Young Leaders Summer School (Days 12-13)

Before I begin recapping the events from the latest days, I shall just reveal the answers to the questions I had in my previous post!

Shortest mating time - 3 seconds; apparently this happens for some of the animals in the wild such as lions and zebras because of concerns such as predators so they can't afford to take too long to mate since they are vulnerable to attacks during this time...

Longest mating time - 24 hours; this would be for, surprise surprise, the butterflies!

Shortest gestation period (for mammals) - about 2 weeks; this occurs for some of the marsupials (although I didn't really recall the zookeeper saying this but I checked on the Internet)

Longest gestation period (for mammals) - about 22 months; apparently this is the average period for some species of elephants...

Some other random and interesting (at least to me haha) tidbits (I tried to verify some of the more dubious ones on the Internet):

(1) some animals are of the "solitary" type while others are more of the "social" type and hence they are also kept in captivity in the same way so that they are in an environment similar to the one in the wild

(2) some animals have barbed sexual organs (OUCH!!!!!) such as some of the cats and also I believe the snakes (which have what are called hemipenes, one of which they use to attach to the female to hold her in position and the other for copulation)...

(3) for lions, it is actually possible for the lioness to bear cubs of different parentage as the eggs can be fertilised by the different males

(4) the lions sometimes kill the cubs so that the lioness can go to oestrus again and be ready for mating

(5) some of the gorillas had social problems and did not know how to care for their offspring and also how to mate. The solution? Nursing moms were brought in to show how they cared for their children and the males were shown videos on how mating was done lol...

(6) frogs lay up to 2000 eggs and some species of frogs (e.g. Surinam toad) have the eggs implanted on their back and the baby frogs hatch on the mother's back and seems like there used to be a species of frog (gastric-brooding frog) that used to eat its own eggs and the baby frogs would then hatch within the stomach and then come out from its mouth...

(7) the slimy skin of frogs is due to the mucus it secretes

(8) the determination of sex in many amphibians is controlled to quite some extent by the environment (known as environmental sexual determination, ESD, and this is opposed to genotypic sexual determination, GSD, where the genes determine the sex)

(9) for the stick insect, the lady emits pheromones for 33 days and if there is no mating partner that comes along then it can switch to asexual reproduction where she clones herself. Apparently this process can only occur for 7 generations because it takes out too much of the female though it sounds quite strange to me...

(10) the scales of iguanas can change colour due to emotions and environment (so colour-changing is not something unique to just chameleons)

(11) there was an iguana shown to us where we could see light through its eyes because apparently there's nothing between the eyes!

Ok, that's a lot of new knowledge! Time for recaps!

Day 12 (15th Dec) - went out for an excursion to Science Works in the morning and it was quite enjoyable, though I was disappointed that it was kinda rushed so I didn't have enough time to try out everything such as all the puzzles and this segment called Sportsworks which looked quite fun as it tests our body talents from flexibility to explosive power to hand-eye coordination and even grip strength. We ended off watching a video in the Planetarium regarding "Our Living Climate" and then were given an explanation on astronomy which I can't really appreciate because I just find it difficult to observe the stars (it's prob even harder in Singapore due to light pollution). Went to look around the shop after that and there were quite a few interesting books and stuff but I wasn't sure what was unique to Australia so I didn't buy anything. Ought to go to our Science Centre, Singapore, one of these days to see how it's like - it's also been quite a few years since I last visited it!

In the afternoon we attended a lecture on "Beyond Highschool" and it was pretty crap cos of the lecturer, which was very disappointing considering that he's been working in Trinity College for 13 years and was the Director of the Summer School but he kept digressing and seemed more interested in cracking mean jokes rather than delivering any substantial content and his remarks were also insensitive. It got so bad that we decided to leave before he was done because we felt that we had wasted enough time with him though I was too diplomatic to tell him off in front of the students but I will definitely give my frank feedback as I always do when I attend stuff.

Napped in the afternoon cos I wasn't feeling well and in fact throughout the whole trip I was not in perfect condition which was extremely irritating. Started with a persistent ulcer then had a sore throat and seems like now I have a bit of a cold...

Night activity was "Cultural Night" and most of the students were dressed up except for ours but I guess it's cos they were performing a skit so they dressed simply. Anyway the performances generally weren't great though there were some decent ones such as the Indian dance which was more authentic and also energetic though sadly too short and I thought Ngee Ann Sec's performance was good also - simple and sweet - with a rendition of Singapore Town and simple dance moves. SRJC's school dance was uhmmm... I think nothing compared to our orientation dances and I'm not being biased here! Oh, and the NASS kids were nice to encourage our kids cos we were first up amongst the 3 Singaporean groups as they cheered, "Go Meridians!" Nice kids and I always had a good impression of them from the students that I've had and am having from there =)

Our own performance had much room for improvement admittedly cos the kids barely rehearsed since our discussion on Mon and some of them felt that they embarrassed Singapore but I thought they did a fair job and also the Powerpoint slides were quite decently done and quite cute. They were kinda let down by a lack of mikes and also the audience which were too noisy so they couldn't express everything clearly as they intended to but at least they felt bad about it instead of feeling apathetic because they were trying to get out of not performing in the first place but we felt it's not nice since everybody else was performing. Our second video would've done better with subtitles but it was quite good also and it was done by one of our students for her N.E.Mation entry...


Day 13 (16th Dec) - had a talk on mentoring students in the morning which was just so-so cos I kinda mentor students also so there weren't much new stuff. After that we went out for an early lunch cos we were quite sick of the food in the college and went to this place called "Don Tojo" on Cardigan Street as it was recommended by one of the mentors. It was not bad and the food was relatively cheap as compared to other meals in Australia and the salmon I had was quite ok but somehow there's something lacking though I couldn't put a finger to it...

In the afternoon we went for the lab session entitled "Murder in Melbourne" which was in the genetics lab which we thought would be interesting but it was just so-so to us cos there was nothing to do and some of the stuff were quite basic such as analysing cheek cells and the other stuff we saw were quite simple like how to use the micropipette and some simple purification process of protein using droppers to transfer fluids so there was nothing technically difficult or unusual. Was kinda draggy so we left earlier and I went back to have an afternoon nap cos I was feeling more sick...

Woke up for dinner and we eventually settled on eating out since some of the kids were going out with their mentors anyway. The plan was to go to Sydney Road for some cafe that a mentor recommended but sadly it was closed early for a Xmas party so we wandered along the road for some time before landing up by chance at Tibas Lebanese restaurant which is apparently highly rated from what I just checked out but we didn't feel that way and the service was not good (we were not served water throughout the entire meal despite having asked a few times!) Food was just ok as we ordered 6 mixed grills to share amongst the 10 of us and most of it was lamb so I didn't eat too much as I only ate the chicken.

Came back to the college after dinner cos we didn't want to go and watch Narnia with the kids, which was what they were going to catch at 9.30pm as a cohort so it would end very late, and I decided to come back to rest... Ended up listening to some K-pop while watching some videos on Youtube as I tried to find out what's with all this craze about K-pop with the kids and while I found some of the songs catchy, there were many by the popular groups (such as SNSD and Super Junior) which weren't that great though the dance moves were good and I'll give them that...

Ok, finally caught up with my blogging at least for the trip. <70 hours to our flight back to Singapore! =)