The first day started with much nervousness for me, as it was a new and unknown experience for me, however, after meeting with my AVS work-shadowing mates, I felt very relieved and assured by their presence. 

We had to make a presentation about proper pet care for any pet of our choice. Dhzreen and I presented about the betta fish. This activity enabled me to improve my presentation and collaboration skills. I also learnt more about how to care for other pets through listening to the others' presentations and asking questions. For example, we were shocked at the revelation that rabbits actually should NOT eat carrots, due to the sugar in the carrots that can be harmful to their health! Overall, I enjoyed this activity and I found it very enriching.

My favourite activity for the day was certainly the Pet Expo planning activity. We are responsible for planning and managing a booth at the Pet Expo this year, and today, we planned our booth. Our final idea is a simulated living room game, where the participant picks out the "right" and "wrong" items for their pet dog, in a living room setting. I found this activity very interesting and helpful as it improved my teamwork and communication skills, yet challenged me to think of an innovative yet informational booth. It also gave us a taste of how event planners work and gives us a peek into their perspective. We found out that their jobs are not that straightforward as there were many considerations to take note of. We needed to ensure that the booth was engaging enough in a short time at the expo, ensure that our booth was friendly to all ages, and was feasible to execute. I found this activity very enlightening.

As for the second day, we had to continue working on our booth at the pet expo. Jane, Chloe and I worked on the graphics for the booth, which includes the posters for the game instructions and the educational infographic. I found it very fun to create and design these graphics as we all collaborated together to make sure the final product looked pleasing to the eye as was attention-grabbing enough since they would be displayed at the expo and had to attract people to participate in our booth. 

Next, Ms Kate shared with us more about volunteering opportunities, which I found really helpful. She told us about what we would expect if we became a volunteer at AVS, and also the different types of volunteers we can become such as animal classroom caregivers. After her sharing, I definitely became more interested in looking at volunteer work because it is a very fulfilling and valuable experience. 

For the next sharing, Ms Enna shared about Singapore's developments to become 'A City in Nature', which was a new term I had just found about since I thought that it was still 'A City in A Garden'. I found it interesting how the Singapore government is constantly finding ways to make Singapore greener and incorporate more nature into our lives. It was interesting to find out that they are reintroducing the tiger orchids back into the wild and trying to make them bloom in the wild again. 

For the last sharing, Ms Jeanne shared about the macaques in Singapore, which was my favourite part of the day. I enjoyed learning more about the animals that I have seen roaming around parts of Singapore, such as when I visited the MacRitchie reservoir. I felt that this sharing was really helpful as she taught us about the important things to avoid doing whenever we encounter macaques, and how to properly behave around them. I feel that this information should be more widely spread to the public in order to increase awareness about macaques in Singapore in order to decrease the cases of people doing the wrong things to them that result in them angering the macaques. This can also apply to other wildlife in Singapore such as otters, monitor lizards etc, as I feel that we should do more to increase awareness about what to avoid doing when encountering these animals in order to ensure the safety of both the public and the animals.

My favourite part of the program today was the animal husbandry portion, where we learnt how to clean the animal classroom, feed the animals and also learn about their dietary needs and other needs. I found this activity very interesting since it taught us first-hand the amount of work we have to put in if we own a pet ourselves. My old pets were usually cleaned and fed by my older sisters, so I never really experienced cleaning and looking after a pet before this, but animal husbandry taught me that it is not an easy job. Furthermore, certain pets have some needs that need to be met such as a cool temperature of around degrees celsius for a chinchilla, and also feeding guinea pigs Vitamin C tablets since they cannot produce Vitamin C on their own. I feel that this was a good experience to have since I do not have a pet but am considering owning one in the future. I am more knowledgeable about the necessary things we have to do for our pets and learnt useful ways to care for a pet, such as how to change a terrapin's water using the pressure in 2 hoses. I feel like we should let people considering to be pet owners also experience a similar activity so that they are well prepared to bear the responsibility of owning a pet, be it via a virtual simulation or physical simulation of animal husbandry.

We had a simulated learning journey activity, where we pretended to be conducting a learning journey for fellow JC students. We split into groups and had to put together our whole briefing in a few minutes. It was a good collaborative experience and overall, I believe that we did fairly well. After both groups finished their briefings, we began to give each other comments and I found that this part was particularly helpful as we could point out what others have done well and what we could improve on. For example, our group did well in engaging the audience but could have worked on adding more content to our briefing.

We did animal husbandry, and it was an enjoyable time again. I enjoyed cutting the vegetables like the bell peppers for the guinea pigs and the rabbit. It went by smoothly because we already did it once and remembered what to do. 

Today, we went to the AVS office in the JEM office tower for the first time. Seeing the office side of the job was interesting, and we learnt more about the other divisions in AVS such as community management. I found the talks about diseases and about importing food very informative. I learnt about how AVS works to protect Singapore from dangerous diseases that are zoonotic, like rabies and avian influenza by border control and licensing. We also learnt more about where our food, like chicken and pork, ends up from farm to fork. This information was important to learn so that we are more aware of where our food comes from, and how AVS and SFA work to ensure that our food is safe for consumption. We also learnt the importance of licensing our dogs, and that it benefits both the owners and the dog

Then, we went to the pet shop in JEM, and observed the animals there, like the hamsters, terrapins and rabbits. We learnt about how AVS assigns the pet shop a grade, which is mandatory for the pet shop to display. We also learnt more about the animals from the vet at the pet shop such as how to tell a male apart from a female, and their behavior.