swedes, still summer and climbing!

first. gunnar hansson visited zürich! for the unfortunately uninformed, that's the ex-supervisor of my previous supervisor, and concurrently a previous job offerer. so of course i had to not only be present at his (most interesting) seminar all about muc2, but also speak some swedish with him afterwards (inte så svårt igentligen) and then, of course, attend his nachsitzung. lots of networkingwork and so.

then it was time for the weekend! since it's such great summer weather these late autumn days, shell and i had to follow reto up to braunwald for a most relaxing weekend. all with the goal of turning off the water supply to the hut for the winter. mission accomplished! (along with some most impressive tödi watching, sleeping in, and waterfall touring).

climbing! i'd almost forgotten, but reto had bought himself a shiney slinky stretchy new climbing rope! and on monday night we finally got around to trying it out! off to schlieren we were, and most impressed we also were with our 5 lead climbing efforts. not so hard, it's true, but fun indeed! yay for more climbing in the weeks to come!

no snow, sherlock

here's cheers for global warming! today, in late november, shell and i were able to walk from meiringen (home of sherlock holmes, meringues, and very little else) to grindelwald, over the 1962m grosse scheidegg pass, and had to hunt for some snow to be able to throw snowballs at each other. late november and still alpine walking is quite crazy methinks. but very fun! it was touch and go, as usual, to get ourselves out of warm bed into the dark swirling fog, but once in meiringen, the weather was perfect all the way over and down. granted it was quite chilly, with a heavy frost pretty much the whole way, but that made it all the more impressive to gaze up at the awesome 1.5km high wall on the north faces of the wellhorn, wetterhorn and eiger. wow. and thanks to wintertime, the walk finished early enough that even after the 3 hour train trip back to zürich, there was still a relaxing evening to be had!

things are more real on tv

...or in a photo. sometimes i catch myself watching the big screen rather than the actual muscian at a gig, or looking at pics i've just taken on my camera rather than the scene in front of me. so i found this flickr slideshow (linked from boingboing) quite amusing and shouldertapping.

any excuse for lunchtime champagne!

well, it's not every day i'm on a science paper!

it actually wasn't too hard either to get the rest of lab out for a mini-apero celebration of mike, shin, mario, my, nico, eva, ina, and markus's _very_ interesting science paper, out today. you can read the abstract and article, the science editor's summary, and more about it on the eth microbiology site, or in ETH life (in german) where markus talks about how cool it is that we have such an international and collaborative lab. which it is actually.

drinking at lunchtime makes work in the afternoon a bit challenging, so it's lucky i've got fabienne, my semesterstudent, to take care of me these days. and i reckon that since mike, shin and mario are all equal first author, that counts me as second author for sure.

at last, bara sahib

for all you last.fm scrobblers out there, or even if you're not, go listen lots to this:

bara sahib - this is just the end



it's fun, good for you, and free!

happy birthday shell!

yesterday was shell's 30th bday! for such a momentous occasion, much celebration was of course called for. she started the morning by ripping the wrapping paper off a variety of exciting presents, and getting loads of phone calls from well-wishers.

pause for largely normal day.

then in the evening it was time to get busy. we dropped in at pippa scott (most confusingly of the uq vet school, but no relative of shell scott)'s housewarming party. she has a very nice spot. an apartment squeezed in between two pubs just off escher-wyss-platz in the middle of zürich's party district, but still amazingly spacious and quiet. only a brief stop there though before it was off to les halles. as opposed to lasalle right next door - also most confusing. there was a bit of additional confusion as too how much we all had to eat and pay for, but we sorted out the kranky boss and friendly confused waiter who didn't work there anyway, and got stuck into our pig buffet. all sorts of pig products were on offer, as it was metzgete (the pig slaughter festival, not the bike race). speck, rippli (yum), leberwurst, rauchwurst, and the very impressively disgusting looking blutwurst. it was all a bit much really, and i'm still quite full 20 hours later. the heads of the pigs were very tastefully on display just near our table too. they looked very happy with their floppy ears, snuffly snouts and cherries for eyes.

but anyway, lots of people turned up to wish michelle all the best, and much fun was had by all (except for the cranky boss, but you can't please everyone).

happy birthday shell!

happy halloween

ina decided to hold a halloween party. i really had few ideas for costumes. going with michelle as buffy and spike would have been a favourite, but chopping and bleaching the hair would have been a tad extreme. so instead reto and i came up with the sensational ideas of pippy long-stocking and superman! perfect for halloween costumes! reto had all sorts of fun on monday night going shopping on the langstrasse for colourful stockings and skirts, but unfortunately i already had all the ingredients for my costume. it's amazing what can be done with running tights, thermals, a towel and some boxers. i think we looked quite stylish in the end.



vadim, on the other hand, was truly sensational.


i'm not sure that ina was so impressed with our pitiful efforts to maintain the halloween mood, but i had fun at least! and at least we had costumes, unlike some.