Wednesday, January 2, 2008
haiz....
school started already...
went to school today with a sick body and an empty mind
first thing to do was to get my watch back from nik
haha.....left it there when i went over the other day
due to my stupid eyesight, cannot see joash waving to me in the canteen....
made a fool of myself....haiz....what a great start to the year
went to class, which was at the top most level of school
it takes so much just to walk up 5 stories from the canteen....wtf
i sat under the fan....somemore hte top levels very windy....
=damn cold
class went by quite fast....new home tuitor....
nice guy....quite fun to be with...i think
break = go down 5 levels to eat and climb up 5 lvs to emo in class
it seens that i left one insect vial in my bag while at EAGLES camp and spent the time looking at it
not much happened today....only that i was feeling unwell in the afternoon and became lazy to walk out to the main road and took 132 change to 163 to go home
got home at 1545 have lunch and fell asleep....
thats just about what happened today
time to post my EAGLEs reflections for day 4
enjoy....
......................................................................................................................................................................
Day 4
The same classic music woke me up that morning and washed up to start a new day of insect catching. We went for the morning run around the paddy fields for our morning run. The run was going well until we did a turn into the path between two paddy fields. The path was overgrown with grass and touch-me-not plants that cut at our unprotected legs with their spiky stems. The grass was wet with morning dew and as filled with seeds that stick to shoes and socks. Walking in this path and those that followed was the same experience as they were also overgrown with grass and touch-me-not plants. Walking on the path made our socks wet in dew and covered in grass seeds. For those not wearing socks, their legs were covered in the marks of the touch-me-not’s spikes. After walking on that path for ten minutes, my shoes were soaked in dew as the dew from the grass brash onto my shoe and when into it. Walking with it, as well as soaked socks, I could feel the water being squeezed around the shoe and made my trip back very unpleasant. After we walked back to camp, I quickly took off the socks and shoes and hanged to my slippers to prevent my foot from rooting in that wet shoe and developing smelly feet.
During breakfast, the group decided to use that day to finish taking photos of the insects and photos of the places we caught the insects. We were approached by the survey group during breakfast to look for people who were free that day to help their group. As I did not have to take pictures that day, I joined the survey group and aided them in their quest to map the farm. Breakfast was followed by a quick shower to wash off everything I picked up during the walk.
Helping the survey group started with a briefing at their base area, which was inside the house area. We were told to use some formula to help reduce the time needed to take measurements of the farm. And we headed out with measuring tape, which was one hundred meters longs coiled up into a head held role, and a bearing device. We went around to the dragon-fruit plantation to take measurements of the plantation and the road leading to it. We had to hold the tape down at one point and pull it so that it reaches its mark or the hundredth meter, whichever came first and record down the bearings and length of distance travelled. This went on for the whole morning and we went round the plantation and took down the distance travelled before returning to camp with a bad sunburn on my neck.
Lunch was followed with labeling of the pictures taken by the group while I was gone. As I have a vast knowledge about insects and helped both insect groups indetifiy the insects we caught, I was assigned to label all of the photo taken. I sat in the cookhouse surrounded with insects to aid me in the identification of the photos and the insects. I was checking the book that we brought and my earlier research to place a name onto the insects we caught. Even with all these, there are some insects that I cannot place a name on because I have never seen it before, even on the mass media. I had to name a few “some beetle” and “some bug” to some of the insects. As I was naming the insects, my group leader was busy making the power point slides for the following day’s presentation on our findings and the insects we have caught.
The day went by quite fast as there was much to do in a short time period and we rushed the work. I helped out the photo taking after I have labeled all the insects they have taken in the morning. I got to see how the pictures were taken. The insect was first moved into a zip-lock bag and held flat beside two rulers to take the size of the insect into account. The insect is held in place by someone applying pressure onto the sides of the zip-lock bag and holding the insect down. A photo is quickly taken from the top before we flip the zip-lock bag over to take a photo of the underside of the insect. This went on for all the insects we caught until we have the a softcopy of the whole collection. The photo taking ended just in time for the evening activities to start and we packed up the insect filled area to get ready to get rifting.
We had to put on life vest again for this water activity and we were each equipped with along bamboo pole about two times my height to push ourselves forward while on the rife. The rife were ether a one man rife or a four man rife and we ether group up with three other to take the four man rife or go sole and take the one man rife. As I prefer the one man rife, I took off with my bamboo pole and got onto a rife. At first, the rife I got was a rocky one as the logs were not tied together tightly and was moving under my feet. Five minutes into my ride, my leg fell in between the logs and I fell into the water. At that point in time, my boat also turned over and I had to get under the boat to turn it back into the correct position.
After trying out how to move the rife around, I tried to move around the pond area to visit some of my friends. What followed was a chain of events that led to me trying to get everyone into the water. It started out when went into a four man rife filled with girls, one of the girls who could not swim started to scold me and I smiled and left them with the intention of pushing her into the water me. Soon, a few guys banded together to try and sink one of the four man rife and the girl filled one was the target with me leading the attack. We caught up with them and started our attack on their rife by splashing water onto the girls. Soon I got too close and the front of my rife went under their rife and it made their rife tilt away and this scared the girls. Soon I gave up the attack and when to have fun with the other four man rife which was filled with three guys and a girl. They saw my attack on the all girl rife and wanted to stop me by pushing my rife down with their poles. But my broken rife was amazingly slow sinking and it gave me time to balance myself and avoid falling into the water. I counterattack by jumping onto their rife and bouncing on it before returning to my own friendly rife.
This went on until there was a war to get everyone wet and in the water. The girl’s rife was the first target again as everyone tried to overturn the rife. I again jumped onto the rife and bounced a little before returning to my own rife and scared some girls off into the water. Soon, everyone, even me, were soaked through and were searching for people who were still dry to wet. One girl who was alone on the other side of the pond was still dry and was being hunted by everyone to get her into the water. I joined in the quest by due to the earlier events, I was tried and could not row was fast as I could and when I was half way to the girl, she has already jumped into the water herself to save herself from us. As I was unable to push her in, I carried on the chase until I was too worn out to push with the pole and jumped into the water and drag my rife towards her. By now, she was at the end of the pond, a fair distance from the shore, running away from me and I was walking in the water to reach her. After I finally reached her and she was ready to fight me off with her bamboo pole. But after all the jumping and walking in the water, I was very worn out and decided to be a gentleman and bring her back to shore by tying my rife to her rife and pull her back to the shore.
What followed was an hour of playing in the water and many group photos taken while we try to cram as many people as we could on a four man rife. A mini fighting match was held on the rife as two people tried to push each other off. Many tried but in the end, one defeated all his challengers and stayed on the rife for the longest. We did many more things in the water and soon I felt that I was going to get off and go and bathe before getting some dinner and returning to do some work on the computer. I got out of the water and got my clothing before heading off to clean myself of the river water. When I finished my bath, I was amazed to find my friends still playing in the water.
Meals there were getting better as I was getting used to the food served there. Dinners were the best meals I had at the camp, most likely because I am is hungry after the day’s activities that I just eat anything on the plate. Dinner was followed by my group leader trying her best to finish the power point presentation before the leaders meeting that night. I was there to help my leader in any way I could. After the leaders meeting, I was told that as I was very informed about insects and their interaction with the environment, I was the best person to do the presentation. We were also told that our presentation will be in the morning and every group in the camp will watch us present once in a shift system. We have to present five times to five groups of people and inform them on what we have been doing for the past four days. But after the group talked things over, it was decided that everyone will do the presentation, but I will be first to present to let the others know what to say.
We worked until 1200 in the morning before I went to sleep and get ready for the following day’s presentation.
haha.....quite short day
thats all.....
died at
21:27
