Everything In a Popiah: Chemistry In The Rain.

Chem is for Chemistry.

I wrote the title of this post before leaving the content part blank for almost 3 weeks.

I was really really busy. With all the dance club stuffs and the 3D competition dragging my dear feet, I almost suffocated and left to die. LOL.

For those who was in the same class with me during college, you would have remember Mr Kok, our hottest Chemistry teacher EVER, brought 10 of us to MCD - Malaysian Chemistry Department, right?

And now, back to Form 6 in Seafield, I have another chance to visit MCD once again! YAY!

On the 28th of June 2009, we 6 Elok, the whole class was given a chance to visit MCD in conjunction of their 100th anniversary. Whoa. I was kinda struck that there's actually a department which is twice older than Malaysia. And it was supposed to be in June, but since the Prime Minister wasn't free that time, so it had to be dragged to July.

That day, we had to skip MUET second period onwards, which is around 12.30pm for our lunch break so that we can get ready for our trip by 1. It was Kristina's birthday that day, and we had a surprise for her, in collaboration with her boyfriend who also came to celebrate with her in the canteen.

Approaching 1 o'clock, the sky starts to pee. I mean drizzling rain.

And it's a bad news because, we have not even got onto the bus. And most of us are umbrella free.

We somehow managed to run to the pondok-pondok near the security guard pondok, fighting pass the strong drizzle. Well, everyone was partially wet, but not so wet until u can feel it in your underwear, yet.

While waiting, me and Keng Wei sorta had lots of fun singing out

'Meli~~ SAAAAAAAAAAAAAA~~'

by alternating the tone and so on. He did the lower tone for the 'Meli' whereas I'm the one who did soprano with 'ssa'. Haha. The best part is when Chia Yen joined it, don't know why and did the 'ssa' part with me.

I tried out with Yein Lu and Chia Yen's name too. But nothing beats Melissa's.

We had to stop when the rain was pouring heavier and people call us to stop singing.HAHA.

Then, the rain somehow miraculously went lighter and the teachers (Pn Poh and one more don't know who) came, running towards the bus, which is outside, far away from the main gate. Really far. So we just followed la.

As we were walking, we can feel the rain has got bigger drops and are dropping more and more. We were speeding up our steps on the wet tar road as the drops kept hitting our head more and more. WAAAH!

Someone sang 'Rain rain go away...' Kevin Lai of course. Then some joined in.

Then, when we reached the bus, HOLY! The driver's gone! The bus was parked there.

The rain was raining like the normal rain, heavy rain la. We had to run to the trees at the other side of the road for shed. But the trees were botak. So many branches but yet so few leaves. The leaves are small. I don't know why we ran there, because it just doesn't change the fact that we were going to get wet. I think it was just for the sake of psychological help that, we are under a tree, so we won't be THAT wet. Still, rain splattered on us mercilessly.

Under the tree, someone suggested bringing out the labcoat. We had out chemistry practical that day. And probably someone saw me having my labcoat in my recyclable non-woven bag. Fine. I took out and everyone hid under it. We only hid our head in, our back and butts were outside in the rain. Haha.

While feeling the weight of the labcoat increasing, Pn Poh made a phone call to the driver. HE WAS IN THE CANTEEN! WAT DE.

We saw him, running towards the bus, under an umbrella, dry and unwet. ==

urgh.

We got onto the bus. All extremely wet. For those who wore pinafore, like me and didn't wear camisole underneath, like me, can feel the transparency. And sexy. watever la.

Then I said somehow, 'Men looks sexy when with water.' It was a quote from Ouran High School Host Club though. Haha.

This is the proof.

Many girls put down their hair because they nid to try it. I put it down when almost reaching MCD though. It was around a 20-min drive in a bus there. Now I know Chia Yen is very obssessed with her fringe. She kept drying her fringe under the air cond of the bus. =.= Not other parts of her hair. Feel like taking a pair of scissors and *cut cut*

Upon reaching the MCD, we walked on quite some distance before coming to the main entrance of the MCD. It started to drizzle again! We ran again... And someone, a guy, which I don't remember who was it, kept hitting onto the poles beside the road. I meant the short ones. There's this lady attendant called the 'USHERER', padahal it should be the USHER. Which reminds me of USHER, a singer. LOL.

We passed through many dining tables, which is under many those maljis tents, before arriving to the main reception area. Apparently they had this Majlis Perasmian earlier before, which is held in the morning. And we are just the invited visitors from some of the selected schools. =)

After registering, we came to the main lobby of the exhibition, with a free goodie bag (1 ballpoint pen, a notebook, a handfan, a flyer, and think that's all) we were then given a sheet of questions on things we gonna see on that level of exhibtion. Haha.

Goodie, goodie.

First, we came to some DNA identification methods stall.

What the hell man, they even had this so called DNA game which connects parents and child. The parents are like celebrities, like Jack Sparrow, Professor Snape, Kiera Knightley... The kids are random baby pics.

Lessons learnt :

There's such a thing called the FTA card which holds DNA of a person, like blood, liquid, or cell scrap. FTA card is like your plain piece of paper, but, it has anti-bacterial functions. And, it's safer to handle it than handling the raw blood specimens, because raw blood specimens may be contaminated with HIV, herpes or anything which is contagious. Hmmm...

D8S1179 represents chromosome 8 and D21s11 represents chromosome 21, both of the alleles may be same of different. XY is called the amelogenin. FGA is the chromosome which compromises 1 from the father and 1 from the mother. Twins has the same DNA profile, so only by fingerprinting is able to separate both of them.

Then, we went to some security stall.

They have this so called VSC 6000 (looks like a printer to me, only slightly bigger) which its function is to detect frauds in documents and signatures and many more. The one shown in the exhibition was the first in South East Asia. USM is going to buy one for their own. And normal people like us can't afford to buy one of those machines, because one of those would cost a few bungalows in KL!

A man shown us how to detect frauds in altered documents like cheques, contracts and so on. There are sooooo many security features in a piece of new RM50 note.

Credit cards, IC and also our simply laminated P licence too!

Lesson learnt :
There are just so many security features in a RM50 note (new design). From scattered security fibres to holograms, some of them wouldn't be able to be seen by normal eyes, under normal light. Some of the features only appear under certain angle of certain light. Microprintings can only be seen under high power of microscopic lens. == if only common people like us would bother to know what are the security features, we bother more how to earn an RM50 man!

There are different chemical composition in different colour and brand of pens. So if somehow a person wrote over your value with another pen brand but of same colour, the VSC6000 would be able to detect it. One under light neon colour, one under darker neon colour. Fuiyoh.

In P licence, Wei Hong took out his to try out. He was like 'My card got fibres!' Security fibres, he meant. L licence has a tiger in the middle.

Credit cards. Visa has a V at the label. MasterCard has a MS word in the card. American Express has AMEX at the card also and moving holograms strip which is like a short movie at the back.

Some other smaller stalls there...

Lessons learnt :
Pirated discs has their small little code number (SID code) erased near the middle hole of a dvd or cd. The codes are labels for the company/machine which produces the disc.

During fires, firemen or forensics will start to investigate fom the least damage places to the most damage places. The place with the most damages is where the fire have started. Houses like wooden houses makes investigations harder coz, everything just burnt off and there's nothing left to be seen. Haha.

Etching solutions are used to remove the chasis numbers on chasises/ engine la. I think. However, the chemistry department has their own way to detect the original number again, though it was already etched away. LOL.

Ketum are boiled with water will create hallucinating effect after drinking the water. And to help make ketum leaves easier to be brought around, they are grinded into powders and mixed like coffee.

Opium are made into heroins and codein. Heroins are refined opium which is white. Some businessman would add chalk to it so that it's more porfitable. Codein are found in cough syrups.

Then we went to the industrial department. We submitted our answers and got a small keychain. Our group got seperated because of the questions. So left me, Melissa, Woei Yaw and Wei Hong.

We took the lift up to the 2nd floor but didn't want to go because it was the water exhibition. So we came to the 3rd foor - Industrial department.

Nothing much about the place except that they show some stuffs we can get outside and how are they categorised. They have a whole place for artifacts and old chemistry apparatus. It was kinda nostalgic and impressive.

Wei Hong got obsessed with the dodol they were giving out that time. ==

We went to take some quiz and get some prizes. We 4 also answered. And my gift was the best among all - Clothes hanger.

_|_

We went into the place with the spectrometer again. Missed my college trip. =)

4th floor was the Food Department. Wei Hong's heaven.

We saw lots of things in there. Food. When the lift opened, the smell of food rushed instantly into our lungs. HAHA.

Lesson Learnt:

The dried prawns looked like real undried prawns, don't they?

Chlororampericol is a carcigenic substance which can be found in you food. Please beware of imported ones, especially China.

A refractometer is a small machine used to test the amount of sugar contained in a food. In the exhibition, it is tested that coke has the highest amount of sugar, then pepsi and even tropricana twister has a a fair amount of sugar too. And surprisingly, 100 plus has the lowest sugar among most drinks tested there. ==

Red cabbage is a good pH tester.

Military food has the high amount of preservative. Their food is more express than maggie mee. Even a nice bowl of curry can be done by just adding hot water. Their biscuit is rather hard, but tasty to chew on. Yum. And their menu names are rather semangatly named. Like Menu Gerak Tempur. Lols.

Beany..

Wei Hong is extremely childish when he's hungry. That's what we knew.

Back to the ground floor.

Urgh. Curry Puff, some kuih and bandung.

After that it was already 4pm, and we had to meet up in the dining place to have short tea break provided by the mcd.

I have got 4 clothes hanger, some pens and a few flyers with the notebook which was already written down with some notes to be written here in this blog post.

We rested a while before heading back to the bus for our trip back.

When we were walking back to the bus, there was this big building there:

Keng Wei suddenly yelled,

"Poh Ping! Poh Kong!"

Blast him.

And then we had lots of fun while going back. Like taking pictures of our sleeping friends. And somehow, the most precious one is Keng Wei's because his sleep only lasted for a few minutes, and woke up just after Sophia took his sleeping face. LOL.

Love is Cinta (6E version).

We even had fun when we passed the Avon building. Woei-Yaw was sleeping and we were joking about him. Jordan made this stupid weird ad for him, as an ambassador of Avon company. We laughed until our stomachs burst.