Introduction to the blog

I think I don't know who Topper is - is it you Christopher?

A Friendly Welcome to New Comers!

Hi all! Welcome to all the new comers in the Wildlifers blog!Do blog and share information with us here!

Ka Han

On Tamu Gadang and Supervision

Dear all,
I was listening to Datuk VC before he launched the Academic Expo yesterday. He was saying that some supervisors thretened their students i.e. whoever involve themselves in Tamu Gadang activities, the supervisors will cease supervising them.

Now, that's a foul-smelling threat!

However, I wrote an email to my students saying that they shouldn't wait until I decide to abandon supervising them. I was referring to my students who takes my advises in emails and in this blogs lightly. This is my way of supervising them, apart from our dedicated meetings or appointments. Therefore, I still mean it. It had nothing to do with Tamu Gadang.

Things involving student's activities (under the flag of Student Affairs) takes similar conditions - and I was referring specifically to Mohd Aiman whom I know is organising an international trip to Tarakan, Indonesia. Neither me or Hafiz met with him to discuss about his proposal before he actually presented. This is a no-no. I wrote a blog post to the effect mentioning about the trip to the Snake Island in October. Because Aiman is working in a tag-team with Cindy (a matter we agreed in Tawau), the team must be in a tag to get it to work, no two way about it. And I still mean it. Frankly, Cindy will be able to execute her work even without Aiman in the field, but for an undergraduate project, this will be a waste of resource. We don't have all the money for the luxury of individual projects. Also, time is not a cheap commodity.

Guys, I need to be grumpy coz' I'm getting old - but I promise that I will not be your grandfather!

Take care now.

Hamid.

Letter to Sabah Wildlife Department

Feeza, Izwan, Marly and Yene,

I have written and signed the letter, now availale to be taken from Pn Gomera at IBTP. But I need a summary of your research - each of you will write synopsis, the length should not be more than ONE page and should not be less than 3/4 of a page. It can be written in BM. Now, I need to read them before you send that letter.

A synopsis is a short description of your project that describe the objectives, methodology, study area. All in text form of about 3-4 paragraph.

Send in your synopsis as soon as you can so that you can have the letter sent as soon as possible.

Get cracking.


Hamid.

New members - Welcome!!

Dear all,
I have invited five more students to join this blog today - All of Anna's students. So, guys, whenever you're in, I'm saying welcome and happy blogging!

Hamid.

Posting emails

Dear students,
It is incredible to see how you guys write emails. We cannot talk because there is always some distance between us. So, writing letters and now, emails replace this situation. I.e. it is like talking.

If you are writing an email, please "talk" in the email. Say what your email is about. For example, if you were sending your proposals, tell me that you are doing so and that you require my help to read them and you hope that I can make some advice to make them better. Then, say thank you. Add some politeness. Show some manners. Show people that you are friendly and worth talking to. This is the thing that is called "communication".

You don't want to be like cashier girls at supermarkets. You can do the transactions without saying a word!

Please, I'm not like that, I think I am a human being and deserves to be treated like one.

I'm sorry I have to say this. I wish I could say more. My message is, please learn that there are a lot more things in life and it can be wonderful if you can start learning to live this world. I never asked you to write me in english. But if you did, I can correct some of your mistakes.

I am not angry, I am giving advise because all of you are under my supervision. It is a part of the job!

Hamid.

Welcome to Wildlifeshadows, Dr Fairus!

Dear Dr FJ and all,

Welcome to the blog! We are among good people here, don't worry. It is, I think, at the early flying stage and sometimes later we should be able to see more contribution that can actually assist all of us who supervise or being supervised.

Enjoy Wildlifeshadows!

FROGGING IN KLIAS

Dear all,

Mr Ahmad Sudin needs 2 guys (blokes, not sheilas) to help him catching frogs in Klias swamps tomorrow night. This is voluntary, Zoo Negara needs some live specimens for SEAZA conference end of this month.

So, two blokes, please. If you are interested, Ahmad leaves tomorrow afternoon and you might be sleeping in one of the huts along the bridge - now completed through the swamp up to the village on the other side.

Hamid.

reinvitation

Guys,
I have reinvited Anna, Dr Fairus and Hafiz to this blog. If you guys know any of their students, I will be pleased to include them here, too.

Arisa, please could you send the email address of your students so that they can be here, too.

Hamid.

Azmi Abdullah & Mohd Aiman

Yes, that's the name, Azmi. I remember now and he didn't present his proposal, did he? Dr Buck comfirmed to me that he didn't. For you guys who know him, please send my msg to him that I need to know if he's dropping his Project I (and I will stop making any referral to him as a wildlifer in this group). All I need is an email to that effect. At administration level at ITBC, I can now announce officially that I have only 5 undergrads directly under my supervision.

For Mohd Aiman, what I said during your proposal was a serious one (i.e. about the Tarakan trip you are organising). Whatever happens, when the time comes when we will be out in the sea and go snaking, you'll not be anywhere else except for in the boat with us. I will equip Cindy with a small gun now, just in case you try to escape!

Hamid.

Crocking, crocs and M16!

Dear all, let's have a little story of what may happen.




On the left is the pic of two baby crocs from Serudong - this was about 18 km from the rivermouth, almost to the Tabung Haji oil palm plantation, way upstream from a military post, somewhere in the Serudong.
The larger baby was 18 inch, the other was 16, but as you can see, their size differ significantly, although may be they may have hatched at about the same time. You see, survival rates of baby crocs very much depend on what they do or capable of doing to survive, like if they can eat many crayfish (or if there are a lot of crayfish around to eat).





This is a close up of the head. Looking at Dr Anuar's hand, he didn't seem to squeeze the croc - and that's what you're going to do. Almost all baby crocs we caught were docile and never attempted to bite (and if they did, they cannot eat you either). Well, I lied. Some bit us but I have thrown away that scare into the Klias river a long time ago.




And then we got back to the old jetty at Kg. Wallace Bay (Feeza, you remember this one?). Behind us are parts of the mangrove forests of Tawau, the city is on the extreme right, somewhere. The two policemen escorted us with bloody M16! - I don't know what they were intended for - the crocs or the indonesians (similarly, I didn't know whether to feel secure or scared). Mr Azman, second from right is my coleague at uni, now a PhD student at IBTP doing cicadas. Then AP Dr Shahrul Anuar of USM, my junior at uni, he studied the Klias croc in 1991.

You know what, Feeza? A breakfast of nasi kuning after a crocking trip will make all the difference!

Hamid.

Submitting Research Proposal

Dear all,

I am (as all of you are) told that now research students will have to submit their research proposal. (Dr, PP, this has never happened before). Not that I didn't like it, but it seems lecturers/supervisors now have more load than before - which in a way is also better for two reasons:

a) We will be able to see if comments given by examiners during their presentation were taken into account and appear in the final version of the proposal. This, I see, as an obvious trap for those who did not take notes of the comments given in the presentation. So, now, please start to remember what really happened in the torture chamber.

b) Having the proposal at hand, there will always be something that students and supervisors can fall back to. When I looked back, I sometimes (and this can be many) did not remember the title of the project, let alone the details like the objectives ets - which consequently resulted in "new versions" of advise everytime students come to seek further advise.

Well, I think we should be thankful to that decision.

OK, guys, prepare your proposal - and this should not take too much of your time. You need to keep on reading.

Hamid.

dear dr,

im sorry. I will submit my proposal by email this week.

regards,
Cindy

Hi.
Dear Dr,
Its me Marlina.. not Mariana. It’s been quite a long time since we (me, fiza and also izwan) all want to meet you. It’s just we don’t have free time, quite busy with our assignment and also midterm. Last week we went to ITBC to see the specimen of crocodile but unfortunately the woman in charge there said that she’s not sure whether there is crocodile specimen in borneensis.
Last Saturday we went to the Tuaran Crocodile Park just to see the real crocodile. It is exciting but also scaring. Right now i’m only using string to train myself (cant find stick) We will keep on training to estimate the length of croc. About the Bayliss’s paper, we just got it (is it the paper? Estimating the abundance of saltwater crocodile, Crocodylus porosus Schneider, in tidal wetlands of the northern territory: a mark-recapture to correct spotlight counts to absolute numbers, and the calibration of helicopter and spotlight counts) from our friend that also doing the crocodile under supervision of Dr. Pushpa.
We will go to see you sooner, when are you free Dr.? This morning we went there but you have meeting so maybe by tomorrow or by this week we will try to reach you.
Since this is my 1st entry, sorry for my broken words. My english is quite bad. Hee~
Truly,
Mar ;)

Guys who are doing crocs

I am communicating with Mariana, Feeza, and the boy (I forgot your name, sorry. It is a disease with blokes names, quite frankly). Well, I have no news about the other bloke. Is he alive?

Please train yourselves with estimation of croc size. I have raised my concerns during your presentation. When you write back, please tell me here if you have done some kind of training. Now that you're in a group, train in a group, because you will be in the same boat in Serudong, Klias and Beringis.

Secondly, have you got Bayliss's paper yet?

I will have time until October to purchase two GPS, and that will help us a lot.

There are a lot of survey results in PDF format in the internet. Please read. When you write back, I want you to write down the references that you have read. At least that will tell me what you know.

Now, people.
We are going to do crocodiles! This is no joke. You can be as clumsy as you can with your mother's knife, but not in the boat. You are going to step into the little boat with confidence and well prepared. No trial run will be enough if you are not serious. Show me what you have!

Wildlifers are one of its kind. I hever had a chance to slip through the small window you're now about pull yourselves through. You made that choice and I am waiting on the other side.

So, please guys. Impress me a little!

Hamid.

Little details in your proposals

Dear all,

I am writing to remind you the little details about the text of the proposal and Project I. Please take note and take actions accordingly.

a) Use the correct citation technique. If you fail to do this, this will be the first bomb that smashes your marks to ashes - no matter how good you write in the rest of the text.

b) Write taxonomical text correctly: spelling must be precise, italics are done whenever is needed. Taxons above genus must be written scientifically - you need to read scientific articles and look at how these are done. e.g. :

Taylor, JA, Webb, GWJ and Magnusson, WE. 1978. Methods of Obtaining Stomach Contents from Live Crocodilians (Reptilia, Crocodilidae). J. Herpetol. 12 (3):415-417

The word "and" is usually used in the list of references, NOT "&"

See how the Class and Family is written. In this case the name of the species is not mentioned because workers were working of several species within the Family.

See how the numbers for Volume [12], Number [3] in parentheses, and pages [:415-417] are written.

c) Be consistent throughout

d) I want you guys to produce a good map of your stations/area. I don't want to see you reproduce a map from the internet or to show pictures from google earth. Those are not maps. You MUST show the map of Sabah and the detail map of your study area. Redraw the map just as what your geography teachers taught you in school. many computer programs can help on this one and you need to be creative.

I have not seen any of you guys (those under my supervision) that came to see me and discuss about the scientific papers that you guys have recently read. Why? Did you understand them all? Or you have not read them? Or they are not there?

These are some of the reminders that I remembr to write this time.

Hamid.

Questions during presentation

Hi, all.
OK, most of you (I mean my students) have presented and have faced questions and comments. So, That's how it feels like. Nothing much, really. But I urge all of you to take note on all of the comments. They are useful.

In doing a research, not only what you do in the field counts, the way you do it must be properly documented and explained. For you guys who are doing crocodiles, I think there were questions on how you would take samples (tissue) from the babies. I think, you must be able to explain how you would catch them babies. Either by hand, using a net or using a nose (you know what a nose is? What it is not is the thing that has two holes just above your upper lips).

Do some more reading on the things that you are going to measure.. tail, TL, SV. I still think that we have some specimens of baby crocs in Borneensis. You might want to go and see them.. look at the tail scutes, count them, and then, plan if you can do anything to mark them babies either according to sex, sex and date of capture, numerical marks... I don't know. You guys think about it. I'm sure you're more curious than I am and it should be that way! I have passed my monkey curiosity a long time ago.

Hamid.

Fighting fish from Danum

Guys,

Here's a picture of a fighting fish, Betta unimaculata from Danum Valley - captured in my recent trip to Langum River in the Conservation Area. Now, this is an air-breathing fish, as commonly being called for almost all anabantids. I actually caught them in two rivers, Langum and Purut - both in the main rivers and in smaller channels and pools. This one was caught in a rock pool ABOVE a small waterfall. Fish was photographed and released.

However, I am still confused looking at some of the specimens I have caught in Tabin and Danum, all of the fish commonly believed to be B unimaculata. The ones in Tabin, especially larger males, have coloured scales on the last third of the dorsals. This one that you see only has coloured scales on outer operculum.

Are we looking at different species?

Here goes.

Hamid.

picture of tarantula

Guys,

This is the picture of the tarantula that I stole from the wasp. I hope you guys haven't seen something like it before.

Here goes....

Hamid.

Project Discussion

Dear Dr. Hamid,

Dr, we wish to make appoinment with Dr to discuss about our project on this Friday (10th Aug). When do Dr feel free to meet with us?


Regards,
Susan

tarantula

Guys,
I was in the field last week, came back yesterday (and stopover at Sukau on my way back). So, the plan was to walk up the Purut trail and camp overnight near Purut Fall (about 5 km from DVFC). Then walk up the Raleigh trail and camp within the Sabran catchment. You guys need to look at Danum map to know these places.

You wouldn't believe what you would believe I would have found!

It's a tarantula!

talk to you later.

Hamid.

postponed presentation date

dear frens, the presentations for 1st, 2nd, & 3rd of august had been postponed to 13th, 14th, and 15th of august respectively. maybe this is a good news for some of u..hehe..frankly speaking, im grateful 4 dis..hehe..stil av sum times to finalise my proposal..thank God