The trip to UKM KL Campus was…. well to say it was normal or just ‘ok’ would be an understatement. I mean unless you are a pathologist, doctor, mortician or ....you get how I’m grouping all these, you don’t see parts of real human bodies all around you, do you? Ok, maybe not only see (the internet…) but touch, smell, feel and I really hope not taste or hear. It is generally no doubt an interesting trip.
Well, the trip to the place itself was unexpected. We were joking around before the trip on how or going to get there. Bus? Monorail? LRT? Someone even told me walking there. In the end all of us guess wrongly, we get a free ride on the President College staff’s car! Who cares if we guess wrongly, who’s complaining? Thank you for the ride anyway.
So, the wait to enter the anatomy museum was not that long. The only downturn was probably the typical KL heat plus our all black shirts only gets worse as time lingers. I can say now that it is worth the wait.
In the anatomy museum the first question I heard was ‘is it real?’. Is it really real? Really? Of course it is really real or it won’t really be called the anatomy museum and President College would not really bring us here. Really real! Thus, we all found out that it is real. That’s where the fun part begins.
Personally, I have been to that place before 4 years ago and most of the exhibits are the same except of the plastinated cadaver. But I don’t mind ‘enjoying’ the exhibits again and especially for the first timers, it was shockingly interesting. Everyone spread out around the mini anatomy museum as soon as they enter. I could hear gasps, whispers (yes, from a living breathing human being) and chatting – the excitement and passion.
The staffs gave a short briefing in the anatomy museum. I manage to throw some question in return for some valuable information. I mainly ask about the plastinated cadaver (the new family member!). It seems that the people there have sent their people to Germany, which is the first country to produce plastinated cadaver through plastination. This process has been in this world for some time, however, not many countries know about it. Among the country which has made its name on this are Germany, of course and China. Malaysia had just inherited this about 3 years ago and UKM are the first in Malaysia.
Plastination is a very complicated process and it yields complicated money. One plastinated body could cost at least 110 thousand ringgit. I have seen a plastinated body a few months before this in Management & Science University and the staff there did explain the plastination process. Although they did not tell me where this specimen was obtain, when I proposed this to the staff in UKM, it seems that UKM sold it to MSU and a few others under some company name I forgotten. (Can’t think of company name that sells stuff like that! The Body Shop? Body glove?) Intriguing isn’t it?
We went below the anatomy museum, where they store wet specimen of cadavers. The staffs of UKM did brought us a male body (don’t ask how I know if it is a male) to mingle with. It was a hands-on (more like fingers-on for most of us) on a real cadaver. There was a lot of Q&A session between the students and the staff in charged.
Among the questions I clearly remembered are:
Q: How long can you keep a wet specimen?
A: Between 5-10 years.
Q: Do you import bodies?
A: Nope. Bodies are donated and are obtained from unclaimed bodies. Things like that cannot be imported or exported. It is not market material except for the black market. (What happen to the selling of plastinated cadaver?)
Q: We treat all these cadavers with respect, right?
A: Of course, once the body can’t be used anymore, we will send them to the memorial centre to be burned every single piece of flesh and bones.
Q: Do you like your job?
A: (Laughs) Yeah, I do. (Ok……)
Q: Aren’t you scared? Are there any supernatural occurrence?
A: Nope, if I’m scared I wouldn’t be working here. (Duh, good answer). This place must be closed by 5.30pm . So, I never really heard it around here from anyone.
Q: How much does the wet specimen cadaver cost?
A: We don’t sell the wet specimen. Even if we do, it will only cost less than then ten thousand and the process of making one is quite costly itself. (Who wants to buy it? Don’t buy one for me please.)
So , that’s basically some of it.
That wraps up the trip and we all departed away from there. For once in my life I’m seeing my friends washing their hand like some killer pandemic was among us. We waited for the ride back for some moment at a bus stop. (Buses were actually stopping for us, too bad we saw signs stated ‘UTAR’, ‘UM’ etc…..oops no ‘President College’) We finally got back to Putra mall safely, home sweet home.
We really enjoy the trip. We could really see how it is like studying medicine with cadavers. I hope none of us would change our mind on taking medicine line and etc after this trip. I could see the satisfying look on everyone although some even looked hungry after the examining the cadavers (yikes!). To conclude things, although I have a dilemma now (whether to sleep in my room or my parents room tonight), it was a really real awesome trip.
Thanks, President College!
No comments:
Post a Comment