15 days from now, I’m officially going to be a sophomore college student and I know that I wasn’t really able to update anything about my acads during my first year because I was too busy adapting that blogging became the last thing on my priority list. I also lost a gadget just a night before Paskuhan (sucks, right) so I didn’t have the opportunity to take any pictures for the whole second sem. Microbiology and Parasitology (MCR-PRS) was one of my courses last sem and I super duper enjoyed the whole lab experience although it was really tiring and I admit there were a lot of times that I felt down because I kept flunking exams and performance tasks.

The third photo was taken by my blockmate Pau and I used my groupmate Angela’s iTouch to capture the other photos so I give credits to them! Keep reading to know the stories behind them:

i. The specimen looks really beautiful isn’t it? It looks like a vintage wallpaper, but it’s actually bacteria from the armpit of a person who-shall-not-be-named!

ii. We performed antibiotic susceptibility test and the one in the photo is poorly done yet this was one of my most favorite activities because I was amazed with how it’s done and how the results are perceived. The bacteria that we used is the one in the last photo :)

iii. They all look so colorful but don’t drink it because it’s actually agar! You use these to help grow the bacteria you want to observe. We did biochemical tests using these colorful agars to know some of the characteristics of the bacteria.

iv. The last photo is definitely my favorite experiment that we did. Because I will become a future food technologist, it is very crucial to achieve food safety. We performed a bacterial count in food products. My professor made us choose one streetfood and my group chose calamares. We were able to count a significant number of 46 colonies in the third plate with a dilution of 10^-3, amounting to 46,000 bacterial count. The group that obtained the highest number of colonies was the one who picked the fish ball sauce and I couldn’t remember the exact number but their plate was really dirty just after a day of incubating. After this experiment I really became more cautious on eating streetfood. My courses really influenced me with how I eat. This photo was taken after a day of incubating in the incubator and I think 3 days after storing it in our locker lol.