Final Year Project and Graduation!

What kind of FYP involves getting chased by a wild boar?

Well, mine did.

The final report.

My collection of litter bags for my FYP.

For my FYP, I worked on home-field advantage in Singapore's forest. It was divided into four parts: decomposition of litter bags, plant censuses, nutrient analysis and data analysis. The most time-consuming part was the plant censuses even though it was not the most important part of my research. Generally, it was rewarding when I could identify the plants, but the opposite was also true.

Who-are-you? This is one of the plants I wanted to identify the most, but hours of Googling turned out futile.

I found the nutrient analysis interesting as I got to work with sophisticated machines, which is something that appealed to the geeky side of me. It was also a nice break from counting plants in mosquito-infested forests. For data analysis, statistics was and is still my arch nemesis (ANOVA? ANCOVA? MANOVA?).

Machine to measure total reduced nitrogen

My phosphorus samples!

The toughest aspect of this project was actually waiting for the permits because it was largely out of my control. My year-long project was more similar to a semester-long one as I finally settled on my three sites in February. Two of my original sites were rejected as they were located in primary forests and NParks wanted to prevent trampling. I understand and totally support this reasoning, but the time taken for them to reject my application was excruciating.

Lastly, I would like to talk about the scariest and funniest part of my project - getting chased by a wild boar. One of my final sites was a secondary forest with wild boars as I had no other choices. I accidentally went too near a boar hiding in the bushes while setting up the transect tapes. Wild boars move so fast and this huge one dashed out of the bushes straight at me. Surprisingly, I was considerably calm during the encounter, but I became very paranoid during subsequent trips to the forest.

With the completion of my FYP and my last finals, I have graduated from NTU with both my major and minor! I celebrated by having... diarrhoea and insomnia and cleaning my room. Thankfully, I celebrated beforehand with FOB Mania Tour 2018.

Priority ticket! I had a pretty decent view of Patrick, Pete and Andy. Could not see Joe for most of the concert.

This concludes the highlights of my past semester!