croissants, kylie and running home late at night

i had my first progress report for my phd research friday morning, and it actually went off pretty well. i was impressed at how i was able to speak for 50 minutes about what few results i've actually managed to acheive in the 4 months i've been in zurich so far (at the ethz). i think people were even reasonably interested, which is always a bonus. "investigating oligosaccharyl transferase function with quantitative mass spectrometry" does sound pretty cool don't you think?

after working so hard for the hour of my presentation i had to take it pretty easy the rest of the day to recover, which was just as well, since martin convinced me to join him for some thai karaoke friday night. he'd picked out the tong 999 bar, which didn't look too bad on their website. it was actually the cheesiest place i've been to in a very long time, and luckily there was a group of german tourists wanting to sing as well, otherwise it would have been a bit empty! i opened up my karaoke career (that's right, i'd never been before!) with some kylie, which the crowd loved. the clear favourite though was 'rock around the clock'. i'll have to practise my elvis for the inevitable return.

we hung out listening to very bad thai techno for a while, until we realised we'd missed the last trams home. so i had to run back to hongg. it was a very pleasant evening for the 40 min jog, although i do miss being able to do drunken very early morning runs over the sydney harbour bridge with the unsurpassed views of the opera house. i was right on cue arriving back at meierhoff platz just as the late-night bus from downtown zurich pulled in as well... some people don't seem to appreciate the deep understanding of a city you gain by running through her streets very late at night, preferbaly not completely sober. i, however, feel it's the only true way to get to know a city, and think everyone should try it once in a while.