For the first time in my entire life, I am now an owner of a study desk! I know.. pretty late in the game, considering 20 odd years of my academic career have gone by but I'm a closet karang guni, I am - its a table left behind by Prof B when he cleared his lab out, an old 80s wooden table small enough to fit into my room while still leaving some room to walk about. As a matter of fact, I'm not really in the closet, so to speak, everyone knows! One of the nicest things I've picked up was an old wooden sign with the words "Department of Zoology" painted on it. It used to hang atop the doorway leading to the Zool. Dept office back in the days when there was no such entity as "Department of Biological Sciences" and the Zoology and Botany (Departments) were two different units. That must have been decades ago.

In any case, I saw it sitting in the rubbish pile back in 2001 when labs in S2 (including mine) were getting a major face lift. It looked nice (good quality wood!) and I thought it would make a nice souvenir marking my days at the uni so squirreled it away at the other lab. Now the sign sits atop the second door leading into ecolab. I brought it back when I returned to the spanking new lab and showed someone my 'treasure'.

Someone: "Nice! Let's hang it in the lab!"

Me: "Um... It's mine, I picked it up from the dump, I'm going to take it home"

S (probably not heard me): "I'm going to get the drill. Where's a good place? How about the spot above the door?"

M: "..."

So this is how it has come to pass that ecolab is now the last hallowed ground of what remains of the Department of Zoology, which is a pretty nice touch since everything else in the department is spanking new or renovated and all traces of DBS's previous incarnation have been removed by relentless renovations and everything is so spanking modern and new. Lab 6 is gone, the aviaries are gone, the garden was an aquarium and of course, I'm not so old as to remember when S1A didn't exist! Hurhurhur.

We also joke about Boss being the head of the Zoo department because the Department is a one lab outfit!

Durian coming out of my ears

It's worth it!
Originally uploaded by island_girl

This is what I was up to last weekend.

I can't wait to go another round before the season is over!