Busy week

Heck I wasn't that busy but I was actually.. This was my schedule, there were a few more addition to the events lined up.

Those are basically the essential stuffs, the additions are the extra-curricular you can say, from Ecosoc and guest lectures.

The flowers above was taken Thursday I think. Cause we finish at 3pm that day so I decided to have a walk around campus and take some photos of the flowers blooming. I wasn't that interested at first but Mom and Dad wanted to see them since it's spring - yes people, it's already SPRING!! :D The start of life after the harsh cold winter :P lol

The scary looking alley has that barred door on the left.

It was really weird to find this right in the middle of nowhere, the Goonhilly Heathland area. It looks like a cell ruin. That's what I heard at least. I didn't have the guts to actually go in a bit deeper to see the cell room  if it really is one. To give an excuse for myself it was a dark alley and I was wandering around there all by myself - got a bit bored waiting for the demonstrators to identify the grasses, so I went for a little walk.

We went to the Lizard again for our weekly field trip on Wednesdays. Maybe I should've put these pictures first before the flowers to go by date but oh well, am too lazy to change them lol. It was such a sunny sunny day! But the winds of course won't change. We were supposedly gonna be able to see some Choughs - a black bird that had been successfully been reintroduced there. But we only see Jackdaws and Crows, which are also black birds, so it was kinda frustrating. Our demonstrator Paul decided to do some 'Chough sight hunt' and a small group of us went with him to go over the area where they are nesting. It was quite a walk - a HIKE to be exact. Bad news was we didn't see any Choughs, not that we actually reach the breeding site since we don't have that much time before heading back to Campus. Good news was I get to see more of the Lizard and I got some photos for my collection :D And we were told last Friday that the deadline won't be end of March, but end of APRIL!! YAY!! I was stressed as I won't have enough time to make my collection pop out if the deadline wasn't changed. I hope I'll be able to now.

And then yesterday, I went to Penzance for the Marine Life rescue Training.

Bubbles - the fake Dolphin

posing as lookouts lol

Calm sea, good for dolphins - you can barely make out St. Michaels Mount on the left horizon

Releasing Bubbles back into the sea

It was AWESOME! I didn't know what to expect really. It just sounded interesting at first so I signed up for it. It was well worth it! I also bought a wetsuit specifically for this, for 20 quid lol. And to sum up the whole thing, we were given a certificate for the completion of the training. What more can you ask?? Excellent day it was. To make it better, Shamsa's dad came to visit last night as he was around europe for some business so might as well pop in here for a bit, and he took us all out for dinner at an indian restaurant called Asha restaurant in Falmouth, which is really sweet of him. I wasn't gonna go cause I was a bit dizzy from the cold sea maybe but I took some panadol and deal with it lol. Had some 'chicken Tikka' and 'nan breads' with curry, yum~ No regrets there. He's only here to visit for a bit. He already went to London this morning but it was nice to meet him last night.

As for today, me and Santi will have a walk to Swanpool and the Pendennis Castle :D And the weather looks promising. So yeah will update again soon-ish. Got a test on Tuesday and no class on Monday - time for revision, I know it's a last minute one again but I did try the mock exam questions so it'll be alright ;) Adios~

Carn Marth!

Heya~ Haven't been posting lately. I was just too tired from Uni and when I get back I just wanna lie down and watch a couple of movies. Have been watching a lot of them, I watched King's Speech just last night. It is a good movie, you can relate to what he's going through. To those who haven't, I would recommend that you do. ^^

So we went to Carn Marth last Wednesday. I was such a pretty place! Too bad it was really cold when we got there. EXTREMELY at that. It was like an assessment thing where we have to identify species on our own with our groups and present a species list to hand in by today. And so we did :D Identified about 102 species! Ok I only know like the basic ones, most of them were ID-ed by my group mates. But hey at least I'm getting better at the ID-ing bit ;p

The view from above of the Open Theater

The stage bit of the theater

The seats bit - all natural e

The big lake

Love the green view

The smaller version - a pond

The monument-y looking old building lol

Thankfully the sun was out near noon so we get to feel warm in the end. It was a good trip. Would love to go there again when the flowers are in bloom ^^

Yesterday, nothing much was going on. Me and my group did the species list in the IT room and I went to the Exeter award thing - "Planning your CV" talk. It was ok-ish. Wasn't that interactive but a lot of useful information though and handouts of the examples of a good CV.

Then today, same-o same-o ; lectures, the walk and the debrief on previous trips. There was like an international thingy in the stannary though. Tiqah was in charge of the Bruneian booth there. I went there and help out a bit. There was a flag-painting booth next to us and the African Booth the booth after. The African Booth was really going well. They cooked African food and sell them and they put on African music and such.  Would love to try the food but they're not halal nor vegetarian so too bad. We only have like 'kuih sapit' to offer. Would be really good if we had prepared like our traditional foods and such. But it was great all the same. Got Brunei's flag painted on me :DD

I love it. The person at the booth next to us did it - Susan I think her name. It was really detailed, the red emblem I mean. She did a really good job. Of course she graduated with a 'Fine Arts' degree so of course she'd be talented.

Oh I forgot, I didn't go to the Nocturnal walk in the end. Cause I won't get transport back home and I have a field trip at 9am the next morning so I decided not to. Hmm I asked Sally (the one organizing the volunteering  works) to contact me if someone bailed out from the Monkey Sanctuary volunteering tomorrow. So I might be going there tomorrow with Tiqah. Hopefully she messaged me really early cause I need to catch the bus so we'll see how it goes. Till next time~ *needing a break from uni :p*

National Day Cornwall Celebration!

Heya~ So yeah we did the celebration yesterday. There was a celebration at main campus but honestly we're in a bit of a strict budget so we didn't go so we made a small lunch celebration cookout! :D We all met at Tesco Metro to get ingredients (the 4 Bruneian ladies in Cornwall). Too bad the fresh seafood shop was closed on sundays so we didn't get to make the infamous crab dish BUT . . we then get to have the honey-blackpepper beef. :D

Ps: I'm sorry that you have to endure looking at the mouth-watering dishes below :P

The main dishes:

Telur goreng extra special as it was made by both Tiqah and Dina ^^

Honey-black pepper beef =9 made by Dina

Tom Yum made by me 

 The 'kudap-kudapan' :

Apple + sambal kicap belacan

Cucumber + sambal belacan by Dina

 The dessert ( western desserts) :

Scones which hungry people teseliur before actually cooking

My oreo pudding turned ice cream haha

Strawberry coated with chocolate by Tiqah

Rice and the dessert section

The finished products! Well presented - me thinks ^^ Worth all the hard work! Dina and Tiqah did most of the cooking though so all the credits go to them *clap2* 

We were all bloated after all that food. Glad we did it. So HAPPY NATIONAL DAY BRUNEI! ( All the colors of our flag :D )

All-in-all it was a nice weekend. Today nothing much interesting happened. With one exception, it was actually SUNNY today ! Me and Cally ate our lunch outside at the garden benches. The bad news is I slept in both of my lectures thanks to sleeping late last night *sigh* I'm being such a bad student. I think I should drink coffee every morning now. AND I need to do my field diary thing and finish it by Wednesday for inspection. AND I need to pick a collection theme to present to my lecturer on Wednesday as well. Tonnes of work, too little time. Might do the 11pm Nocturnal Walk tomorrow if I can afford it. We'll see how it goes. So till next time.. need to start on my diary thing. Chao~

Volunteering at the Monkey Sanctuary!

Yay! Another productive day! I was late for the bus for this trip cause the bus wasn't that frequent today and also I should've taken the 41 bus instead of the 2 bus. That would've saved me from being late :/ but oh well what's done is done. Alhamdulillah the bus waited for me though. The journey took longer than I expected. It was said on the e-mail that it would only take us an hour and a half but it took us 2 hours (the bus driver went on the wrong road) but there were a lot of new sceneries so I don't have much to complain.

Just realized, it's not actually the right path but you get the rough idea how long it was

Got this from google - the bird view of the Monkey Sanctuary

We can barely make out the outline of cages and the house there (from the above picture).

Here we are!

All ready in my wellies, still got dirt on me :s

The enclosures are a bigger than what I expected 

Pretty too - nice runways interconnecting the enclosures

Seh Ling was there too

So as Cally ^^

These are some of the monkeys open to the public: 

One of the Wooly Monkeys

Black-capped Capuchin

Another Capuchin

Wooly Monkey - My first time seeing a monkey eating GRASS

I was working on this post last night but I fell asleep *typical me* so I'll just continue where I left off. Don't mind the date. This happened on the 26th of February ^^. I just woke up and WOW my body's so sore! - especially my back. Thanks to shoveling mud yesterday or was it due to sleeping on the uncomfortable chair in the bus. Seriously it hurts so bad.

Ok enough of me whining, straight to the story - when we got there we were give an introductory talk on how the place started. It was formed in 1964 by a monkey-pet owner who studied about them more so than the average pet-owner. He/she then realized that monkeys are wild animals and they need their social life instead of being kept in cages alone for years and years hence set up the sanctuary. The pet trade is the main danger for primates especially the cute little monkeys like marmosets and squirrel monkeys. I was surprised at how bad it was, even London apartments have cages in them to keep their pet monkeys! Man I guess that's no surprise actually, as monkeys are cute of course some would take them as pets. Not sure why people would want the big ones though but yeah people have their own preferences. But yeah there are at least 5000 primates being kept as pets all around UK - not counting the small cute ones as no license are required to keep them, unlike the big ones like capuchins. So we can only IMAGINE how many are there being kept in houses or apartments all around the UK only, not to mention Europe and everywhere else! Monkeys are smart creatures so imagine humans were kept in cages all their life, how would you feel about it? The monkeys in the sanctuary all came in the state of poor health psychologically and physically. Dental problems, diabetes, abnormal bone formations, over or underweight not to mention high stress levels - all were victims from the pet trade as of being put in cages and being given inappropriate diet. There are 26 present in the sanctuary now and most are healing well and living quite happily in their own social groups. But if the pet trade is not stopped, there would be no end to this. Ah I forgot to mention, the law says that it is completely legal to keep them as pets. I personally find that absurd. They should ban the primate pet trade altogether - be ethical and think of what's best for them and not us.

Being all protective there :) But it is true and we should raise people's awareness on this matter.

One thing I'd thought I'd never had done - I ate ham yesterday, pure accident of course. We were provided lunches and they were hand made sandwiches, I took the one labelled 'tuna with cheese sandwich'. It looks a bit weird cause there were veges in it but I trusted the label and ate it. But then I didn't taste any tuna so I checked it and ask Cally if it looks like tuna to her and she said it looks like ham. I was SHOCKED and froze for a bit. I stopped eating and threw it away. I honestly didn't know what to do but mom said, "tawakkal saja . . apa buleh buat." so that's what I'm doing. Moral of the story : Don't be too gullible and check before you eat.


Then we head out and do some shoveling. After that made some enrichments for the monkeys to make them active and keep them interested.

We reached Tremough at about 6.15pm, thankfully there was a bus there to go to Falmouth but I had to pay £2.60 as it was past 6 and it's the weekend so no student discounts. Jolly~

We're gonna have a cookout afterwards here with Dina and Tiqah for lunch so I'll update on that later.. Tata~

Long Depressing Days.

It's been raining a lot this past few days. And a lat was going on in Uni, I mean classes and activities and such. Fuh~ The reason why I haven't updated my blog for a while, cause I'm tired at the end of the day. I'm just gonna put everything in before I forget now. So . . . on the 23rd, last Wednesday, we went for the Swanpool and Gilly rockpool field trip. It was all sunshine that I just wear thin clothes, as is I didn't wear my coat, just a hoodie.

A lady feeding the ducks

Hungry ducks lol

close-up on a coot!

Coot playground :p

Swanpool Lagoon - rain?

Gilly Rockpools

The tides coming in!

the misty looking background was actually the rain :s

 Loovve the weather at the rockpools~! *sarcastic mode* haha the rain started pouring when we were waiting for the minibus to go to the rockpools from the lagoon. We could've just walk though instead of waiting and standing in the rain. One good thing is that I get to use my binoculars :DD And the coots were really CUTE and FUNNY! They actually come up to us ( that's how I got the close-up picture ), maybe waiting to be fed lol. But we don't have food with us at the time :/ We've pretty much given up ID-ing stuff in the rockpools, thank to the rain my books are ruined . . AGAIN! *sigh* 

Begedils!

YUM~~ First in ages

Where'd all the potato go?? Just the shell's left hmm

Santi made the begedils that night. It was painstaking but worth it. Thanks Santi! Made my depressing day a lil' bit not depressing ❤

Then yesterday was a long day as well from 12pm to 8pm! Not as bad as Cally though, hers start at 9am!! We just have class and a dry lab session on intake rate again. Which reminds me, I have a thousand word report due on Thursday, need to start soon! And we had our first BeeSoc talk! Which is why we end at 8pm but it was so much fun! Berny the Beeman gave a talk about bees and how he kept them. It was really interesting, full of interesting facts. The one thing that spoils it is that there are people in the room next door making a hella lot of noises . . which was really annoying cause I can't hear Berny clearly. They still made a lot of noises even after Andy (our Zoology lecturer last term ) told them off ( at least I think he did as the noise died out for a few minutes ).

Then today, rain~ ~ I don't know why it's always raining when we do our Group Walk, but at least we did it early and some of our usual paths are blocked by construction sites so saved up our time lol, Which is good as it started POURING by noon. It was still raining at 4pm. How depressing not to see the sun so very often anymore. And we learned on how to identify the footprints of doormice and woodmice. Complicated processes, didn't know that it could be that bad. And I skipped the Ecosoc Talk on dragonflies, not in the mood.

Anyhoo that's pretty much it, looking forward for the volunteering trip to the monkey sanctuary tomorrow!! Hope the sun's out, amiiinnn~~ I should be sleeping now as I have to be on campus at 9.30am tomorrow. Toodles~ ^^