To Bloom Like the Wild Flowers.

I must say it has been quite awhile since I’ve last updated this page. Reading Viequesguys‘ entry sort of reminded me I have this rarely noticed unspoken unheard blog that I once, well still own. From where I left off, it’s too difficult to continue…too much has happened although much of the time were repeated sequence of events – such as rambling on the fact that there was too much to do and too little time to finish (when most of the time we were just plain lazy to lift a finger to press them keys on the all mighty keyboard) or complaining out loud that one is fat when clearly, one could see bones jotting out of the skin – okay, maybe not that bad but amidst the awesome workload we had, there were much frowns and complains-most of the time, just for the sake of doing so, but there were many laughters and grins too.

To those that never understood what us biologists are doing, the following might give you an idea.

We were assigned to set out on a journey to any forests in our country to collect plant specimens. The rare ones are better. The flowering, fruiting ones are better. The difficulty of this assignment? – we cannot enter any recreational forests or protected forest reserves. In other words? we had to be like ninja turtles set on a mission being all green with awesome tools to work with in forests with no trails….

Did we become like one? well. partially. our awesome tools were some poles, secateurs, scissors, a notebook, pencil…no, we did not paint ourselves green.

In the end, we collected some nice specimens – in the sense that some of us had great flowering, fruiting specimens.  We were supposed to collect just ten specimens but the process of collection, drying, identifying, mounting – took us two months.

But gosh, that’s barely a quarter of what we’re supposed to do for one course. We had to remember the Order and Family names of at least 50 plant specimens, their relationship and taxonomical significance. Pretty nifty stuff but very interesting.

But say you ain’t interested in plants and you’re not particularly curious about the immobile creatures I find fascinating – surely, you’d be interested in little chicken?

Seriously.

Little chicken.

Chicken embryo

We had to do some experiments – understanding its developmental stages, i.e.: when organs start to grow, which organ(s) grow first, testing FAS (Fetal Alcohol Syndrome), etc. These experiments tested our carefulness – we were dealing with a live specimen to which its growth depended on our skills. We got really close to our “babies” – we had to incubate the eggs. We gave them names; X-men. lol.

Interestingly too, we spent much of our time studying the behaviour of animals. Why animals behave the way they do – is/are there any underlying reason(s) for their behaviour? Our targeted animals were the monkeys, the pigeons, and the mice. Thanks to this course, I sort of, could make out why my dogs (two males) fought madly over a really old bitch. The two males are no longer friends I’m afraid.

The highlight of the last few months of work I have to say would be our trip to Maliau Basin, KK. Not everybody could reach that basin. Not everybody could survive the terrain there. We were the few lucky ones that were financially supported (thank you so much Dr.Charles and UBD!). We spent one week in Maliau Basin Field Studies Center. I chose to be in the birdie group – we were assigned to record all the birds we observe and managed to identify. That one week was fruitful – from my point of view. I could identify birds much easier now. Above all, I’m very very glad that I managed to observe beautiful hard-to-see birds.

To some, we’re “pretty sad” people – because we barely able to catch up with friends, we barely had time to sleep properly, we did not chill out or catch a movie until our semester end. Yet some others, find us the few lucky lot that could and managed to get a little closer to God’s natural gifts. In truth, everyone could do what we’re doing but urban-designed comfort has created bodies that are not fond of forest-trekking or camping out. It’s tough living in the forest but it’s one breath-taking, fulfilling, priceless experience.

I saw. I heard. I conquered.