Yakult's Trip

Last time, I had a trip to Yakult’s factory with my classmates and my lecturer. The factory is located at Seremban. At 8.15 a.m., my classmates and I departed from our faculty with bus. We arrived there around 9 a.m. I was very excited to see inside of the building.

Yakult's Factory

As I entered the building, the lobby was full of sakura flower. I felt like I was in Japan for a while. It was a very beautiful scenery with a bench under a big sakura tree. Then, we are told to go to the lecture hall upstairs to hear a talk about their product.

I received many new information about Yakult drink actually. They were so interesting but I am just gonna highlight some of it. I learnt something new there when I knew there were some requirements for a bacteria to be in cultured drink. The bacteria need to reach our intestine alive, live in our intestine and proven to be beneficial for us. This requirement matched with Lactobacillus casei Shirota strain, which could reach our intestine alive and had higher resistance to gastric juice and bile. There were also a term called Shirota-ism which means preventive medicine that leads to healthy intestine to achieve a long life with an affordable price. Bad balancing of intestinal flora were caused by stress, aging, infection, unbalanced diet and consumption of medicine (antibiotics). Since 50% of our immune system were in our intestine, we really need to have a balanced intestinal flora. This could be help by taking cultured drink such as Yakult. The benefit of drinking Yakult are increasing good bacteria, decreasing harmful bacteria, reduce the production of toxin,improve bowel movement (for constipation and diarrhea), and boost immune system by making NK cells to function more effectively to detect and destroy cancer cells. There are also 30 billion Shirota strain per bottle.

In the lecture hall

After the talk, we go for a tour to see the making of Yakult drink. I did not remember much the step because we could not took picture. What I remembered were firstly they cultured the bacteria in a tank then transfer to a mixing tank before sent to storage tank. The next step was packaging process. I love to see this because the flow looked wonderful and made me felt like in Willy Wonka's factory.It looked very tidy,clean  and systematic.

Steps to make Yakult drink

Mixing tank

Packaging process

After the tour finish of course it was picture time. Everyone took pictures around the lobby with friends and some selfies. During that time I managed to buy Yakult drinks for a dozen. It was much cheaper than in stores. Then we took class pictures as a sign we had been there.

The lobby and counter to buy merchandise

Class picture

After that, we got on the bus and departed to the campus. Around 12.15 p.m. we arrived at the faculty. It was a great trip even only for a couples of hours. I gained many new knowledge about Yakult and hope to use that knowledge in my daily life. 

Yakult Ace Light & Yakult Ace

Microbial Ecology

After a long time, at last Dr. Wan came into the class again. Not to just to meet us but also to teach us topic 9: Microbial Ecology.I thought last time was the last class ever for this semester but I was wrong. I was happy plus excited when I heard the news.

For this class the learning concept was very different from before. We actually need to teach our friend in relay. Each group divided the subtopic to every member. The person who in charge of the subtopic need to understood and find extra information about that topic. Then, the group will explain what they had found to the other group. For example, Group 1 to Group 2 and so on. The explanation was just like simple discussion while facing each other.

I got the subtopic about negative interaction between organisms. This activity had thought me how to deliver information effectively to the other person and gave me the satisfaction when the other person understood the info and can pass to the other group.

But if I could rewind the time, I wanted to do the session again because the last group's conclusions disappoint my expectation. They said there are no new information delivered to them other than information in the notes. Before that, when I explained to the group before them, I included new example of the negative interaction but they did not pass down the information. There must be something that happen between the discussion that caused this situation. I hope to fix that if I can turn back the time.

Overall, the class was different. The lecturer did not give lecture but just be there and in the other hand, students teach each other with lecturer's guide.

Microbial community in freshwater