THE JOB ......... in partial detail ONLY :D

(the cages .....)

(autoclave machine in the background and me in PPE)........don`t even fiddle with this EXTREMELY HOT machine!!!without wearing heat - resistant gloves!!!

The place where i worked inside nanyang technological university is called the animal research faculty or ARF in abbreviation. Basically, the job scope was to ensure cleaniness, hygiene and of course , taking good care of the research animals there.Speaking of it, there is only one kind....mice. Basically, the faculty contains 8 animal houses, each containing around 80 cages to house them. And at the end of every week, i and the rest of the stuff there had to clean those cages and prepare new ones. Although not all of the animal houses had to be changed . Only those instructed by the management stuff there. And if there are dead carcasses in the cages, there are preserved by keeping them in a medicool fridge at around 4 degrees celcius to keep them from rotting away. Before they are placed in it, they are sealed in air-tight carcass collection bags. Strict procedures are observed there too, before you step into the work area, you will have to wear a set or PPE which includes, sterilised latex gloves,shoe ,head covers and face mask. After which you must spray ethanol onto the gloves and shoe covers as well. Anyway, what you see behind me is a autoclave machine, used to sterilise the cages . This machine uses high temperatures to do so , up to around 520 degrees celcius, for around 1 hour 10 minutes.However, the cages are not placed directly in it. They are wrapped with special kind of paper that can withstand high temperature without catching fire and i don`t know what kind of paper is that! never mind....

The dirty cages are placed in an high speed automated washing machine called the I.A.W.T-INTEGRATION.AUTOMATION.WASHING.TECHNOLOGY.Definitely a complicated name for such a washing machine,right?But it really does it`s job well , high pressure hot water spray from it`s nozzles attached to the walls of the machine with a rectangular compartment. Inside the compartment is a huge metal rack where the cages are put.For the the two weeks from 16th march to 1st april 2009, excluding the weekends, i had been cleaning the cages , wrapping the newly washed and dried cages , putting them into the autoclave machine and assembling the parts of a cage.The parts comprises of a rectangular trough, clip-on cover and sipper bottle(who do not need water to survive?)First, attached the cover to the trough and put the bottle into a small hole at the front of the cover, that's all.Almost forgot, a wire mesh also must be placed on top of the trough before cliping the cover on.

I also tried to handle the rats by placing them into their new home(just a new cage..). And this is the first time i am doing that, kind of nervous , tightening my grip on the tail of a big white mouse, i finally did it! Wonder what will happen if i let go? No way! cause i am being surpervised!!

What do i learned from this two weeks of work ?hardship. Why is that so? cause i have been walking around and standing from 9am to 12pm, 1pm to 3pm and 4pm to 5pm.I do not even get a chance to sit down. And for two whole weeks.Now i know how hard is to earn money.....