This is definitely going to be a very long post.
Today, our school board decided to invite our country's first every astronaut to our school. His name is Dr. Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor and is 42 years old. Any other information about him can be found on wikipedia.
To be very, very honest, at first I wasn't elated at the thought of spending a few thousand bucks on a person who already has a lot of money. I didn't think it was worth it. However, after having the opportunity to spend an hour with him, hearing him talk about his 12 days in space and his childhood dream of becoming an astronaut, I quickly realised that I was wrong- this was worth it.
Call me prejudiced but I expected him to be this strict, un-friendly, arrogant guy who would talk a bunch of bullshit on how we are nothing if we don't study and blah blah blah. Again, I was proven awry as Mr Astronaut was none of the things I expected him to be. He was down-to-earth, friendly as well as had a good sense of humour. These characteristics of his made the time spent with him enjoyable and I think it's safe to say that this was unexpected since almost all of the speakers invited to our school were usually the annoying, strict ones who can't take a joke.
I've managed to jot down a few of the things that happened during our meeting with Mr Astronaut so that I could post it here on my blog. So without further ado, let's begin!
Okay since I only started to jot stuff down halfway through his talk, these events happened I think after he introduced himself and showed us clips of his training before going up into space. I said "I think" because I'm a forgetful person.
Anyway, I started to jot down stuff when he was talking about his time in Russia for astronaut training ( I think that's what you call it, I'm not sure ). He said that 4 people-including him of course- were to go to Russia for training, then 2 people would be picked for further training, and in the end only one of them would get the chance to go to space. He also told us that the Russians loved their country so much that whoever wanted to train there had to learn how to speak fluent Russian. When Mr A asked us if we wanted him to speak Russian, everyone screamed "yes!" and he obliged by telling us what his first Russian words were: I love you. This prompted the students in the hall to go "awwww" upon hearing that.
OOH, before that, Mr A told us that he wanted to go to space since the age of 10 years old. He said he dreamed of being in space, surrounded by the planets as well as other stuff which I did not manage to write down.
Continuing the story, Mr A told us that whilst Koreans brought kimchi to space and uh, other people from other countries brought their own delicacies too ( I only remember koreans ahhaa, he did mention the Japanese but I forgot what it was), he brought satay, rendang and other foods too. He also said that he couldn't bring nasi lemak to space as the rice would float all over the place due to zero gravity.
After that, he proceeded to show us short clips of him in space! One of them included him in the uh, space shuttle(?) surrounded by floating objects ; Another one included him trying to eat his breakfast (biscuits) and whist he talked about how careful one must be when eating in space because his/her food will float, his biscuit floats in the air as if on cue and the students started to laugh. There were also clips of how he brushed his teeth - he couldn't rinse his mouth after that so he had to swallow the water in his mouth after brushing his teeth, how he washed his hair - water is extremely precious in space due to the lack of water in space, how he slept - in a sleeping bag in this uh, capsule ( I keep saying "uh" because I'm not sure what the exact terms are ) etc.
Speaking of water, Mr A told us that he couldn't drink water from a glass because the water eventually turns into a "water bubble". He then played a clip of him squeezing a drop of some strawberry flavoured liquid out of his tube and we watched as it transformed into a pink, "water bubble" which floats in mid air. As we continued to stare intently, Mr A explained that popping the "water bubble" is a dangerous thing to do as the bubble could pop into millions of tiny water droplets that could in turn, damage almost all of the equipment on board. So how did he handle the complication before him? Well, the Mr A in the video took a spoon, held it upside down and stuck it onto the "water bubble" before him. The "water bubble" then transformed into a jelly-like substance.
When the showing of clips ended, Mr A continued to talk about lots things regarding his experience as an astronaut.
" The greatest thing about space is you get to look out the window and see the Earth surrounded by millions of tiny galaxies."
I'm not sure about the details but Mr A definitely didn't successfully landed on Earth. I think he said he was in something... which was ejected from the rocket(?) [ AGAIN, he was speaking too fast for my hands to write down everything he said so while I was writing about the words he'd spoken earlier, he had already moved on to another experience ] which was in flames.. and he landed somewhere either in the forest or in the sea, I'm not sure. If you're curious just google search it please because I'm pretty sure that I'm not a reliable source. Eventually the rescue team was able to find him.
He said that after he landed, he was so weak that he couldn't even lift a finger. He stayed in the hospital for a few days and when he finally woke up, he didn't know whether to lift up his legs or put them down. He says that this is because after coming back from space, astronauts' physiological aspects are messed up. For example, on Earth, blood flows to all parts of the body but in space, blood flows to the head due to zero gravity which could result in osteoporosis.
Also, to quote Mr A, "twinkle twinkle little stars does not work in space" because when you look at them from space, they do not twinkle. This is personally my favourite quote of his as it contains a hint of sass, ahaha.
Ran out of sentence connectors... Besides that, Mr A also said that "they" - he did not specifically say who "they" are- plan on going to Mars in the year 2027 because Mars seems to be the only planet that is similar to Earth since they were able to find water, and the existence of water means the possible existence of living things. Not only that, Mr A kept stressing that they have not been able to find any other lifeforms in space ( ex: aliens ) so we should not believe in the photos we see online because for all we know, those may be photoshopped or something.
After he finished talking about the things he wanted to talk about-which included his training regime ( surviving in forests, on a boat at sea etc), the requirements for an astronaut and many other things that would further lengthen the length of this post, he decided to have a Question and Answer session with us students. Here are some of the more memorable ones that I felt the need to list down as it would be a waste to not do so.
Q: What happens if a woman astronaut has her period in space?
[ cue people like me face-palming themselves ]
A: [ talks about how capable women are at certain stuff before answering the question ] It isn't a problem because they could still use pads whilst in space, it's just that they have to be more careful because their blood could turn into.. "blood bubbles".
Q: [ Something about why people are rehabilitated after coming back from space ]
A: As Mr A's stated before, their physiological aspects get messed up after returning from space so they tend to have trouble adapting to earth once they come back. So in order to solve this problem, they have to be rehabilitated for about 2 months. Mr A said that he was lucky enough to be amongst the 25% of astronauts who didn't experience space sickness.
As we were running out of time, Mr A asked 3 students to quickly go to the front and state their questions before he leaves. One of them included a some-what overweight male student. When Mr A draped his arm across his shoulders and asked if he aspired to go to space, the male student replies "not really," which made us students erupt into a fit of laughter. Mr A, seemingly not taken aback by his answer, responds by saying that if he does want to go to space then he should lose some weight. After that hilarious exchange, the questions continued to flow in.
Q: What was your first thought when you looked out the window?
A: He basically said that he was amazed at how huge the galaxies were.
Q: What is the best way to learn a second language?
A: The best way to learn a language is to be in that environment. [ Went on to speak about how the Russians only spoke Russian when he was in space so he had no choice but to learn to speak fluent Russian ]
Q: [ This question was asked by the slightly over-weight student that was mentioned earlier ] You know the space suit is very heavy right? How do you fart in it?
A: [chuckles] Uhm, well astronauts take off their suits when they're in the space shuttle(?) [ I don't know the difference between a space shuttle and a rocket] so it doesn't matter whether they fart or not. Due to the fact that space suits have a vacuum in them, when you fart it would still be well ventilated.
After all questions were answered, he decided to share his 5 recipes for success before leaving us.
MR A's 5 RECIPES FOR SUCCESS [ ALTHOUGH IN THIS CASE IT'S 4 SINCE I DIDN'T HEAR THE LAST ONE]
1. You must dream big.
2. You must be fearless in order to be brave.
3. You must be fluent in English.
4. You must have good grades because if you excel in your grades then you can be anyone you want to be [ which I object because have you seen the amount of jobless university graduates? Having good grades doesn't necessarily guarantee you a job for your information ]
He then ended this little "meet & greet" by saying that he wished us all the best and other stuff which I can't recall... I have a bad memory okay?
Once it was over, the students who bought Mr A's book were to have the chance to get his autograph and have some face-to-face time with him. The teachers even gathered to have their picture taken with him for remembrance of this historic event. The rest of the students? We were forced to return to our respective classes.
So, that basically sums up my experience of seeing Mr Astronaut in my school. I think I can speak for all of us when I say that we had tons of fun as we were not only able to learn many interesting facts about the profession of astronauts, but also because we had the chance to loosen up and enjoy ourselves with the country's first and good-humoured astronaut who certainly surprised us with his personality. I am pleased to say that this was an incredible and pleasurable experience, and I can't help but feel sad for the students who missed out on the chance to experience what I was able to experience during the limited amount of time we've spent with Mr A. For all I know, chances like this aren't going to appear for a second time.
I think I'm going to end this post here. Till my next post [ which may be posted tomorrow ], bye!
I initially planned on writing two posts for today, ( one of them is this and the other is about my parcel which I received yesterday night ) but it's 10:19 p.m. now and I have to sleep soon so I think I'll write the 2nd post tomorrow.
Man this post sure is long.
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