Fossil hunter

There is a staircase at work that I both hate and love. I hate it because I have to use it to get around the different buildings and people are allowed to smoke in it.

*Side note - while indoor smoking is apparently banned in Germany, it does not seem to be strictly enforced anywhere other than Bavaria. Like seriously. When I complained that it was not okay for this to happen, I was told that the weather is so bad in Bremen (with the rain) that smokers complained it was discriminatory. I countered this by saying it snows like fuck in Munich, and if smokers there have to go outside in the negative degree weather, they can suck up the rain. Also, how can you discriminate against someone who chooses to smoke? Don't give me *it's an addiction* shit - I could be addicted to alcohol but you don't see me drinking at work *End rant*

Anyway, I love this staircase because it is marble with some really lovely fossils. 

Beautiful nautilus - you can see the individual chambers!

And I figured out it's a nautilus and not an ammonite because ammonites have a ridge on their outer shell. There is a fossil that I think might be an ammonite but it isn't complete so it's hard for my inexperienced mind to decide

I'm actually a little upset that this one has a scratch right through it

I've got no idea what this is but I really like it.

Yes, I am a big nerd. BUT I LOVE IT!!!

Thanks Miss Pooky!

A gift! I was afraid that wearing this would make me seem like an asshole, but luckily my pals (many of whom also have PhDs) found it hilarious!

In other news...

I am now writing as a blogger for a science magazine. Given that this is published under my real name, I am hesitant to provide a link here. 

If you're interested in reading these entries, please send me a message. 

Passed!!!

I passed the in-house unit exam of my German school. Hopefully it will be good enough for the powers that be!

Duolingo

In addition to restarting German classes, I've decided to refresh my French and Spanish by checking out the Duolingo app. The app apparently will teach you vocabulary and grammar through repetition, with each level broken up by theme once you pass the absolute basics (e.g. animals, food), and consists of exercises in reading, writing, listening and speaking. Except the speaking can't seem to pick up my whispered words so well - I'm mostly doing the exercises at night or in the u-bahn.

So does it work? Well, as someone who used to be quite fluent in french, I probably should have skipped the basics section but the repetitions are reminding me of some of the genders. On the other hand, given my very basic spanish, I think the app is quite useful in forcing me to remember how to conjugate verbs. I've also used it to see how difficult it would be for me to learn Portuguese - my conclusion is that I can read it quite easily :D :D :D

In summary, I think if you want to get started in the offered languages (so far it has English, French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, and German), the Duolingo app is a pretty good (and free) way to start. At the very least, it will teach you how to say you drink beer or wine within the basic stages. Nós bebemos cerveja!

SCIENCE!!!

I think this is pretty cool. 

I kinda wish they actually taught it to dance though...

Swag!

In happier work news, I attended a scientific trade fair this week. I love trade fairs. I love goodies and freebies as companies try to woo us into buying their things. This is also helped along by my general shamelessness in asking for more and more freebies. After a slow start to the day - Markus and I actually had been tasked with talking to different companies about the possibility of purchasing a new piece of equipment - here's most of what I collected! 

Booyeh.

Not pictured are the edible freebies such as the bag of popcorn and fairy floss that I had, and the FREE BEER from the bar in the Sarstedt stall. But there was something there that I really regret not getting which wasn't the best pipette in the world from Thermo. A person at Eppendorf was wearing a lab coat that said ' Your expert in cell culture' or something like that. Markus, who had been fairly low key about the swag-grabbing and a bit taken aback at my general excitement at being the trade fair at this point actually said to me that if I could score the coat, he would wear it in the lab everyday. Alas, it was not to be and the Eppendorf people were a bit shocked when I asked for it. Ah well. 

 Here's a few other photos from our day out!

With the Thermo chameleon...

and the Metabion cow. Metabion were giving out stressballs shaped like cows but I really wanted the cows that came dressed in tracht. Alas, they were only free if you bought over €100 worth of primers. Dang. 

Delicious, delicious science.

Soup

I picked up a really nice memento from Wiesn - a cold. As far as colds go, it was a pretty mild one. Just sneezing, snotty nose, and a sore throat - no loss of voice, coloured mucus, headaches or fevers. However, being an opportunist, I decided that it was the perfect time to make soup! And not just any old chicken soup (although I made that too), I decided to make this soup which is practically perfect for colds.

Tom Kha Kai!!!

What makes it so perfect? It has ingredients that have been shown to possess medicinal properties. Firstly, it's a chicken soup- chicken soup has been shown to inhibit migration of a class of white blood cells.
I made the soup using chicken legs and lemon juice - vitamin C and zinc are good for the common cold. (Although that paper comes from Bayer - grain of salt, people!)
Another major ingredient is chilli - capsaicin is antibacterial, just in case something does start taking over the mucus.
I threw in carrots - beta-carotene is (among many other things) an antioxidant.
But if all the others fail, just drinking hot liquids clears the upper respiratory tract.

Pooey playing Street Fighter IV

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH

Someone I showed this to said it looked like her hands were having a seizure.

A Walk in the Park

Pooey had her wedding preparation under control and as such, she didn't need me as much as I'd anticipated. This wasn't such a bad thing - I had the opportunity to take some time to myself in autumn sunshine after the crappy German winter (and autumn, and spring). 

I don't know what these flowers are but they were a happy and colourful sight after the grey winter. 

The Secret Garden-esque entry to the Heide II Kitchen Garden...

...where snakes are a natural part of the environement (hehehe)

And spiders!

Although it looks full, I could see that a few of the beds were in the midst of being re-planted.

No matter how often I see these corrugated iron cows, I love them. They just look so much like...cows...

Gardening - Australian style

I made my way down to the river and enjoyed the sight of sunshine coming through the trees and reflecting off the water. 

Then I made my way back to the other Heide Kitchen garden and took photos of...

Zucchini!

Tomatoes!

Eggplants!

Chillies!

I never really appreciated how nice the Australian landscape was until I left and really enjoyed walking around and seeing our weird flora, like these blossoms. I ended up walking out for around an hour - Mum actually rang me to ask where I was for so long!

And as I made my way back, despite the clear blue skies and warm sunshine, I got this reminder that winter is coming...but not snow :P

Candy Crush Saga

Okay, I've realised what I've been doing rather than updating my blog - playing Candy Crush Saga.

That crap is addictive. Keep away. 

Working with nerds.

First of all, I am a nerd and DAMN PROUD OF IT!!! However, being in the profession I'm in, I'm often confronted with people who are far more nerdy. This time around in Bremen, I had the opportunity to measure a sample on an R&D version of a machine that I'm using. 

Upon visiting their offices/labs...I was instructed that I had to suppress my Asianness as photography of the R&D machines was strictly forbidden. I really wish this was not the case because once I passed through the laser safety curtain...god I wish I was allowed to take photos.

It was far more hardcore than this.

(Image source)

The walls were lined with racks filled with plastic boxes filled with various bits of wiring and god knows what else. Arranged around the room were various machines, stripped of their protective exteriors designed to make a lab looks streamlined, exposing the wiring and in some cases, with adaptations. In the centre of the room, standing like a beast, was a Frankenstein version of the machine I've been using. Looking at him, Michael made the comment, "hmmm, looks like they've got four lasers mounted..." Being a clumsy sort, I had to be especially careful not to bump into anything!

But the real joy came when they were explaining to me how they'd altered the machines to alter various measurement parameters and the line, "Yeah, we had to hack the (company's commercially available) software to get it to do that..." and pointing out the modifications on the machine. Seriously, it was putting my nerd declarations to shame. Respect to the true nerds. Respect.

Getting our culture on

At dinner, Spu and I discussed with Drs I-K about what we were going to do in the following days. Spu and I said we were going to hit 3 major museums in one day - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The American Museum of Natural History, and MOMA.  They gave us looks of disbelief and made comments such as *I could spend the entire day there!* Indeed, and we also could have spent entire days there, but alas we only had one week in NYC and therefore, one day. Since the Met opens the earliest, we headed to the Museum Mile and strolled through Central Park while waiting for things to kick up. 

Along the way, we saw this.

Hello, Guggenheim! But we didn't go in - I visited it later in the week.

Sunny morning, hanging out on the steps, waiting for it to open

Kekeke

Unfortunately, we basically had to run through the collection without stopping to read the descriptions and skipping major things like the Egyptian section...but we were still there for 2.5 hours! Sheet - time schedule not working!

So we grabbed a hotdog from a streetside stall and trundled across Central Park to ANMH, where we basically ran to the top of the building to the dinosaur section.

Which had this giant spider over the (closed) main entrance.

Rexy!

Trixie!

Hey, it's Kevin!

EEEEEK!!!

A mammoth

Hehehe, Spu looks like Beethoven.

Roar!

Steggie. The really funny thing about being up there was remembering all the random info we learned about dinosaurs when we were kids. The different periods, names, etc...

Like an aussie...

The hall of American Animals was closed but the African and Asian ones were open, thank god. 

I think these were black rhinos?

As a sign of our mutual immaturity, we looked at this sign and simultaneously said *boobies!*

A very close parent-child relationship

Dum-dum!

Mexican dog sculpture. It looked much cuter without flash.

Spu gets into a spot of bother with a giant head

The Hall of Biodiversity.

HAHAHAHAHAHA

Well, we do our next best without sitting in it

Poor taxidermied tiger

Seriously though, the taxidermy was both impressive for the sheer number of  animals but also depressing when you realise how many animals were killed for it.

But this is a model of a baby blue whale that died naturally.

Sharks chasing a turtle

The Squid and the Whale - an Epic Battle 

After a mexican lunner, we walked down the Upper West Side and swung by the Dakota. We couldn't go to Strawberry Fields because a crime was committed in broad daylight close by.

Spu wasn't too keen on MOMA (he doens't like Modern Art) but I convinced him that it would be worth it. In the end, I think he decided that it was the best museum because it had an exhibit examining things related to children. This included advertising, toys, films etc. 

And it had these giant tables and chairs that we were allowed to climb over!

On Saturday morning I finally made it back to the Guggenheim (Spu went shopping), but the main spiral was closed due the the installation of an exhibit so we could only take photos in the foyer and look at the exhibits in the annexe.

Then when I left the museum, there was, irony of ironies, a German culture parade on! It actually kinda made me wish I had my dirndl with me but I did end up having a nice chat (auf Deutsch!) to these Swabisch ladies who'd been in the US for 40-50 years.