Marathon: 2nd of 15 parts

Thesis, adviser, and co-advisees; Ichthyology and immunology; No permit, brown-out: how they almost destroyed it; Death of fishes; The hammer and animal rights; Tabbada thesis

My thesis is about fish--Oreochromis niloticus, more commonly known as tilapia. I used Vitamin C as immunostimulant (something which boost the immune system). After 30 days of control and vitamin C treatments of 48 fish, all of them will be vanquished (killed). And that would be this coming Thursday. Tests such as cell counts (of particular cells) of the head kidneys and blood will be conducted. Phagocytosis of yeast would be cute. My thesis adviser is ESC. She's good, brilliant, and nice. I'd say she's the perfect thesis adviser. Although I am one of her first advisees at IB, she's quickly making progress. She's always there to update us, ask about how's the fish. I wish more of my instructors in the past, especially in my first 2 years in college were like her. (Unlike AJ who was my Chem 16 lab instructor. If only she knew how much a negative influence she made on me. That was my first chemistry course and she made me hate chemistry to the bone. Nasty. Ask me for more details about the first lab report. More details revealed if only you'd inquire about it.) My co-advisees are KS, JP, and PL. I would like to express my gratitude to KS for feeding my fish. We alternate with the feeding. I am along this last week of feeding. Sigh. That makes me go to school everyday, even on both days of weekends!

Last Thursday, there was I came to school to feed my fish. Unfortunately, there was no class and I can't work according to the lady guard and Kuya Noel at IB main. In just a few minutes, electricity was off. Sweat. Sweat covered my body and I rushed back to Animal House 2 where the fish were, looking for the assistance of my dear thesis adviser. She went there and was able to convince Kuya Noel to let me work for the day. And so I was allowed to weigh fish feed with a balance (analog) which does not need electricity for its operation. I weighed 6 sets x 12 pcs. = 72 of ~ 2.5 g fish feed. That took me about 2 hours. When I finished (about 12:45 P.M.), I hurried back to the lab to feed my fish. Alas, one more fish died because of cannibalism at tank 2. (When I went to the lab at about 10 A.M., only 1 fish was dead at tank 5.) So why did I weigh a lot before feeding my fish? It's because I do not want to take the risk again of not being allowed to weigh feeds at IB 116. I planned to go school during Wednesday to weigh the feeds and attend the seminar on malaria. I didn't push through because of my painful right foot, which will be given more attention in this blog at Tripped @ bus stop. Enough of the sadness.

Ichthyology and immunology. That would be Bio 119 and Bio 151. Perfect for my thesis on Fish Immunobiology. What a coincidence! Along with the seminar (Bio 196), I am primed for this semester as a scientist. I guess this welcome into to the pure science world would not last long because of my incoming stint at medicine. Worth of mention is my instructor at Bio 151, WLR, which was a choice as thesis adviser. Recalling, he rejected me since he was already handling 7 advisees at that time. You, yes you, who are reading this may be one of them. But I do not hold a grudge against you since all regarding my thesis is flowing smoothly.

It saddens me whenever a test subject dies, even if they are fish. I consider them different from those which I have eaten. Something's just special about them. Basically, I do not want them to die because of the effect on the statistics and the veracity of my future conclusions regarding my undergraduate thesis. I wanted them to live forever. And that was left as an idea. When I came back to the lab during the afternoon. I saw KS's fish--dead. And it was a good half of them. They were placed on a pale green basin after blood smear were done from them. How they were killed? I'll give a leading clue with 2 words: brutally, hammer! This is a clear violation of AR, which I doubt is being upheld in the Philippines. If clear violations of HR are seen and action is not taken against them, how much more on the AR of fish? This is okay here, in the Philippines!

The Tabbada thesis. How I wish I knew about it earlier. It would be fun doing it in a thesis. Plant stimulation by touch. It is somewhat related to masturbation. The correlation became more evident when our professor, RAT, demonstrated with his hand movements. Simple and happy thesis. Simply funny.