Awesome Microbes Carnival (19 & 20 November 2015)

Assalamualaikum w.b.t.

It’s been few days after the much anticipated “The Awesome Microbes Carnival”.

I will now write my reflective journal upon the event, covering the period before and after the carnival; from my point of view.

I did mention about this carnival during the first week of Semester 3, in my first entry. Ring a bell? The one that Dr. Wan suggested during semester break.

Well what do you know, it’s actually happening. To me, everything went well. I had loads of fun! :D

PREPARATION FOR THE EVENT

Before the event was held, there were few meet up’s involving the whole Microbiology students from first year until final year, even the lecturers and lab assistants were there to listen to a little brief about the event by Dr. Wan.  

There were also few meetings involving only the higher up(s) and committee in charge.

(My name was actually randomly picked and put under the “Social and Activities Committee”.)

I don’t intend on joining the event by being one of the committee but I do want to contribute to this event either directly or indirectly.  I think it’s a good opportunity for me to learn a thing or two about handling an event. Even just being in charge for the activity part.

It sounded easy and simple, right? For me, it’s not because we have to think and discuss on what activities that would be suitable and at the same time fun for the visitors.

Also we have to consider about the target visitors, which is primary and secondary school students in which we have to lower down our ways of thinking and try to imagine being in the students’ shoes on things such as questions for quizzes; whether they can answer it or not and etc.

It was a fun experience for me because as far as I can remember,  I have never handle the activities of an event, so being a part of this committee gave me a “sneak peek” on how to do it.

We have to know the things required for the activities planned, how many activities, the layout, the rules of the activities and prizes to be given if the visitors won the activities and etc. We have to make sure everything was planned well in order to avoid any unwanted circumstances that day.

It was fun preparing the props for the activities too.

Over all, it was a fun yet informative experience.

From the meetings that I have attended, I also managed to learn a bit on how to plan an event such as the publicity and logistics scope of works, and so much more.

APPRECIATION POST

The event has officially ended. I was partially sad and partially happy. Sad because it ended but happy because the event was successful.

First and foremost, I would like to thank Dr. Wan because without her, this event would not have been done because she kept on planning it although it has not been approved yet. Haha. So confident!

The venue which is Panggung Percubaan was set up well. Kudos to the logistic team to ensure that everything that was requested by each committee “comes true” by supplying us what we needed. Especially for the activity team.

I think we might have requested the most since there were eight activities and each one of them requires different things such as petri dishes, cardboards, double sided tape and etc.

Also, most of the things that we habe planned were successfully done. For example, the Golden Tunnel (I don’t know what is the name of the tunnel showing the achievements of scientists involved in our field. Hehe. I will name it Golden Tunnel like the golden years of Microbiology. Right? Right?) During one of the meeting, Dr. Wan suggested on doing the tunnel  but some of us said that it’s actually quite hard to do it and might require a long time, so the plan for tunnel was actually uncertain. I myself thought that it’s not going to “appear” on the event day.

However, much to my surprise, the tunnel is actually there! And it was reaaaaally beautiful!! I like—I love it! It was simple yet fascinating at the same time. Kudos to the people who was in charge for that part.

The food was good too. I  tried all of the foods. Not only to support my own seniors but also because everything looks good even when I am not hungry. And for a moment, I feel like I’m in my own “wonderful world of microbes”. Haha.

You know, like everything is made up of microbes and revolve around them, including the foods. So it was interesting. All the food was based on microbes such as doughnuts that are made up of yeast, mushrooms and cupcakes with microbes art on it. Also, there is this drink; actually there are two drinks that particularly took my attention during the carnival. Which is the Kombucha tea (I hope I didn’t get the name wrong) and “lactogurt”.

The vendor for Kombucha tea briefly told me about the contents and function of that drink. From what I remember, the drink contained enzyme, bacteria, yeast and something else that I couldn’t put my finger on it.. The drink taste carbonated and also you can taste the yeast strongly. I actually like the drink while others don’t really like it. He he.

I offered to most of my coursemates and their face went “blerrghh what is this?!” hahaha. I guess our tastebud don’t really match.

The other drink which is lactogurt contains bacteria and milk. It taste sooooo good! Like a yoghurt drink you bought from the supermarket. I asked one of the senior that made it because it is actually their project for their GM course. And he said that they really fermented it. 

I don’t believe it at first but later on I did. It was unbelievable on my side but also amazing. Haha. I didn’t know it was possible to make yoghurt using bacteria for real in our laboratory.

I want to try doing it in the future too!

What I Learnt During The Event

1-     I can brush up my skills on how to approach people; to invite people to play at the game booth where I’m in charged on. The target visitors were broad, if I must say myself. I had to greet primary students, secondary students, elementary students, university students an their instructors. I remind myself to always show a bright face and explain to them properly how to play the games.

2-   I was able to interact with the first year students that I still don’t have the chance to know them. Since my game booth are just beside the first year students poster section, I was able to recognize their face more. The male students were easy to detect since they are just few of them and they often played darts at our game booth. I can see that they are friendly bunch of kids. “Kids”. Haha. The female students too! First year students were assigned to take care of our game booth if we are not around during our  poster evaluation.

3-   I was able to interact with the seniors that I usually saw around the faculty. I made friends with some of them during the event. At least, I hope that if we cross path at the faculty, we can smile to each other now and I can differentiate the seniors from other courses in our faculty. They are really friendly!  

4-   For the whole two days, being with my Microbiology course “big family” and surrounded by everything related to microbes; especially the foods! Made me feel like I’m in the “world of Microbiology” for a little while.  It was unforgettable for me! I really like the environment surrounded by microbes related things. I would really like it if we are going to have it again in the future.

5-    I learnt that teamwork is very important. As long as there is teamwork, things should be fine as there will be people supporting us no matter how critical a situation is. For example, there are days where some of the third year or final year students have classes and the others have to cover our absence for a little while.  Like the saying “the show must go on”.