Hm. Whee. First lab for Gen Bio today.

So... we were told we were gonna make beer and observe bacteria.

First, the beer.

To be exact, *we* didn't make it, the lecturer did while um... about 5 lab assistants... helped. Which kinda made me think. How many people does it take to open a can of malt and hops concentrate...??

(One lecturer and about three lab assistants, apparently. C'est bizarre.)

It seems that the beer will be done fermenting by our next lab session on Wednesday next week, during which we can bottle it, and after it's bottled, it'll be ready to drink in six days, but it can be stored in the bottles for up to 3 months.

And the most interesting thing is that this whole home fermenting kit can actually be purchased in Singapore! Except if you start making the stuff, you'll have to get a license for selling alcohol. Which my lecturer says costs just ten dollars, so you could probably recover what you've spent by brewing just one batch of beer. (23 litres of beer)


Bacteria was quite interesting to look at.

I remember the last time I was supposed to look at cells in Sec 2; we were supposed to scrape cheek cells from the inside of our cheeks and put them on slides and look at them, but I never saw anything and to this day, I think all that I managed to get from the inside of my cheek was just saliva. :P

They gave us yoghurt culture to look at. And we were supposed to stain it and observe it. But later some of the lab assistants walking around told us to make a new slide and *not* stain it, and that way we'd actually be able to see them moving around.

They're actually kinda cute. Tiny wriggly things that bump into each other as they go about their business. ^_^

And now I have no idea how to explain the answers that I have for my assignment. Sigh...