London Day 1

So. I'm back in London, also known as Rundon, which can probably also be called 'Fundon' because it's always so much fun. I got in quite late on Thursday night so I wouldn't be spending the first day of the CHINESE NEW YEAR travelling. Also, I can get CNY banquets in London, I don't know where I'd get them in Munich. I guess London can therefore also be known as 'Yumdon'. 

I had plans to also do some shopping and touristy stuff while in Fundon. It doesn't matter how many times I'm there, there are always things that surprise and amuse me. 

Like finding this street not far away from where Pooey lives! I thought only the Germans were giant fans of the Hoff!

I did consider whether I had enough time to be really touristy and go to the viewing deck of The Shard, but decided I didn't :/

Despite the overcast sky, it was a pretty clear day. I considered taking a photo of St. Paul's through the bridge supports but there were too many tourists. Tourists!

Yes, I did take this photo from here because 1D were in this very spot for their One Thing video. 

(Go to 2:12)

Oh hey, Bumblebee!

After doing some shopping, I headed into Chinatown and have some curry laksa from Rasa Sayang. It was nowhere near as good as Laksa King.

The first banquet of the trip was a catch up with different people who used to be from Melbourne at Kam Fung, near Holborn. It was a pretty good dinner, but the really funny thing is that when I told Smee and showed him the photos, he had no idea that this place existed and said he'd check it out asap!

The very Asian table setting. What I didn't know until later was that the mandarines were a present from Jade and the Friendly Dragon.

YEE SANG!!!! Funny point - the orange things at the edge of the plate on the bottom left of the photo were crunchy nut cornflakes?

Scallops. These were pretty awesome.

Golden pillow prawns. I don't think I've ever eaten prawns like this before.

Stuffed fish. I know I have never eaten fish like this before! The fish had been skinned, the meat mashed up into awesomeness, then rolled back up again, cooked and then sliced and presented like that. Awesome. 

Siu yuk/roast pork belly. Everybody agreed that this was pretty good. 

Roast duck

The other dishes that were too far away for me to photograph individually but there was tofu, chicken, and vegetables.

To be honest, I don't think I've eaten like this since Pooey's wedding, and my lack of practice showed. It HURT to walk to the tube and get back home. I had to sleep on my side and still felt full the day after!

Another manuscript?

For the last...year...Nicki and I have been trying to get labelling for a particular class of cells to work. This involved different antibodies and even emailing people I didn't know from other parts of the world for advice. This advice turned out to be fruitful and it finally worked in the last few weeks. The final step in what I hoped would be the closing of another project, when discussing the outlook with someone else involved in the project (after an absence of communication for a few months), we have decided to change tack, and I'm now writing another collaborative manuscript. This time however, we're angling for just a short communication with a 1500 word and 10 paper citation limit.

As Markus pointed out, with those low numbers, I could probably finish a first draft of the manuscript in less than a week...except I won't because I'm flying to London tomorrow! MUHAHAHAHA!!!!

Happy Australia Day!

It's a funny thing being an ex-pat. The longer I stay away, the more I care about the things I used to have but didn't really bother about, like eating Asian food and access to a real beach. On that note, here's some honey joys I made to celebrate Australia/Invasion Day that I brought as dessert to Stefanie and Jacob's place (although they'd already prepared a 3-course Indian dinner), and then palmed off to people at work.

With bonus stuffed kangaroo!

Hey, it's snowing!

You know, I'll flat out say that I've been quite happy with the unseasonably warm winter we've been having. Not having to worry about wearing the right shoes or falling on ice or having to brave negative number in order to buy groceries or whatever. I'm loving it! But I will say that I do like the look of a freshly snowed street and the strange appearance of a snowing sky.

When I emerged from a nightclub with Annina to find that it was snowing like hell, I decided to not bother waiting for the nightbus and to catch a cab home. But once I got home, I decided that it would be nice to record a bit of snow for posterity.

The fluffy and pretty stage of snow before it goes all grey and icy.

And I was even happier the next morning to see that most of it had already melted away :D

Another paper online!

I'm equal first (listed second), and it's that crazy paper that I was writing back in August. The paper was actually accepted a couple of days before Christmas (Merry Christmas!) but it's only just been posted online now. The good thing is that this paper is my third first author paper in 3 years, and second from this position. The really good thing is that this paper is from a collaboration between myself and the group I'll be joining later this year, so we all know that we can work productively together. The great thing is that I now know that with the right project, I can complete a study from initial experiments to online publication in SIX MONTHS (and write a full manuscript in 2 weeks). Current boss says this is the record she knows of!

Wrecked

For the last couple of weeks, I've been feeling pretty tired. And when I say tired, I mean despite staying home during the week and sleeping (relatively) early, I've been waking up late and feeling like I could do with more. Hell, Ziad even pointed out to me at a party that he'd never heard me say, "I'm tired" before - and he's seen me dance for 4 hours straight.

I chalk this feeling up to a couple of reasons. Firstly, I'm in the second half of a course of antibiotics and I think fatigue might have been listed as one of the side effects. Secondly, I don't think I've seen the sun in two weeks. I think my melatonin levels might be out of whack and not able to determine when I'm supposed to be awake. Thirdly, work has been a bit of a shit and that is never motivational.

Movie review - The Wolf of Wall Street.

Jordon Belfort (Leonardo DiCaprio) is a self-made made. A millionaire, owner of his own Wall St. stockbroking firm (Stratton Oakmont), beautiful wife Naomi (Margot Robbie), a huge house, a private yacht, and as many drugs and hookers as he likes. Based on a true story and the current record holder for most uses of the F-word (and variations) in a feature film, this is Martin Scorsese's latest film about criminals and low-lifes (even when they're living the high life).

Hmmm, I'm a bit conflicted about this movie so I'll just do a pro vs con review.
Pro

• This is a pretty interesting story that I feel was well-adapted. The opening scene where Belfort introduces himself and his possessions do a pretty good job of showing his self-absorption and materialism. It also does a pretty good job of immediately giving a reason how these combined to drive him towards criminal activity by his desire to control how others perceive him.
• Leo really puts in an amazing performance. At his manipulative yet charming best, we are shown how Belfort was well-regarded by his peers despite being an absolute shit. Also, two words - crawling scene.  
• The rest of the cast are also to be commended. Robbie could have easily been the sexy-bimbo/husband-stealing second wife, but draws an emotional response as her life-crashed down around her through no (real) fault of her own. Props also to Jonah Hill as Belfort's second-in-command who is let down by a combination of greed and a bit of lack of brains, and Matthew McConaughey as the broker who set Belfort down his path.

Con

• It might be well written but it's freaking long. Clocking in at 180 minutes (not including previews/adverts), I'll flat out say that I was sore from sitting so long! 
• The movie has been accused of glorifying Belfort and his crimes and to an extent I agree. We never actually see the people who suffer as a result of his actions, just repeated and prolonged scenes of parties, drugs and sex. These also become grating after a while - I just wanted to say, "Okay, I get it, let's move on." Perhaps this was the intention, but I felt that my reaction that Belfort is a despicable person is more to do with subjective response as opposed to what was presented to us on screen.  
• On that note, I can't help but feel the sex/drugs were completely over the top. I mean, I know some corporate types and have been told that there is a culture of drugs, booze, and sex that they join in on to 'fit in', but I can't help finding hookers for the brokers and sex in the office during working hours in front of others to be slightly unrealistic? 
• Unless you include Belfort's arrival at LF Rothschild, there's no real character development. Most the people are introduced as small-fry scumbags and end as bigger-fry convicted scumbags. It can be argued that this is because none of the people involved were/are actually repentant of what they've done, but we don't even get much insight into the FBI agent who brought it all down (Kyle Chandler).

So yeah, in this case my cons outnumber the pros. However, while I think this isn't Scorsese's best, but I can't say I wasn't entertained.
6.5-7/10

Raspberry and coconut pancakes.

For reasons that are unknown even to myself, I decided to make myself pancakes for dinner. They were pretty good, with the sourness of the berries cutting through the sweet of the pancake and golden syrup. It was a nice way for me to use some of the random ingredients I had in the freezer and cupboard.

Recipe makes about 12-15 pancakes, depending on how large you want them. I halved the recipe and ended up with 8 smallish ones because I was frying them 2 at a time in that pan (as you see in the photo).   

1.5 cups of milk

1 egg

2 tsp vanilla extract

2 cups of flour

1/4 tsp baking powder

1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup dessicated coconut

'handful' of frozen raspberries - quantity depends on how many you want!

butter for frying

golden syrup

Mix the milk, egg, and vanilla together in one bowl, and mix the dry ingredients into another. Make a well in the dry ingredients and whisk the milk mixture into the flour. Break the frozen raspberries into smaller pieces and stir through the batter. Fry the pancakes in butter, flipping them when bubbles form. Eat with golden syrup (or ice cream if you have some, I didn't).

People watching at Stachus Maccas.

Simon and I were late rocking up to this month's Hyper Hyper! party and after standing in queue for one and a half hours, we decided to cut our losses and go to McDonald's to get something to eat before catching the last u-bahn home.

Despite it being relatively early on a Friday night, in the half hour that we were there, we saw:
1. One old lady with clown make up on who was happily sleeping in a booth. She was later thrown out by security.
2. The couple next to us kept wavering until the girl suddenly stood up and announced she was going to the toilet and then didn't return for at least 10 minutes.
3. A trio of friends, the guy physically picking up one girl and putting her on her feet, and repeating the same with his other friend while juggling the other girl at the same time. All three of them managed to get out by their own power.
We've agreed that if we ever find the queue is too long to get in within an reasonable time again, Maccas Stachus is the place to go for some other Friday night entertainment!

Well, that was quick.

Two weeks into the new year and one of my resolutions is already kaputt! And it's not the one about speaking more languages! What matters is that I tried :D

Sharknado!

This gem of a movie was finally being broadcast in Germany - AND IN ENGLISH NO LESS!!! Markus and Felix actually WON tickets to watch this in a cinema while I chose to stay at home with a cup of ice cream as a tornado of sharks rained down on LA.

This is not a proper movie review because I wasn't treating it as a proper movie but our next day assessments were that, unlike other fantastically trashy moves (e.g. Iron Sky), we have no idea what the budget went into because it was not the script, sets, props or CGI. But since we got to see Steve from the original 90210 chainsaw his way out of a shark, it doesn't matter! There was also a bonus Australian (Jaason Simmons) who was a fount of random information - as Markus said, that's pretty true to life given the (one) Aussie he knows! Also, Tara Reid as the mother to two adult children? Okay...

Anyway, if you get the chance to watch this movie for free, make sure you've got some alcohol and/or ice cream, then settle an entertaining night!

Short week, long week.

Monday (6th Jan) was a public holiday so this is only a 4 day working week. Despite that, this week already feels like it's been dragging on forever as we all get back into the old routine. And so, despite it being only the second day of the working year for many people (not for myself, obviously), many of us are already saying, "I need a holiday."

Skiing?!

Believe it or not, for the first time in over 10 years, I went skiing. There are a number of reasons for the long time between drinks - namely money and my ankle injury. I wasn't going to test my crappy ankle on the icy Australian slopes (again), and I had other (better?) things to spend the money on than fly to NZ or JP for their powdery snow. But now that I live in a cold country, the 'expense' argument is wearing a bit thin not to mention contending with weird looks when I tell them I've visited famous skiing areas and didn't ski. The ankle is a legitimate reason why I shouldn't ski, but I was persuaded to eat least try the ankle out on some European blue slopes, or at the very least, keep Barbel company given that a bunch of friends had planned a ski trip and she was the only person who wasn't in a couple. 

We were staying in a village near the Serfaus-Fiss-Ladis ski resort, in an apartment on the top floor of a farmer's house (Bauernhof). And when I say farmer's house, I mean it because they kept a pig that we fed our scraps to and a cow that supplied us with milk and cheese!

The view from our window.

So how did I go? Good news - the assessment from Yvonne and Daniel was that they could tell I'd definitely been on skis before, even though I was a bit rusty and technique wasn't that great. Hooray for muscle memory! Ladis has two blue runs, one quite short and the other one a bit longer, both of which Daniel took me along twice in the morning to teach some pointers. I made it to lunch falling only 1.5 times! Once during my second time down the longer run, and half a fall when I was trying to figure out how to use the platter lift. 

Check out my happy smile at the shorter blue run!

The bad? My leg basically couldn't handle it. My leg was pretty sore by lunch, and REALLY sore after it. I decided to stick to the shorter blue run which was a great idea because I could tell that I was having difficulty controlling my left ski, making me a bit of a hazard to other people. By dinner time, I was limping and my knee was killing me :( I decided to make the call as to whether I skiied the next day based on how my leg felt.

The next day it felt fine, actually. But the view from the window looked like this:

Yes, it was snowing like hell and I was advised to not ski. Turns out it was a good decision because it was powdery snow on top of ice and 'tricky'.

Once the snow stopped coming down, I took advantage of the dumpage to make a snow creature!

There ARE kangaroos in Austria!

They're just awesomely camouflaged.

The new dumping of snow also transformed the valley into something a little more abstract. Like a greyscale sketch.

Our last day at the snow was beautiful, but Yvonne, Barbel and I decided to just hang around the restaurant on top of the mountain rather than ski due to either being physically or financially crippled.

Seriously gorgeous day.

That restaurant served some mighty nice hot chocolate. 

And a pretty awesome strudel as well!

Watching kids learning how to ski, I wished again that I learned while still young enough to not care about injuries

And so to end, here are some shots of the Bavarian/Austrian alps on our way back to Munich.

Back at work :/

That's another thing. Second day of the year and I'm already back at work :/ I'm the only one in my office. You know what that means.

I GET TO PLAY ONE DIRECTION OUT LOUD BABY, YEAH!!!

New Year's Resolutions/Silvester Vorsaetzen

Resolution time! Let's start off by looking at last year's resolutions and see how they went.
1 & 2 Eat better and exercise more. Well, I think this has been achieved. Going back to Aus, people were telling me I was looking thin. Good, but thin. People have also been saying this to me in Munich so I guess it's not just that I've lost a few kgs since leaving Melbs.  3. Drink less. I'm not sure if I drank less, but I definitely spent less money on Bierfests in 2013 compared to 2012!

4. Save money. DONE! Maybe it was because I didn't do a cross-continental trip with my parents this year, but I managed to save more than double what I did last year!5. Be happier. DONE! 6. Do more cultural things. Does travel count as a cultural activity? But I'm pretty sure it was DONE!!!

So then the resolutions for 2014 are:

1. Be nicer to German people. Arriving back to Munich, I was so jetlagged that I left a piece of luggage on the S-bahn. Unbelievably, I got it back! In any other country or city, it would have been a write off! So, German people deserve more kindness from yours truly.
2. Be nicer to one colleague in particular. Those who know the story know that there is a colleague who drives me nuts. Admittedly, almost everyone else also has problems with this person so it's not just me, but I still think I should try to be patient. Anyway, it's not as if I HAVE to stick to the resolution so long as I try...
3. Speak more German, French, and Mandarin. Well, the first one is a given but the other two I used to speak to varying levels of fluency and I should try to maintain some sort of multilingual ability rather than let them die a painful/less death.
4. Get shredded. HAHAHAHAHAH. But really. Since I appear to be thin, I should probably put some bulk on. Marene, Amandine, Rachie and various people in Melbs noted how I no longer seem to have my guns. I should try to get them back.

So let's get 2014 on the road!

Year-End Roundup.

So here is my 2013 round up now that the year has come to an end.

After presenting some of my results in Melbs at the start of the year, I spent a lot of this year writing manuscripts. One of my papers was accepted in September, and for those who don't know, the paper that I wrote in a week was also accepted just before Christmas :D. Other things finally started to work, and it also took me to some workshop meetings on the Starnberger See and German Alps. After all this, I suppose I can say that it was a pretty good work year over all. For those who don't know, I'll actually be joining a new group in 2014 - the people with whom I wrote the one week paper! This both thrills and frightens me as I'll be leaving behind the crowded pool of diabetes research and move into the crowded pool of cancer research. 

After ringing in the new year in Davos,.I spent a lot of time travelling in 2013! As part of the to Melbs in Jan/Feb, I also swung by Singapore and Radelaide to catch up with old friends. Eight weeks after returning to Germs after that trip, I was back in Melbs for Pooey and Smee's wedding. I also go to walk around and drink in some Australian flora. I caught up with them again in Rundon in June, before H and I went off to Helsinki and St. Petersburg. I started summer with a long weekend in Budapest and got my feet super dirty at the Balaton Sound EDM fest in Zamardi - it was worth it :D. I stayed in Munich for most of the summer - not a bad decision given the heatwave - before catching up with H, Laulita, and Rosa in Rome - when I finally got to visit Pompeii! During October, I went off to Solingen and Wurzburg as part of the Wedding Road Trip, then caught up with Marene and Studds in Belgium in November. Unbelievably, the year ended as it started because I was back in Singapore and Australia again in December. And despite all of that, I'm STILL not a Krisflyer gold member!   

This year's movie of the year is going to be a controversial choice. It is actually...One Direction: This is Us by Morgan Spurlock and featuring One Direction. Why? Because it has totally converted me to them. Despite only seeing it for the first time when I got back to Melbs in December (1D aren't big in Germany), I somehow watched it 2 more times before the year was out. But okay, if you want a real movie as my movie of the year, I'll say it was Rush, which I also watched multiple times before the end of the year. 

2013 was also a year of sport with visits to the Aus Open and joining in on the Champions League celebrations, parties, and all-round fun. Looking back, it was a pretty good year! Here's to 2014 being even better!