now:

DQ Ice cream - no matter what flavour, especially the Green Tea Cheesecake.

The stash of pulut hitam ice cream potong in the freezer (reduced to 4 because Alai decided that he wanted to eat it just now).

Jollibee’s chocolate pearl cooler.

Teabox Cafe / Kokoberry / Easyway iced pearl milk tea.

Any type of ice-blended drinks.

Ada rasa kan damam udah kan? So, please stop eating the food above for now.

Instead, do go and make some ginger tea.

On another note, I wonder why I can’t comment at some of the other blogs (like Atul’s), I submitted the comment, but it didn’t show up.

And aren’t you supposed to be on hiatus?

Well, someone clicked the refresh button a bit too often, without commenting though, so I felt bad for not updating regularly. So yeah, the updates are actually for that person.

The Much Missed Merimbun Part 1

Or should I have titled it ‘Beautiful Merimbun Part 7′? I think not. After all, these Merimbun photos were not taken during my brief 1 week trip last year, but taken recently, when I accompanied Shawn, Koichi and Sensei to Merimbun a few days ago.

Merimbun is just as pretty as it usually is. Not posting the other pics yet. Who knows when I’ll get another case of blogger’s block again?

Accents, Spellings, Teachers

I know I said I want to go on hiatus, but somehow, when talking with Ihsan on MSN, we first touched on the slight accent that I noticed most of my friends (including myself) have, which is a mix of British and American. British thanks to the teachers who hailed mostly from England and other parts of the British Isle, that taught us during high school and pre-university, and American thanks to the media in Brunei, where back during the days when Brunei only have RTB, RTM1 and RTM2, the sitcoms showed on RTB was American sitcoms (remember Family Matters, Full House, The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air?), while RTM1 is watched for the malay dramas, while RTM2 watched for the chinese dramas which tend to play around Maghrib time.

More American than British perhaps, because I remembered  once when mom brought me to visit her then lecturer, Dr. Florence (this was during the days when mom only taught English), when I was in form 5 perhaps, I can’t remember the exact year, I remembered her comment though, she commented that I was very ‘American-ized’, with the way I speak English mostly. At that time, I didn’t fully grasp on what she meant, until a few years later.

I also noted that I write mostly using British English spelling, but often with a mix of the American English spelling. It’s not only me who did that, one of my friends even commented that she write in British English, but speak with an American accent.

This convo eventually moved to teachers, somehow.

There was this Eurasian teacher that used to teach the both of us English during Form 2 - Form 3 (correct me if I’m wrong, Ihsan). I remembered not liking him at first, but then, he’s also my form teacher, so he sort of grew on me after a while, not just on me, but also to the rest of my classmates, bear in mind that at first, almost nobody likes him, though after a while, I see him getting along with the boys of my class too.

I then realised that for the whole time of high school up to pre-university, there’s not really a teacher that I don’t like. I do have my favourites though, that’s normal, everyone have favourites, but I never detested any of my former teachers. What’s funny is that, some of these teachers that I favourited, was detested by some of my friends.

Like this chemistry teacher that I once had, I’m not going to tell his name here, almost all my friends (excluding a few of us) detested him because at that time, he was very critical, sarcastic, and had a wry sense of humour. I like him, and like some of the few who likes him too, got along with him. Up to a point that, when I was at a wit’s end on which club to join for CCA (I was not present during choosing club day), I joined the club that he was supervising.

Though there is a teacher which I know everybody likes, everybody that he used to teach, that is. He’s a favourite of many. He even has his own Friendster page. He made pure maths and stats enjoyable. I missed his class a lot, and sometimes wish that most of my lecturers are as enthusiastic as him during lecturing. A female counterpart of him is an integrated science turned biology teacher. Everybody likes her too, and like him, she’s also a fun person. I don’t know if she has a friendster page, though.

Bah, back to hiatus…

Hiatus again…

Going on hiatus again till after the 17th.

See you after 17th!

If I don’t get blogger’s block.