Infinite Miracles

We've got one last report to do before the semester ends, which is on animal behaviour. I think the subject Animal Systems will be better for me if it focuses more on animal behaviour rather than on agriculture. I know there are countless of people asking what do I study in this course? I think I will only explain Animal Systems as everyone should know what Biology, Chemistry and Zoology are.

Animal Systems is an Agricultural Science subject. We did a little bit on animal welfare, but most of the things we studied were about farming or pasture management, horse management, poultry, beef, dairy cattle, sheep and pig industries. It didn't really interest me much, not until the very last part of it which was about animal behaviour. We watched interesting video clips on animals and learned to observe their every movement. This module was the most interesting part of the subject. Love it!

So about the report, we had to do it in pairs and we had to observe and record the behaviours of any one animal. I paired with one of my closest coursemate, Meaghan (knew each other since orientation). At first we wanted to observe the geese at a park near her house, but it's a rainy week and the geese might not do much on rainy days. So we changed our mind to observe penguins at the Melbourne Aquarium.

We were required to observe for 3 hours but can split it into several intervals. However, I think we didn't observe for that long though. Hehe. The penguins are so CUTE!! In the enclosure, there were king penguins and gentoo penguins. The king penguins are slightly smaller than emporer penguins but they are still relatively fat and big and make me want to hug them so much.

We saw keepers feeding them. I wish I'm standing in their position. Who wouldn't want to be surrounded by cute and fat and clumsy penguins?

We managed to identify quite a lot of behaviours like scratching, preening, sleeping, swimming, vocalising, flirting, eating ice and even as simple as walking, resting and chasing. Now we have a hard time to actually describe their movement. Like, how do we describe this preening movement? Twist its head to the back and peck its butt?? @@" Or this. Bend its body and scratch its head with its toenails like a doggie??

Or when they were courting. Take a bow and say "I love you" ??
In the meantime, we went for a bottom glass boat tour. We went behind the scenes where they prepare the food and also where divers dive into the aquarium. The level below is where the visitors will pass by the aquariums. Now I know where they get in. Lol.

Then we went on to a boat to see the fishes from the top. They have names for the sharks and stingrays. Wonder how they recgonise them? One of the stingray doesn't have a tail which means it is defenceless, so it is the friendliest stingray in the aquarium. They said this stingray was found near the shore, already lost its tail and it's nicely cut. So they concluded that it was cut by a farmer or someone else.

This tooth belongs to a shark named Michell. Divers picked them up when they were cleaning the aquarium. It was quite sharp. Can use to stab people. Lol.Then, we went to looked around. A super big crab. Jellyfish.

Boxfishes.A super big lobster. Forgot what's the name.We didn't finish walking the whole aquarium because most of the time have already spent on the penguins and I had to go back before dark. So we left at around 4.15pm. It's so inconvenient when the sky gets dark so fast. =(

I took a picture of my dissection this week, the northern pacific seastar. It's easier than the snail one although it's a bit tiring when cutting it. Can see the stomach at the center (right one).

I've got a free AFL ticket from FOCUS. Although I'm not a sports fan, but they say it's an experience that you must have in Australia, so I don't mind joining in the crowd since it's free. Lol..

We planned to take the train from Gill's place to the city, but there wasn't any trains and trams available because of maintenance. So we had to depend on Gill to drive us straight to Melbourne Cricket Ground with the help from her GPS. Luckily we reached there just in time. There were traffic police in the car park to direct and tell us where to park. All the cars were parked nicely and systematically in a line. Before this we were still thinking how to find a place to park in this crowded area. Lol.

It's a match between Essendon vs Richmond. This was my first time entering a stadium. The opening ceremony was a bit grand with all the fire and performances. The pictures are a bit blur.

The other side of the stadium was more empty than this side. So here we can hear more of the cheerings, scoldings, yay-ing and boo-ing.
There were seagulls flying in and out of the arena. A lot of them landed and sat there just like spectators. So cute. The camera cannot zoom too much. So can only see the seagulls as white dots in the picture.

Luckily I wore winter clothing jacket!! It was super cold sitting there doing nothing. During the half time, all of us moved around and took pictures. Felt less colder after that.

Me and Gill. Don't know why she always won't smile too much when using my camera, but smile harder when using her camera. >.<

Me, Len and Miley. Len is a super hot korean tomboy studying physiotherapy. Miley is from China and she's studying hospitality. Sometimes I have to listen harder when she is talking to Gill because of their chinese accents. @@.

Me and Alvin from Malaysia. Can see that he can crack a lot of lame jokes by looking at his face. lol.

Me and Asher. He's taking mandarin classes and said it's super hard to write chinese characters.

Asher: "what's auntie in chinese again?"

Me: "ah yi"

Asher: "no"

Me:"yi yi"

Asher:"no".

Then I blurred for a while, thinking what else.

Asher: "oh! gu gu?"

Me: "oh yea! gu gu is father's sister"

Asher: "oh really? I thought it's maternal side."

Anyway, was I correct? Scared I taught the wrong thing. @@

Me and Joel. He's studying business. I always get neck pain when I'm talking to him because he's 180++ cm tall, so I have to look up. @@. He laughed when I told him that, then he said "maybe I'll sit down, so I'm the one whose getting the neck pain." lol...

Me and Anna. She doing double degree. One is linguistic and the other I've forgotten. Don't think that she's a nerd, she's very sporting though.

So the winner team was Essendon! Yay!! (for fun)

The highlight of the day was actually at the end. We(me, Gill, Miley and another girl) can't find Gill's car!! Not only us, but a lot of other people can't find theirs too. LOL. We've spent over an hour walking round and round until my body was super warm after that. swt... In the end, me and Miley were the ones who found her car. We also heard some people who found their car shouting "our car!! hooray!!" Luckily not only us. Haha...

By the way, I dissected a snail. I missed escargots.... T.T

This time, the victim belonged to a category that's impossible to have my sympathy. On the other hand, it should sympatize me who have to dissect it! I hate you! Bloody cockroach! I've got goosebums whenever I looked at you through the dissecting microscope with your big eyes looking back at me. @@"....

It was harder to dissect the cockroach compare to the earthworm. The lesson "pick a bigger one" that I've learnt last week was not applicable. It's just too geli for me. It looked a bit better when I cut off its disgusting hairy legs and wings. Then opened up its tummy and removed its fats. Didn't know that cockroaches have fats too. Lol... Luckily this dissection and the drawing were not assessed.

At night, there were heaps of food at FOCUS, maybe there were more people cooking and some people went camping. Glad that my appetite wasn't affected by the cockcroach. =) So full yesterday....

Nothing particular this week. The only thing that I can blog about is the earthworm dissection in zoology practical class. Luckily the earthworm was already dead, if not I will have problem dissecting it because of the word "sympathy". I surveyed around to see how other people dissect first and they did it nice and fast. Oh no... how can they looked so proffesional!?

I asked my friend sitting opposite of me whether she had done any dissection before and she said: "Yea, three times in high school. One was bull's eye, the other one was sheep's heart (I think I heard this because she speaks very soft) and I forgot the last one." No wonder they were so experienced. @@ What about the greenhorns like me? So this was my poor earthworm.

I cut a bit to the side instead of directly above, so the organs' positions and my drawings were a bit different and I didn't know that until my demonstrator told me. Before this I was still thinking why mine looked so weird. At least I didn't damage any of the organs.=)

This was Gill's earthworm. Her demonstrator wanted them to cut the whole earthworm.

Lesson of the day: pick a bigger one next time as it's easier to cut and draw. Anyway, I haven't seen such long earthworms before as the longest I'd seen before this was no longer than half of my finger.

It was a social night at FOCUS, so no bible talk and, instead, all we did was just talking to each other the whole night. Actually there were two activities for us to choose which were sports or fondue. Because they only had footy and volleyball which I have no interest at all, so I chose to relax and enjoy chocolate fondue!
There were marshmellows, bananas, strawberries, oranges, apples, grapes and some candies. I ate a lot of bananas. Lol... Super delicious dessert.

Next was the ladies high tea. Actually it was just a normal tea time snack, but didn't know why they named it until so grand. It was held in a house-like cafe. It's decorated like during the olden days in England. We had scones with jam and cream.

Lorelie, me and Anna. I have difficulty pronouncing Lorelie's name. @@. She's doing her final year in speech pathology and Anna is doing her final year in nursing. So many people from health science department in FOCUS. Kate, who fetched me here. She's so good at driving manual car. When the car died, she just restarted it within the next second, and balancing on a slope looked like nothing to her. I still remember how I suffered on the slopes when I was learning to drive. pengsan...

This is Eleanor a.k.a Nell. She's cute and funny and trying to learn simple mandarin.There even has a gallery showing all the olden time ragdolls. Sometimes I find the dolls a bit scary because of one horror movie that involved this kind of doll long time ago.What is Toy Stories doing here?

It's getting cooler and I'm starting to have problem getting out of bed in the morning and also starting to dislike bathing. Lol...