cristallina

it's been cold, wet and rather miserable in zurich the past few days. and the weekend was only getting worse - 12oC and rainy. so rather than suffer in the northern gloom, lars and i headed south for the day to do some walking in ticino (the italian-speaking part of switzerland). we popped out of the gotthard tunnel (17km long through the alps!) to the sunshine of the south. it was still a bit chilly (it lightly snowed on us when we were starting), but there was no rain! we did a loop around the cristallina massif, and the surounding landscape was mighty impressive. quite a bit steeper and rockier than the northern alps i've walked in before. there was time for a real pizza in airolo (big, cheap and yum - much better than zurich food!), before heading back through the tunnel to the darkness, rain and fog of the north...

pics here.

nigel aylott

i spoke maybe five words ever with him, but his honesty, enthusiasm, dedication and enjoyment of everything he did was obvious and amazing. as many have said, he will be sorely missed.
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honggerberg

the past few weeks have been quite hectic in the microbiology institute, since we've been busy moving the entire contents of the previous building to the new campus. luckily for me the new building is a 10 minute stroll from home - every extra minute of sleep in the morning counts! (even luckier for me that i was in sweden, and so couldn't help out with most of the packing). now we're all settled into our swish new building, but still can't really do much, since half of the chemicals and equipment are still on their way from the old building. unfortunately today is a half-day holiday in zurich (to give the kiddies a chance to practice their shooting, from what i've understood), since we would be going home at about mid-afternoon anyway. all the swiss public holidays fall on sundays this year, and the bastards don't carry them over to the closest work day!! i'd better go out for a ride to make the most of it.

mmmm singletrack...

ok i think i'm addicted to the sweet sweet singletrack i've found over the past couple of days in the forests to the north of hongg. i'd heard rumours that there were nice trails in the altberg forest, and so went out to have a look for myself. now i've made myself a 90 minute or so tour, about half on fantastic singletrack (bits steep, bits technical, bits shrubby, all fun), and with some killer hills thrown in so i don't begin to think that i'm dreaming. i went wednesday, thursday and saturday afternoons, and had to stop myself today, so instead went for a lovely run around kaferberg and honggerberg forests instead. this was probably a good move, since the rain on saturday night had made all the knobly roots very slipepry - it's not so fun to ride when you're slipping, sliding and falling all the time.

rahzel and mike patton

after sleeping pretty much all day trying to recover from the exersions of last week, i managed to drag myself down to x-tra in the heart of the seediest district of zurich to catch rahzel (from the roots) and mike patton the mad genius himself. and am i glad i did. they put on a superbly wierd and funky show, managing to fill the sonic space with beats, basslines and cracked melodies with only their voices and minimal effects and reverb. (a review of a seemingly more boring show is here)

GLIBS

it's been a while, but i'm back in action, with only the smallest backdating.

last week was most exciting and busy. i was back working with proteome systems for a bit again, at the annual meeting for GLIBS, the swedish association for Glycoconjugates in biological systems. it was a most rewarding week, finding out that there are actually people out there who are interested in 'glycobioinformatics' (the domain name is still free matt...) and other such exciting things, playing beach volleyball, and cruising on the nearby fjord.

being in sweden was also a perfect oppurtunity for me to drop in on the various scattered members of my AFS host family (95/96 is a while ago now...). especially exciting was jonna (and eric's) new 4 month old bub, signe. what a cutie!! olle and inger managed to find time to take me for a sail just south of uppsala as well, which was a fantastic way to end the week.

a few pics are here.