Day 145: Tuesday 29th of March 2016

Day 145

Tuesday 29th of March 2016

D-DAY! Got to work early (or at least not late) to set up before the start time for today's workshop.

Good thing too as it took me 15 mins to get the projector working.

One of the other guys in the office asked if he can do an introduction to insects first, OK sure, no skin off my nose, although somewhat bizarrely the slides were in English... why did I translate mine?

The office was quite cosy with the 16 people in the small office and eventually I dropped the air-conditioning from 25 to 18 to compensate.

The powerpoint presentation went off without a hitch, although there was a bit of laughter, something about the translations maybe? Or possibly the transliterations of the insect orders. The presentation went faster than anticipated and I decided that we should just skip to the next activity... although everyone else decided to stay to schedule and have morning tea albeit early.

The next session was inspecting samples and learning to use a dichotomous key. This went surprisingly well as the lao staff I had shown how to use the key explained it unprompted (as i hoped/prayed) , although people had a habit of putting their books down on the specimen containers they were meant to be looking at. This session also ran fast and ended with an awkward 40mins of nothing happening.

Lunch was good and held for the 23 people in the 16 person course (hey...wait..). Schedule was again adhered to despite the early lunch.

Final session went great, it was a pile of printed pictures of insects that they had to sort onto the name of the orders and everyone one got involved. Managed to convince some to try to use the microscope and keys to identify some insects, thankfully the guy in the quarantine jacket attempted it. 

Ended the day with a 4 question multiple choice quiz with pictures of insects and the choice of 3 orders. Most got 4/4 although some got 2/4 with a quite a lot putting the fly in the cockroach family. It was open book, co-coperate and I intentionally made the alternative answers obsured...

Finished up about an hour early.

Headed home, made a phone call to oz, then headed over to Burger Kong for dinner....which was closed... So had bento box instead.

I finished my bento box and had left over crab stick meat (or something like it) so I took it home to feed to Batshit he flinched, sniffed it, nuzzled me, then sat down facing away from it.

**** you Batshit.

The calm before the storm