Strict New Rules for Foreign Students from Home Office

Recently had just been so busy on assignments, lab reports and assessment in the last 2 weeks of the term, and Home Office had just came out some new terms and conditions for foreign students coming to UK to study, it's not recently actually but rather came out quite long ago. 

Well, as a foreign student, some of the things I do "support", but yet some I felt it's a little bit too much for me. ID Cards? Well, I came from a country that is compulsory for every citizen to have an ID card with them, just an easier approach to have a correct identification of the person, I had already "given" all my 10 fingerprints to the UK Home Office when I apply for student visa, which also includes my face, considered as Biometric. 

In one of it's conditions, "Students on courses for longer than 12 months will have to show they have sufficient funds to pay their first year of fees, plus £9,600 to cover their first year in the UK. Students wishing to bring their dependants with them will need to show they have a further £535 per month for each person they bring.", what the kell?? International students studying science laboratory course already paying 4 times more than local students, without including the expenses on books, stationaries, food, lodging and traveling. Correct me if I'm wrong, Home Office still want to lurk around our bank accounts and make sure we have enough money, where is our personal lifes anymore? Do you simply tell the numbers in your bank account to your friends?

In another conditions, I'm not sure about it, just word of mouth and from the internet, Home Office requires international student to report to the nearest local reporting centre or something like that, to show that we are still here???  It's gives me a feeling that we are like criminals on police bail, that we will have to report to police station from time to time. So if we missed the reporting, we will face some actions maybe court hearing or sending us back to home country? Well, most office will be open from 9-5, we have lectures on Monday to Friday, so if we purposely miss the lectures and go to report to the centre, we will miss important stuffs, if we miss the reporting and go to lectures, we will expect some actions, can anyone get me a human-splitter?

We are also required to send an e-mail or whatever to the Home Office if we missed a lecture? Does going to the centre and report for prescence requires that? Our university lectures have the responsibilties to take attendance of the international student to the lectures, seminars, workshop or laboratories? As I recalled, attendance taking is only back in secondary schools, now they bring it to Universities?? Am I still a University student? OK, I don't miss any lectures, but is it neccesary? How about local students? I don't think all of them attend at least 95% of lectures? I had once seen some school students wearing their uniforms smoking in the local bus station at noon, I believe at that time they should be in class. I'm not bringing this problem to the local students, but I really felt unfair to the foreign students, what we want to come here is to get a degree, if attendance really to be taken, take them wholely and seriously.

I've surfed through Facebook and found theses groups, of all the topics, this is the one I liked the most! 

Campaign against unfair Home Office regulations for international students!

Stop Home Office discrimination against International Students!

And lastly, the new rule from Home Office.

Crimewatch: Behind the Scenes of Forensic Science

I've just watched Crimewatch: Behind the Scenes of Forensic Science, it is some interviews with the experts about what they do in Forensic Science, so if you guys are interested, here are the links.

Peter Lamb talks through the Forensic analysis of Blood.

Peter Lamb talks through the Forensic analysis of Fibres.

Simon Monk talks through the Forensic analysis of Drugs.

DI Grant Johnson: Specialist Crime Directorate.

Dr Glenn Wilson on Serial Attackers.

Links from BBC, Crime Watch.

Wasting Prefect's Time

I just watched PC David Copperfield's program in BBC Panaroma because when the program shows up, I'm still in my home country cherishing every moment I could with someone special. As the video runs through, there are so many similarities with what I had when I was a Prefect in my school. Paperwork (as usual), chasing targets, catching criminals (which in this case is students that had offences), patrols etc, which made me a feeling of "Hey! We are not so different after all!!!" Yes, well, of course I cannot compare what I had with the real world police, which they had to deal with much more serious offences than I had faced back in school. 

Just for some sharing, like the usual bobbys, they report for duty, same with me, reporting for duty wherever I had been assigned to the area in the early morning, doing the normal patroling around the school, and if I found some students that look suspicious (which due to my intuition that he will be having some stuffs that is prohibited in school), I can stop and search him, it's just that I doesn't need to fill in a "Stop and Search form", but if I do found something prohibited item, I can remove the item from his possession, give him a slip which consist of my name, his name, date and the item description, less than 2 minutes and I'm on my way back to prefect room and look for the Group members that is responsible for prohibited items to file in the item I had, they will just put the item into a plastic bag, fill up the similar slip I just gave to the student, and I'm on my way back to my duty place.

Chasing targets, yes we do have targets to chase as well. You people must be having your jaws open, Prefects in school have targets to chase?? What world am I in?? We have a certain target to chase for in our personal notebook, which we had to hand in every friday, if we don't meet the targets, the group that is responsible for Demerit System will come looking for you, and which resulting something not really good happened, some Prefects actually fake up some names and offences to meet the targets, that happens when I'm no longer a Prefect so I don't know how the Board dealt with them. But er, what targets used for?? It only made Prefects or Bobbys a hard time.

Paperwork?? We do have, but not full with MG1-MGXX (I forgotten how many Manual of Guidance are there as now I only deal with MG11). Whenever something happened, which is something really bad happened including a fight, a fight with prefects etc, we will be spending some time in the prefect room, sitting at a corner and filling up Serious Offence Form, and will be handing the form to discipline teacher for further actions, and we still need to get the form back for photocopies and then hand the original form back to the discipline teacher, why don't photocopy it at the first place? Well, I can't because there is a column where the teacher need to fill in what he/she had done to the student and signature.

Now, enough of flashing back and had to get back to my work.

Links from PC David Copperfield that is enjoying his work in Canada and BBC.

Evidence Bag & Caffeine, do not mix.

Here are some pics of my lab session in examinations of samples collected and bagging them into evidence bags. I'll let the pics to do the talking this time. One of my sample is a piece of wood that had been suffered from various cuttings, strikings, grippings and pryings, and I have to place some Mikrosil on it, cast it and bag it. And it doesn't ends there like any other CSI you seen in telly, I still need to fill in the form in front of the bag, yes it's considered as paperwork, and I'm just another lad that got into the world of paperwork.

Extraction of Caffeine from tea bags!

Separation of caffeine from the tea sample using solvent extraction.
Then the photos skipped for a few steps, whoa la! Out came the Caffeine in 50ml of tea, quite a lot of amount of caffeine I drank each day huh?? Same as you actually. Fancy a cuppa??

Links from CSIequipment.com . You can get whatever stuffs you like to play as a CSI or SOCO at this website.

Home Office Scientific Development Branch

Recently I came across this news from the Home Office Scientific Development Branch, they are organising their yearly HOSDB Exhibition. But unfortunately it is only for visitors from the Police Service, Government Departments and Law Enforcement agencies, looking over and over again of the visitor registration form, dissapointingly I do not fall into neither one of it's categories. Just have to say it's a shame, I'm not a Police Special or PCSO, but just another wannabe.

Links from www.homeoffice.gov.uk .

Blues on two, I was walking today after lectures, and an rapid response ambulance with blue lights and siren was rushing through the traffic, when it came beside the road I was walking, the car in front of the ambulance was in the fast lane, suddenly stopped. If you can't drive a car and give way to the emergency response services, then don't drive and consider taking a bus or bicycle or walk, if the driver of the ambulance did not react fast enough and had made a mistake, I might be one of the consequences and lying on the bed in hospital or maybe mortuary right now waiting for post mortem.

Of ESDA and Ninhydrin on white paper

Just came back from an assessment of my newly learnt skills of Forensic test, I was given a piece of white paper as evidence, and asked me to recover the sample from it. Everybody like me had been in the lab for the past few weeks, will know what we can get from a piece of white paper, writing indentations and fingerprints is the most common.

So here it goes, i used White Crime-Lite and scanned through the surface, well I do saw some indentations but couldn't find any fingerprints. Then this comes to me, if I used Ninhydrin first to recover fingerprints (if there are any), I risked the writings destroyed by the solution, or maybe distorted the whole writing indentation, if I used ESDA to recover the indentations, I may risked the fingerprints destroyed due to "bulk" handling. Amino acids on paper, I really don't know the handling during ESDA will destroy the prints or not. Eventually, I used ESDA first as I totally had no idea where the prints are or they are present or not.

Anyway, had just finished "Perverting the Course of Justice", and a new book had just arrived and started to read it. About the book? Will talk about it in the next post.

Links from www.fosterfreeman.co.uk .

Two-nil to decency

Recently the plastic fuzz blogged about when she had finished one of her PCSO training and was on the way home on a bus. It is One-nil to decency.

Well, today when I was on a bus full of people on the way to my Uni, there was 3 young lads sitting on the upper rear deck, one was them was younger than 12 years old (i think), the other 2 was just around 15 or 16, there was like screaming, shouting, talking loudly, and totally pretend that the other 3o+ people on the upper deck is either invisible or does not present. It's quite irritating to me, I was hoping that there is really a police at that time to shut them up. But a 60+ man sitting next to them, warned them straight away, the conversation are more likely the same but he's not a police officer. The 3 young lads eventually shut up, and the passengers in front are smiling and nodding their heads, many of us turn our heads back and stare at those idiots. When the bus reaches my Uni and waits for us to disembark and continues it's journey, the man warns them not to creates any problems anymore and doesn't want to hear a sound from them, and he and his wife went to the lower deck. I smile and thanked the man.

At the comments of PCSO blog's, there is another PCSO said nobody actually do anything when similar things happen. When this incident happen in the bus today, I was thinking, if I went to intervene, what will happen? Youngsters these days carries knifes with them, maybe because he is an old man and they might give some "respect" to him, but I'm just another young lad, I'm no good to anobody dead or injured. Youngsters carries knife not because police is useless in unable to arrest them and charged them, but it's just their so-called "cool".

Until now, I'm still amazed on the man, Thank You. So it's considered Two-nil to decency, right?

Miranda Warning

When you are under arrest for doing something illegal, or watch tv and sees the bad guys being arrested by the police, the cops will say the words below, or similarly.

"You do not have to say anything; but it may harm your defence if you do not mention when questioned something which you later rely on in court. Anything that you do say may be given in evidence."

This is called the Miranda Warning or Right to Silence. Yes, it is a long one, and most often when you watch Police Interceptors, Road Wars, Police Camera Action etc etc, once the bad guys got caught, the police will just say all of these out, and the bad guys will just totally ignore them anyway, but it 's a procedure after all. Maybe during this long speech, the bad guys might already thinking how to make a quick get-away but most often failed to do so, or just swearing that their innocent and telling the cops they got the wrong one.

I had this topic yesterday, and my lecturer was an ex-cop, his suggestion? 

"SHUT UP!!! YOU'RE NICKED!!!"

Four words, and typically it covers everthing. Make's the cop's life easier isn't it???

Chain of Custody

Today I was watching CSI, when suddenly one of them open an evidence box to review an old case, when the evidence is reviewed in the evidence bag, there is a piece of paper stating "Chain of Custody" on it, where it is left blanked. I was like "wow", no wonder they can't solve the case, even if there is new evidence, the court wouldn't allow them to use the evidence as they have no idea on where the evidence had been. 

Photos linked from www.iape.org .

Perverting the Course of Justice

Since the reviews of this book went up so high, I decided to buy myself one. What should I say? Well, for you can get it in amazon.co.uk with this link. And it worth every single penny on every page, for me. I end up reading this book rather than reading up the law cases I should have read them last week, so I'm burning midnight oil tonight to finish my law cases for tomorrow. 

Anyway, internet connection in my place hasn't been going too well, I told my friend about this, he asked back to me, since you study Forensic Science, you guys are good in tracing the source of problems, you should know what to do! Man, Forensic Science is not everything, I would rather leave this to those "pros". 

Law cases, where examples discussed by my lecturer, here's one, there is one case where someone talks to a mother with an infant, some how, I don't know how, but some how, the mother drops (i think, not paying 100% attention during class.) her infant and the infant unfortunately died. That someone is charged. Lesson No.1, never talk to someone with a baby.

Lesson No.2, similar case, but it's a woman that is pregnant. I forgotten about the details of the case, but the baby in her womb died, and the someone was charged. So, never talk to someone that is pregnant. Then, someone talks to a man, and don't know why and how again, the man had a heart attack and died, that someone is charged. Lesson No. 3, never talk to someone. Overall, just lock yourself inside your room and don't talk to anyone. ???

Erasers

Nothing much to say tonight, just that 5 hours of continuosly lectures is killing me. When today at lectures, I accidentally drawn something using a pencil onto my notes, which I decided to use an eraser to rub it away, I went searching my pencil box, where I tend to have a full collection of stationaries in it, and I believe I do have an eraser, but end up I don't have one. Being a Forensic Scientist, you can't just simply use an eraser to erase something at there, I can't believe my life is just drifting towards the Forensic life. I DO NOT HAVE AN ERASER IN MY PENCIL BOX.

Newbie. New post. New blog. Old stuffs.

Where should I begin? When I tell my friends I'm studying Forensic Science, the next thing you know is how is it? Is it like the C.S.I. we used to watch in TV? Do you guys carries gun? Have you seen the corpses yet? Did you puke? etc etc.

NO. We are not the same as C.S.I. in the TV. We do not have guns in our side. Normal duty police in UK doesn't carries a gun, it doesn't make any special of us to carries a firearm while performing investigation to a crime scene. I haven't seen any corpses yet because I'm still studying, and therefore I can't puke. And we do not flick our hair or have fashion cloths or any other stuffs that men and women have when they go to work. Even if we does have, it will be all covered up by the white plastic coverall and over branded shoes will be covered as well by blue plastic. Our spiky hair, colourful hair or whatever we have will end up covered up as well. Colourful polished fingernails of the females (sometimes males as well) will be hidden by Nitrile gloves. The only part we do not hide is our eyes only. We will be wearing masks as well. Not as Dr. Gil Grissom below.

Till then, will be posting a new post soon. Photo linked from www.watchingcsi.com and www.tvguide.com .