ben's swiss blog

boredom and cleanliness in pokhara

2008-01-06T12:41:00.000+01:00

pokhara is a really boring place. but it's just what i needed after 21 days walking all around the annapurna massif. there is basically only 1 street to (the tourist part of ) pokhara, and only a few types of shops gracing it - travel agencies, book shops, clothes shops, cafes and tibetan handicraft shops. the confusion is that each type of shop is identical, so walking down the street is like being in a cheap cartoon with a repetive backdrop. the ready availability of quite delicious pizza, apple pie and coffee somehow makes things quite managable though. the most entertaining thing is the traffic dodging the 2 holy cows stoned in the same place in the middle of the road for at least the past hour now.

the annapurna circuit was sensational. from bessisahar on the southeast end of the massif we headed up the river valley from rice farming communities, up through subtropical rainforest, dry pines, and eventually to the high valley of pisang and manang. here was the most spectacular scenery of the entire journey, when we took the high route from lower pisang to manang, which took us 600m up the north wall of the valley for unbelievable views south to the north faces of the massive massif from gangapurna, annapurna II to glacier dome. the mountains just filled the entire sky. we waited in the relative luxury of manang for a few days as shell recovered from a nasty cough she'd picked up from the friendly dungdust of kathmandu before taking it slowlyslowly from 3500m the 2km (!) up to the 5412m thorung la (pass). being effected by altitude is quite a bizarre feeling. breathlessness when you don't expect it is at first quite scary, but soon becomes strangely normal as you adjust your walking speed to slightly faster than a holy cow in downtown kathmandu traffic. getting up to pee every 2 hours through the night as a side effect of staying properly hydrated, and having the most bizarre paranoid dreams are also rather undesirable. up and over we went though, and down into the desert landscapes of mustang. the next few days were a bit forgettable, down the flat, dusty windy and dry riverbed, but once we reached kalopani the reason for the jomsom trek's popularity was clear. the town sits at the feet of dauhlagiri, tukuche, nilgiri and annapurna, with quite amazing views of them all. there's even a new housing estate on the outskirts of the town. tatopani's hot springs were the perfect antidote for a couple of week's worth of accumulated dust and grim, but unforrtunately an hour on the trail the next day put us back to where we started. there's no staying clean! but of course as long as all around are of similar cleanliness and smelliness it's really not a problem. dawn on new year's day saw us on top of poon hill with a postcard panorama of mountains we'd been walking around and beneath, and was quite the spectacle. with plenty of time to spend, we also popped up to annapurna base camp in the "sanctuary" enclosed by the central peaks of the massif. the whole trip we were amazed not to have less than perfect weather, and that has held up to now, when we sit in pokhara under hazy and cloudy skies. i'm very glad we saved the wading through waist deep snows for some other time!

after more than enough relaxation in pokhara, we're back off on an exciting local bus to kathmandu tomorrow, and then on to india!

missing cows in the swiss national park

2007-07-29T20:46:00.000+02:00

i really didn't want to, but shell forced me.

it's always a struggle getting up early on a saturday morning, at the expense of sleeping in, eating pancakes, and drinking lots of coffee, but the mountains and sun were acalling. so off we went to the engadine valley in the southeastern corner of graubünden for a weekend of pleasent strolling.

after dumping our still spiffy new tent at the local campground, we were off upwards. the swiss national park was established a bit over 100 years ago, in a region that had been totally deforested, overgrazed, and overmined, so much so that leaving it as a "wilderness" was about all that could be done. impressively enough though, it's bounced back pretty well, and there are apparently the largest herds of gemsen and steinböckli in switzerland there now - especially in the hunting season. and even a bear at the moment! we only spotted a friendly deer or two, but the cow-free hillsides were quite a novelty.

back in zernez for the evening, we filled up on bearpizza (spinach, berries and baby sheep) and checked out the nock circus that was the big hit in town for the weekend. zebras really look like fake painted ponies.

the best thing about sleeping close to the mountains is that it's possible to sleep in and start walking early. perfect. after checking the paper for the tour result (impressive for cadel evans to be so close to the spanish drugcheat) and some coffee with gipfeli we were again up and away. two ascents of 1500m in two days is a bit much for the legs, but the lakes of macun were very pretty. it's cool to be able to see into the beginnings of the italian and austrian alps as well.

arriving back in zernez on the train from lavin, we had a scanty 16 minutes to race to the campground, pack up our tent, get back to the station, buy tickets, and jump on the train. it was close, but our efficiency was very impressive, and we were able to relax all the way back to zurich, where it had been raining all afternoon. so i wasn't really all that mad with michelle.

hola for the weekend

2007-04-17T18:48:00.000+02:00

what's a short working week for except to morph from french back to german and into spanishimeancatalan? sorry, that's another silly question of course. the week was over in a flash, and off we were to sunny party city barcelona! actually, it was warmer, sunnier and drier in zürich than northern spain over the weekend, but that matters not. we stayed in an apartment-type place just west of the old city on gran via, which was perfectly located for journeying through gotic, ribera, barcalonetta and la rambla, but not too busy itself. that filled saturday.

sunday we spent our indoor time in the picasso museum. interesting perspective on his early work, which, as i had not realised, just shows he could have painted everything "perfectly" had he so chosen. after lunch at a very yum traditional catalan restaurant we headed south up onto montjuïc, to the site of the 1992 olympics and apparently a quite nice park area. actually it was mostly construction site, although the views over the industrial port were high. maybe we somehow just missed the best bits. after the long stroll back along gran via to our apartment, searching in vain for gelato, we had to siesta to recover.

monday was gaudiday. first stop - sagrada familia. quite a bent building. i like this gaudi chap "...the great book, always open and which we must make efforts to read, is the book of Nature; the other books are based on it and have the mistakes and interpretations of mankind ...". after touring the vertigous twirly towers off up the hill we were to park güell. the lizard is quite cute, the smooth curves of broken porcelin quite soothing, and the leaning towers perfectly disturbing. we finished off the afternoon with some successful camper shopping. they make shoe shopping feel like a nightclub. rarely is spending money such fun.

warm sunny afternoons, cosy cafes, small relaxed pubs, fresh croissants, tasty coffee. barcelona's not such a bad spot.

bonjour Frühjahr

2007-04-09T22:17:00.000+02:00

easter long weekend. 4 full days of glorious spring weather. is there anything else to do but walk from lenk to montreaux? what a silly question!

it was, as always, touch and go getting ourselves out of warm bed early on friday morning, but again, as always, once up under the towering bernese oberland peaks, there was no doubt we'd made the right decision. we headed up west from lenk towards the trütlisbergpass, and it was almost hot walking! crazy spring. not to worry though, once above 1600m the snow kicked in. luckily we'd been planning and had our borrowed snowshoes to kick back. still it is remarkably hard work walking in snow, and it got up to 1m deep up towards the pass. exhausting, spectacular, quite perfect.

downhill towards lauenen was also quite fun. weeeee! all the way down. until the snow stopped at least, and then there were lots of pretty spring mountain flowers to keep us company. we popped briefly along the main street, before heading up shortly out of town to a lovely miniplateau overlooking back on our afternoon's pass. we could even see our tracks down from the pass to remind us of the fun! it got a wee bit chilly over night, but nothing too painful nor permanent, and we were all raring to go in the morning.

the best thing about walking in the swiss mountains is the sheer convenience. mountain pass, snowshoeing, then a short 1 hour downhill later we were in gsteig for fresh gipfeli, berliner and cappuccinos. quite ridiculous really. there was a bit too much snow on the next bit of our planned route, so we headed up the valley instead, over the col du pillon, loomed over by the les diableterts massif. quite an evil looking mountain, until we looked more closely and saw the spiderwebs of gondolas and skilifts covering the whole sheer face...

it really is strange to walk from german into french. all of a sudden people stop saying grüezi and start up the bonjours! but being switzerland the convenience of francs, perfect organisation and flawless english remains everywhere.

next morning, next cupofcino. it is tough. more lovely mountains, great weather. almost a bit boring really :) this night we found a superb spot to camp though. head of a valley with all the alps still closed for winter, fields of early spring flowers tentatively poking their heads up through last year's cowpats, and the limestone peaks shielding us and our small valley from the rest of the world.

long through walks are fantastic. we felt quite alien strolling into the early summer montreaux, filled with trendy french icecream lickers, wearing our mountain gear, carrying our snowshoes and smelling of 4 long mountain days. i like it.

9am day over

2007-03-23T21:55:00.000+01:00

i was up rather early this morning, on a mission to collect gipfeli to distribute on behalf of shin, after his progress report. unfortunately, zürich (and also much of northern europe i gather) chose last night to dump a rather incredible amount of fresh snow. so i had great fun wadling and wading through the decimeters. little did i know that it was only after making the pickup that the fun really to begin.

i jumped on the tram at berninaplatz for the 5min trip to milchbuck. 20min later i was finally at the platform, since all the trams in zürich had decided to have a party at milchbuck, and were refusing to move on. such is life with slippery snowy tracks... but i was all happy again when i ran into flavio. (and he i, since i had the gipfeli). since no buses were running in any direction up to the hönggerberg either, we decided to take a wintery stroll through the käferberg forest up to uni, where we arrived only bitzli wet and sniffly. stillness in the air as the snow ate the city sounds away. just in time for morning coffee and gipfeli. mmmm.

that was really quite enough for the day already at 9am.

snowshoeing on the churwurstli

2007-02-18T13:04:00.000+01:00

sun glimmering on the fresh crystalline snow, under the watchful gaze of the 7 pyramidal peaks, the trusty band of comrades marched and frollicked through the brilliant late winter day. what fun is snow shoeing in perfect weather on the sides of the upper toggenburg valley! all of this necessitated a much-too-early start from zürich, but we all made it to hb in time to beat the good-weather-weekend-ski crowds, and head off towards alt st johanne. a very pleasent little village. an unexpected encounter with the lab secretary silvia and her border collie flo. a gondola ride up from the frosty snowfree valley floor in search of snow. a mountain cafe coffee to start the journey. and we were off.

most of the time the snow wasn't really deep enough to warrant snow shoes, but it lent quite an air of adventure to the outing. after meandering through quiet forest groves splattered with sparkling glimpses of the churfirsten/wurstli/fister (depending on your accent, desire or fluency), we had lunch on an pointy spur wind cleared of snow, overlooking the säntis massif, and overlooked by all 7 pointypeaks.

after lunch, frollicks were highlighted by a series of exciting cornice leaps and steep slope slides. face planting in deep snow is really much fun indeed.

we descended back down into spring.

alt st johanne had a most convenient migros, selling ice tea, chips, chocolate and bargain calanda, which tempered our hunger and thirst and kept us entertained through the many s-bahn changes back to hb.

exhausted as we were, paola and stefan were congenial enough to invite us all back to their superstyled new apartment in höngg for pasta dinner. their madagascan geckos are so friendly (being well trained in the correlation between people and food), and did rather seem to enjoy their night-time rain storm/water spray before tucking up in between their favourite leaves for a snooze. and the company was not so unfriendly either.

sleep was good.

pictures

got gotye fever

2007-01-16T21:09:00.000+01:00

i have, recently converted gotye faN. so much do i love like drawing blood that i've listened and danced my way through at least 1 play per day the last week. which is enough to put me in the lastfm #1 gotye fan place! go me! and if you haven't heard yet, please do yourself a favour and go listen.

now i'm lost

2006-12-01T00:03:00.000+01:00

what is it with lindt these days. ?. they had a real winner with orange intense. and now they have to bring out not only chili intense, but simultaneously mint intense! it's enough to ruffle the feathers of even the most sincere chocolate connoisseur. one intense is more than enough surely? i'm really not sure about the chili thing, although the mint is growing on me. orange is still truly the original and the best, though. mmmmmmmm.

swedes, still summer and climbing!

2006-11-28T19:25:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-19T21:47:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-18T13:04:00.000+01:00

...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!

2006-11-17T23:09:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-11T15:45:00.000+01:00

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!

2006-11-11T15:08:00.000+01:00

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

2006-11-05T11:25:00.000+01:00

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.

borat is back!

2006-10-26T22:58:00.000+02:00

yay for more ali g! I hadn't realised this was he when it circulated a few years ago, but now things all fit together...

and in other news, this is really gross.

[Update 20061108]

a contingent from the lab managed to get tickets to the film tonight (it's insanely popular at the moment), and i must say i enjoyed it immensely. more a series of sketches than a coherent story, but that's what sacha does best. 'liar liar panties on fire' he he he :)

brian, warewolves and too much walking

2006-10-09T09:35:00.000+02:00

mmmm. tell me, is there anyone who doesn't love brian? if there is, i don't think they count as being a real one anyway. but enough already of my completely normal obsessions. placebo on friday night is a perfect start to any weekend, and shell and I got suitably excited at the hallenstadion. how do they rock so hard and stay so damn sexy? very impressive. and i did love how they pulled 'running up that hill' out of its 80's synth shell.

saturday was time (finally) for some pancakes and cups of cino. it's been a while. too much good weather and holidays! some sucessful shopping and labbing, and then all too soon it was time for shin's 31st birthday party! hippo birdo two ewe shinsan. although the party was most fun, and cristina's bub mateo was incredibly cute, werewolves (the game) is clearly the highlight of any evening. so much fun. so much intrigue! do play it sometime if you get the chance.

partying saturday night with little sleep is the perfect preparation for a massive mountain pass walk sunday. yes, i do promise this is true! 31km with 2000m ascent and almost the same descent. recommended by lonelyplanet as a 3 days medium/hard outing. yes! that sounds perfect for a hungover tired sunday! actually, it was brilliant. platten to disentis across the alps in a day. i was quite concerned at the outset, but the high glacial valleys on either side of the firn below the oberealpstock were simply stunning. and being quite late season, completely deserted except for us and some sheep falling off cliffs. apparently. we had to run the last 4km to make the last train, but of course it was alright in the end, and it is very nice having something truely impressive to show off about on a monday morning.

emotional heidelberg

2006-09-10T21:51:00.000+02:00

the nominal purpose of my 5 day trip to heidelberg was to attend the 3rd international meeting on fungal cell walls. mmmmm.

luckily i had a few other side projects to keep me entertained. hiren now calls the hberg home, and reto and i did my best to keep up with his evening pub tour schedule. mum, dad, and shell were also up for the weekend, and we all had fun exploring the historic town and surrounds. i think we did pretty much all the standard tourist activities on offer - old town tour, castle tour, fireworks ooo-aaa-ing, pub tour. the local tourist guides made sure we remembered the key point in heidelberg history - that the french bastards kept burning the place down whenever they had the chance. bastard french.

it was most entertaining meeting some of hiren's embl friends. they were doing their best to keep the pace in the heidelberg soap well up. table-top dancing, ellicit photos, best-buddies falling out in the middle of pool games and storming out of pubs. it was really quite a bit much for our delicate swiss sensibilities.

and amongst all that reto and i managed to make it to (almost) all of the sessions of the meeting. actually, fungal cell walls are really interesting things. really, i promise!

haldensteiner calanda for sore legs, calanda bier to make them better

2006-08-20T21:31:00.000+02:00

earlier on in the week, the order for the weekend had been rainy, windy, cloudy and unsettled, so we were very excited when friday afternoon's forecast for saturday was sun! after the past weeks of rain-enforced sleepins and laziness, it was great to have to get up predawn to head down to a train out into the depths of the mountains.

meeting reto at hb, we headed through bad ragaz to vättis at the base of our goal - Haldensteiner Calanda 2000m above. i think the first part of the climb was the steepest forested slope i've ever walked up - an ice axe would have been quite handy in parts! as we rose (very quickly!) the views across the valley to the pizol massif became even more impressive.

after being severly threatened with ominous rain, wind that was trying to blow us down back into the valley, and 2 "passes" that turned out to be only pretending, we finally made it to the teufels chilchli (the devil's church), and views down to the rhein valley, chur, and further into graubünden. after a wet and windy lunch break, we headed up to do some peak bagging, amazingly without a drop more rain, and even some brilliant sunshine!

having reached the local heights, we gradually descended back down, our horizon eventually shrinking to the handelsteiner village square. (but not before meeting some very friendly locals :) )

the Haldensteiner Calanda looms over the chur valley, and i knew that i'd feel proud of visiting her top from now on every time i train it home after a weekend of graubünden mountains behind me - calanda beer in hand of course.

(more pics)

big is small again

2006-08-13T22:39:00.000+02:00

yes, it's mid august in zürich, which means it's time for street parade. as in years past, the event was big. but when the music's stuck in the early 90s; and most of the crowd just watches, needs too much alcohol to have fun, or is wearing way too little, i get confused as to whether it's the event or me that's getting too old.

that said, i like their manifesto:
"Make your dreams come true – discover your personal 'set of tools' for a more fulfilled life. Grasp the opportunities that life offers you. Don't just watch. Take action, and help others. Standing still is moving backwards: move yourself – move your mind and your body!"

anyway, lots of pics, or news.

i'm back

2006-08-06T23:27:00.000+02:00

ok. i've had enough of www absence. my only excuse for not posting has been that since i havn't written anything for near on a week/month/year, the first return post had better be something special. so bugger that. this is not. i'm actually rather embarrased that hirenj should be linking to a dead site, so am making amends as of now.

shell and i had a rather relaxing weekend, making the most of the zürich rain - which means that it's not a sin to not get up super early, head off to the mountains, and do something energetic and silly. making and eating too many pancakes was about as silly as it got. tonight, however, was a rare treat. a brush with australian rock royalty, if you will. with her eagle eyes, shell had spotted that tnt were playing at el local tonight, and the offer of live tex'n'tim, two aussie rock gods, was an offer we could not refuse. they were quite fun really, and as memories of the evening, shell got a cd signed by tim, who had previously told me to go fcuk myself (but only if he and tex could come and watch). i don't think the audience had applauded enough after that song, and he's such a nice chap he has to put on a bit of a rock show for the crowd.

anyway, they are both very stylish and strapping chaps in their st vinie's polyester suits, and that texy certainly is a bit sexy, so i'd go and listen to them somewhere if you get the chance.

mixdown

2005-10-21T12:56:00.000+02:00

magnatune finally finished deciding who the winners of its ccmixter remix competition should be... but forgot to include me :(

even without my superb track, however, there are many (free!) tasty offerings amongst the winnners. or if you have some excess cash to help feed starving musicians, you could wait until magnatune is selling the compilation.

i'm a bit disappointed that several of my favourite mixes didn't make the cut. don't miss sweet life by ashwan. but since the most important prize for all the winners was a magnatune contract, i'm sure it won't be long before this and other tasties appear at magnatune.

hang on there a second...

2005-10-17T22:26:00.000+02:00

there was a most interesting abc online science news article today about changes in brain structure in people who are pathological liars. (as an aside, this seems like a challenging study to recruit subjects for: Q: "So, are you a pathological liar then?" A: "No."). anyway, the last sentence in the article rather put a bee in my bonnet:

"[This analysis] could also help in criminal justice settings by helping police determine if a suspect is lying, and in pre-employment screening."

Hello! All of a sudden we've jumped from a quite interesting investigation into something we all do quite a lot of the time, way way into gattaca land.

firstly, being able to choose to lie is one of the things that makes us human. probably being a pathological liar isn't all that fun, and all power to research into helping people there. but, and somewhat prematurely, to remove the power of choice puts us on a very slippery slope.

but mainly what gets to me is the complete lack of hesitation in declaring that this could be used in pre-employment screening. no discussion, no questioning, no subltety. it is a very small step from could to can to did. if we want this sort of thing, then that's all well and good, but we should absolutely not let ourselves just roll on in to it.

hmmph. a little bit better now. did anyone get the rose thing yet?

petals around the rose

2005-10-16T21:47:00.000+02:00

arrrgh!

i was almost going to have to try go to sleep without having solved this horrible little game/brain twister that slashdot pointed my way. but luckily after an incredibly frustrating hour i have now proven myself worthy of restful sleep.

previously, i was going to make the most of the supposedly superb autumn weather and head up for a walk/run in the mountains, but the rewards of staying in bed and sleeping in until midday were oh so immediate... i saved myself from sloth through an incredibly fun 2 hour mtbike ride this afternoon though. all the way through käferberg, hönggerberg, the next berg, up altberg, and back again. perfect riding weather through the low mist, just cool enough to only just sweat on the uphills, and not so cold so as to freeze on the descents. i get the feeling rain will be coming soon to turn all those lovely trails into muddy pools of slippery roots, which will rather distract from the pretty autumn leaves.

loooong progress report

2005-10-14T21:38:00.000+02:00

today was the my third progress report of my phd. presenting half a year or so's worth of work in front of colleagues and supervisor is always quite stressful, but i'd actually had some interesting results in the past weeks and months, and so there was plenty of data to present. fortunately for me, mario, mike, paola and markus thought the data was interesting enough to discuss in depth at quite a few points, and so the presentation stretched from my planned 40 minutes to 85 minutes! my apologies to the audience for delaying their morning tea coffee and gipfeli!

85 minutes of standing, presenting, discussing and thinking was more than enough for me for the day, so i added to my audioscrobbler account (i lag truely much behind hiren the master), cleaned my desk, and waited for it to be appropriately late for a few beers before heading home for a snooze.

go aussie!

2005-10-07T18:36:00.000+02:00

that's right, australians have been exceeding themselves again, and this time in more cerebral activities. there was the widely publicised nobel prize winning western australians, but my favourites are the winners of the much more entertaining ig nobel prizes (first you laugh, then you think) - where australians won both the physics and biology prizes!

the prize for physics, from none other than the University of Queensland, was John Mainstone and the late Thomas Parnell, for patiently conducting an experiment that began in the year 1927 -- in which a glob of congealed black tar has been slowly, slowly dripping through a funnel, at a rate of approximately one drop every nine years. (i've even walked past this experiment myself!)

and biology went to a bunch of guys from the University of Adelaide, James Cook University, the University of South Australia and the Australian Wine Research Institute; for painstakingly smelling and cataloging the peculiar odors produced by 131 different species of frogs when the frogs were feeling stressed. that's the power of multidisciplinary research for you!

however, in my opinion, the best study won the fluid dynamics prize: "Pressures Produced When Penguins Pooh -- Calculations on Avian Defaecation." it's a pity they can't spell, but the first figure in their paper is fantastic. 40cm is really quite impressive for a penguin.

swiss yeast in geneva

2005-10-03T11:55:00.000+02:00

i had only discovered that it was the anual swiss yeast meeting in geneva today on last wendesday, but had managed to pull my act together and get a rather snazzy poster finished for the occasion. i even managed to trap a (small) audience to talk through the story, which is always most exciting. the swiss community is rather small (50-100 people), and being a very popular model organism, the research presented ranged from dna repair, mRNA regulation, protein degradation control, glycosylation (the most important and interesting topic of course), to community interactions and evolution. but even though i only managed to stay focussed for the introduction and conclusion of most presentations, i think i learnt a thing or two, and as well as meeting some new people, that counts as a successful day.

we explored geneva a little after the meeting was over, with a wander along the very blustery and cold lake front, before hitting a groovy little lebanese restaurant for dinner. yum, cheap, atmospheric and fun! can't do much better than that! as good as it was though, it didn't make up for the 2:45 train journey back to drizzley cold zürich. however, cold rainy weather makes for very enjoyable sleeping in :)

demolition party

2005-09-25T22:07:00.000+02:00

farnoush was moving house. in fact, her current house was being demolished. so there was a need to have a big party in celebration! so the aebians and friends gathered and celebrated.

there was dancing

there was other stuff

people were happy

people got a bit sleepy

it was lucky that it was sunday the next day and i could wake up at 2 in the afternoon.

hi from shell in zürich

2005-09-17T21:47:00.000+02:00

i'm shy. and a bit embarrassed. but i'm still writing a guest entry on ben's fab blog. (i'm shell by the way). i've spent a little time relaxing in zürich with ben and his tiny flatmates, even though they're not really around all that much! i've worked out how to shop at migros (with the tricky veggie weighing!), order kind-of-yum coffee in riff raff, and track down swiss doktors by catching random trams. lots of fun! zürich's getting a bit cold now though, so i'm off to australia on tuesday! must recover from mystery illness/burnout by getting pampered by my mum and playing with my puppies fern and fudge. bye! hugs, shell.

me

ben and i (me a bit sick)

finally some swiss mountains

2005-09-04T21:26:00.000+02:00

we had to get up super early saturday morning to make the train, but it was absolutely worth it to get out and up in the mountains for (probably) the last sunny weekend of the summer. reto, mike, simone, farnoush, vadim, christina and myself managed to get up in time, but we missed isa, who missed her train in luzern...

the train trip to the south-west of chur was fun enough in itself, especially the exciting swiss solution for building train tracks up very steep slopes. the train just did loops inside the mountain, and popped out at the same place, just 50m vertical up! how exciting!

we had to have a couple of cups of coffee once we'd arrived at the train station to begin the walk, but finally got ourselves away and wandering up the gorgeous valley up towards our hut - home for the night. perfect blue skies with dashes of clouds, sunny but not too hot, the occasional marmot on the lookout, cows wandering down from the pastures for the winter, and mountains looming over us all around made for a lovely stroll. we made it to the hut rather early, and so spent the afternoon exploring the valley and mini-glaciers up above the hut. evening was gorgeous as well, with delicious homemade dinners, beer on tap (and cheaper than the uni bar at eth hönggerberg...), sooo many stars, and lightening in the far distance.

sunday dawned crisp and just as clear, so we were off to our pass. reto scooted up the glacier, while the rest of us cramponless went the slightly longer way round. but that turned out to be even more exciting, since we ran into a herd of very impressive steinbock/zlatarog/mountain goats. the way they trotted along unbelievably exposed and steep slopes was, um, unbelievable. we made do with strolling down towards pleasent green pastures full of friendly cows and back to civilisation. luckily we had to wait 70 minutes for our bus, so we had plenty of time to start and finish the bottle of whiskey reto had been carrying for us the whole trip.

there is a collage of pics here.

bbqq

2005-09-01T02:53:00.000+02:00

spontaneous barbarques are always fun, even if they're organised two days before (it's a swiss thing). we had to make the most of the late extension to the summer though, now that it's finally arrived, and so headed up to the edge of the forest overlooking the uni buildings for a night of sausages, beers, fires and other shananagans. of course there was also very fruitful scientific discourse and intergroup teambuilding.

farnoush really liked the sausages.

cristoph and christine are good buddies really.

me and all the aebi party girls

andreas was hungry, but there were no more sausages to be seen.

what a great summer...

2005-08-23T21:28:00.000+02:00

or maybe not. aparently more rain has fallen in switzerland in the past 3 days than normally falls in the whole of august. and it's felt like that for the past month as well. the floods happening around the country now though are a little too exciting. i don't think having people and houses washed away is anyone's idea of a good time. the river limmat is looking pretty incredible at the moment also. all brown turgid swirling rapids swelling up and over the walkways normally well above the water level.

there are pictures and some cool video on the bbc.

my german doppelganger

2005-08-22T23:00:00.000+02:00

i know naught but that his drawings really kick arse.

www.benschulz.de

dancing in the streets

2005-08-14T21:40:00.000+02:00

street parade, the little (but surviving) sister of berlin's love parade, was on again! i had much more fun this year than last, as we tracked down and followed a 'love mobile' playing some funky house you didn't have to be on e to think was wicked. it's been too long since i was out dancing, and the street was certainly as good a place as any to get back into the swing of things.

goodbye lubjub

2005-07-31T22:35:00.000+02:00

not quite as hot as saturday, but still there was no room for anything but the slowest walk possible.

there were surprises in store though, and a brief shower made shell very happy indeed on our long slow stroll round town.

unfortunately though, she had to head back home to england on a mid afternoon flight, so i was left to continue wandering. i just managed to keep myself entertained by taking pictures of more of my favourite ljubljana graffiti and street signs.

then there was a great 90 minute wait at the train station for my delayed train back to zürich.

back in ljubljana

2005-07-30T23:45:00.000+02:00

hot hot hot.

ljubljana got up to the high 30s today (42 on one over-excited thermometer), so there wasn't really much to do except practice walking very slowly around the city. luckily the old town is a small place, and there's not really that much to do. we headed over to metelkove, the 'christiana' of ljubljana, but it was too early in the day for much to be happening there except for some very impressive graffiti.

for dinner we boldly ventured 500m out of the super-central tourist zone to a middle eastern restaurant. and weren't we richly rewarded! fantastically yum lentil soup, fragrant rice, prune saucey stuff and turkish coffee. it was a bit sad though that we were the only customers. too far from the crowds it seems.

late night movie of the day at the only interesting english language cinema we could find was elephant. neither michelle nor i had seen it before, and both felt rather shocked and stunned afterwards. which is rather the point i suppose. the film is not condescending nor preachy, but is observant, subtle, involving and beautiful.

logarska dolina summit fever

2005-07-29T20:16:00.000+02:00

we'd ticked the top 5 castles and museums suggested by lonely planet, and had collected 4 outdoor locations, so it was a fait accompli that we would head north, about as close to austria as you can get without being there, to the logarska dolina. quite a pretty little valley, with towering rock walls all around. even though it was ridicuously hot (37oC!) we got all excited and headed up to one of the huts. a mini peak was bagged before another superyum mountain hut dinner, and we were in bed for an early rise to beat the worst of friday's heat.

getting up early wasn't so much of a hassle, but we still slept in way more than our fellow hikers. that was all planned so that we'd have nice ego boosts later in the morning as we cruise past them all though, of course ;).

we were quite uncertain as to how difficult the via ferreta sections were going to be, but luckily for us wearing a harness would have been more of a hindrance than a help, since there was only three 10m sections were it was even possible to clip into anything. scrambling with a view is so much fun!

but hot it was, and we were mightily impressed with our ascending and descending efforts. yay for mountains!

caves and frogs

2005-07-27T20:02:00.000+02:00

being full of limestone, slovenia has lots of caves. the ones in skocjan were pretty cool, with the huge chamber and underground river. the postjana caves, on the other hand, were the most touristy thing i've done in europe. it felt very cheesey lining up with the slovenian, european, american and israeli throngs, mainly because it reminded me that i was a tourist as well. the caves were very cool, but sadly the most exciting part was the electric train ride to allow everyone to access the depths of the cave. weeee! the safety signs were quite a giggle as well.

in the afternoon we headed down into the hills towards the croatian boarder, in the hope of visiting a castle. but it was shut for summer. hmmm. even more disappointing was that the nearby dormouse museum was also closed. pity the poor slovenian dormice. they are traditionally considered to be the spawn of the devil, and it's a slovenian tradition to go out and hunt as many as you can every year one day in september. mildly whacking day-esque. there were old stone frogs in the castle garden too.

the lipica studnets

2005-07-26T19:54:00.000+02:00

we left piran before it got all that hot, and headed slightly inland to the world famous (so they kept telling us) lipica horse stud. the lovely pleasant green paddocks and shady linden trees did lend a certain grace to the place, and the horses were pretty impressive. the dressage presentation was just like in the olympics, but touring the stables up close and personal to the horses really showed how solid, stately and freindly they were. a dangerous place to visit with your teenage daughters i think.

piran

2005-07-26T17:34:00.000+02:00

slovenia extends all the way (not that it's very far) from italy to hungary, and by the adriatic coast at piran, you could almost convince yourself that you're actually in italy (paying way too many euros for seafood and pizza but feeling all good about it by finishing off with some yum gelato). piran is a very pretty little town though, and we enjoyed a morning wandering through its maze of alleys and squares. things were warming up too, and it got up to mid 30s today (that's very hot for us poor europeans!)

kayak kafe

2005-07-24T17:00:00.000+02:00

white water kayaking was not at all on our agenda when we had thought of things to do in slovenia, but it turned out to be an absolutely perfect plan for 2 days in bovec, the wanaka/queestown of slovenia. we booked ourselves in for 2 days of 'kayak school', which was 3 hours for two afternoons. the first day it was shell, myself and two nervous looking germans, but after a bit of brushing up on the basic control strokes we were off down the gently sloping river. how much fun was that!! the grade I/I+ river was perfectly fun and bumpy for us beginners! and the scenery was about as good as it gets.

sunday was just shell and i, so our friendly teacher gave us some more ambitious grade II/II+ bits of the river. first we cruised through yesterday's section of the river, and then had great fun splashing our way on down while practising all our tricky newly learnt moves. it was only at the last rapids of the day when our teacher, desperate for someone to swim, convinced me to try to cross the stream (paddling across the river facing upstream and not moving backwards or forwards) in the fastest bit of the river we'd seen. needless to say i couldn't resist his temptation, and managed to provide excitment and entertainment for all with my predictable capsizing.

so drowned cat but happy i finished our kayak preschool all excited about tracking down some more back in switzerland!

triglav national park

2005-07-21T15:38:00.000+02:00

3 days walking through the rather spectacular triglav national park was simply brilliant. it was a touch warm for the first day, with a good 1800m vertical climb being good for the legs, and the sunny mountainous views very kind on the eyes. the mountains were quite similar to switzerland, but were a bit craggier and felt slightly more isolated. there were still plenty of cows (sans bells) to help me feel at home though!

both nights we spent in a different mountain hut, fully equiped with cooked meals, bunk beds with all linen provided, and even beer on tap! coming from an australian walking background, it feels very strange indeed to have so much luxury at the top of a mountain, but i suppose it does limit the impact of the increased numbers of people it encourages to visit.

wednesday was to be our mt triglav summit day...

however, the not so spectacular weather forced us to reconsider, and we made it up a nearby peak on our way through some very desolate karst moonscape to the glacial lake-littered valley and our next hut.

the next day dawned with threatening clouds, and the deluge held off until we were just before a mountain hut, only an hour from the car. we dashed through the rain and into the hut, only to realize that it wasn't the tourist hut, but a local cow tender's! he was incredibly welcoming though, and our broken german conversation (on both sides) informed us he lived in the bohinj valley below, and was just up for a couple of weeks to look after some cows. he seemed to relish the chance to ply us with schnapps, beer, schnapps, coffee and schnapps, and since michelle was feeling sensible, it was up to me to appreciate his hospitality. he didn't want any of our chocolate ('just for kids!'), but was very happy indeed with our leftover dried figs. the end of a 3 day walk isn't really the time for choice gifts! mountain hospitality is truely amazing.

bled

2005-07-18T15:12:00.000+02:00

after having pretty much cleaned up the tourist spots in ljubljana in 1.5 days, it was refreshing to get out into the countryside. driving was a bit exciting for me (after a year's break, and on the right side of the road), but we made it safely to bled, a perfectly picturesque town on a glacial lake with a cute church on an island, and overlooked by a cliff-top castle. nice stuff. we strolled round the lake, hired a rowboat for a tour out to the island, made it safely back to shore, and got all psyched up for walking up to mt triglav in the next few days.

slovenians also seem to get all excited about rubbish bins in the shape of frogs. they're so cute they make me want to buy more stuff just so i can feed them!

lubjub

2005-07-17T17:19:00.000+02:00

after a rather epic train journey from zürich to ljubljana, which included a not-so-exciting 5 hour stopover in predawn salzburg, i was all excited to savour the delights of the slovene capital. and what a cute, friendly and accessible town it is!

after checking out the action in the tour (does anyone else find it a bit boring with lance just winning all the time?), and a quick snooze, i met shell at the train station and we enjoyed wandering round the town eating icecreams all afternoon.

sunday was a cruisey tourist day, with a tour of the cute castle overlooking the city, a visit to the slovenian art gallery (with some impressive home grown 19th century impressionism), and then to the 'tivoli park' for some (frustratingly unsuccesful) icecream hunting and lazing around in the nice warm afternoon sun.

bis bald

2005-07-15T21:27:00.000+02:00

see you all in 2 weeks. i'm off to meet michelle in slovenia!

happy birthday to me (and dad!)

2005-07-14T14:58:00.000+02:00

yay for birthdays! so far i've only had to provide 2 cakes for the lab, have received one present in the mail (thanks mum and dad!), and have at least a couple of pressies still on the way, so that makes me way ahead already :)

last night i managed to convince martin, reto, patrick and farnoush to join me at more than mode for an evening of darkness. so much leather, so many pasty-white goths, so much wave, new wave, dark wave, whatever. and of course much fun!

mixarama

2005-07-10T21:14:00.000+02:00

i've put together a bit of a tune for the ccmixter and magnatune lisa debenedicts remix contest. have a listen here, and go crazy with the (lavishing and critical) comments!

longstreet carnival

2005-07-10T12:53:00.000+02:00

so it seems i picked the absolute best time to move in near langstrasse. last night was the annual 'longstreet carnival' - 12 hours of free street party is exactly what everyone needs! and of course the convience of 5 minutes walk home to soft warm bed was never more appreciated.

the most amazing thing was the huge numbers of people jam packed all along the 2km mix of sizzling food and (mostly) funky beats. yummy. it was almost not frustrating at all not actually being able to get anywhere you wanted to.

i spent most of the night grooving away under the railway bridge at the hiphop party. dats da shit! i was looking forward to hearing some karaoke from hell (be the lead singer in your very own live covers band!) on my stroll home, but was i glad i didn't waste my time there earlier. rock never sounded so old.

back from the (internet) dead

2005-07-05T21:15:00.000+02:00

... i don't really think random posts on hiren's site count.

but everything's good in zürich! 1) summer is here, and although it's mostly rainy and cold, it is still possible to occasionally glimpse some bits of blue sky. 2) i've just moved from my cosy apartment in the less than thrilling höngg to a spacious and modern new share apartment in kreis 5, the heart of zürich nightlife (think of a sleepy king's cross). 3) work in the lab is as slowly progressing as ever, but i have summer holidays soon!

here are some pics of my new apartment. pady and barbara haven't been around at the same time as my camera, so you don't get to say hello to them yet.

the building complex does look a little soulless from the outside.

but is really light and spacious in the living room

and we've got a back yard full of herbs and veggies!

back to the mountains

2005-05-29T21:49:00.000+02:00

summer seems to be well and truly here.

friday afternoon at the bistro turned into a spontaneous (always the best type) bbq party at mario's place, and we happily whiled away the fresh summer evening with gossip, happy swiss-cow sausages, beers, and a bit of drunken bravado about how good it would be to go walking in the mountains on sunday.

unbelievably, some people actually turned up as planned at zürich main station at 8am sunday morning, and we headed off down to brunnen at the south end of the rigi. the only complaint that could have been made about the day was that it was too hot and sunny. in switzerland? please don't make me laugh.

we really made a fun day trip of it, with the train to brunnen, gondola up to the top of the hill, strolling along the ridge for 5 hours or so, down the cog-railway to vierwaldstättersee, boat across to luzern, and back to zürich on a speedy swiss train.

i'm all keen for more!

vadim, laura, farnoush, random swiss lady's head, and kristina

'if only we had an orienteer with us!'

i think those mountains are calling me...

the world's worst music

2005-05-22T18:18:00.000+02:00

the eurovision song contest was on last night, and martin and i sat up late in horror watching every bouncy breast and cheesey dance move. of course the quality of the music was just as sensationally apalling. it just goes to show you can have all the implants in the world and still be flat.

switzerland was doing amazingly well early in the voting too, in the lead with a third of the votes counted! it was short-lived, but luckily no one will feel too sad, since the vanilla ninja girls can always just be disowned. in their own words:

eurovision.tv: You are this year’s Swiss entry. What is your connection to Switzerland?

Vanilla Ninja: Well, there is no direct link between us and Switzerland. It’s a country where we have given a lot of concerts and it has become our second home. Representing Switzerland is a task we’re taking very seriously.

the commentators on the different national tv coverages really make the night, and it was great to be able to switch between the swiss, austrian, french and bbc coverage. the austrians were a bit boring and nice, the french almost more annoying than the entrants, the swiss a bit embarrassed about being there, and i had the most difficulty understanding the bbc (i don't even speak french).

the greek winner

my current favourite norwegian

greece may have won in the end, but the most important positions in any contest is of course the battle for the wooden spoon. 4th spain, 3rd uk, 2nd france and 1st germany. i guess donald rumsfeld was right about old europe.

mostly recovered

2005-05-21T18:05:00.000+02:00

i had my second progress report friday morning, which went surprisingly well. going through my last 5 months of lab notebooks on thursday i was pleasently surprised at how much work i'd actually done, and how much of it could actually be coaxed into something resembling a logical workflow. i would really never have guessed. there were also more constructive comments than confused criticism from the assembled crowd of gipfeli eaters, which is always useful.

i spent the rest of the day enjoying the sun, siting on the roof having coffee and enjoying the crystal clear views south to the alps, and hanging out a bit too long at the bistro in the evening. it was rather fun though.

it's all completely legal

2005-05-18T17:16:00.000+02:00

so it seems fredrik is just as strong in his google credentials.

and with the exciting new development of itunes switzerland (finally), i made my first foray into the world of mainstream legal online music. ubs was keen to get young swiss into the act, and so has given every swiss citizen (or denizen with a ubs account) 1.50 CHF of credit (1 free song). how was i going to use that, when i'm a bit of a stuck-up elitist and would never stoop to owning less than a full album, as the artist intended? thank goodness for sell-out 'best of' albums, with the obligatory new track. so now i'm the proud owner of 'twenty years', without needing to buy all those other placebo tracks once more.

i am the king!

2005-05-16T21:42:00.000+02:00

google me

4 of the first 10!

;)

it's a bit sad when an (albeit quite succesful) ego search is the highlight of my day.

oh and hiren is quitting psl and coming to europe to do a phd. clearly the man has style.

without me

2005-05-16T03:07:00.000+02:00

after a busy day of sleeping in, mountain biking, checking out pleasant share house options and even a spot of lab work, what other option was there but to go karaoke? none.

martin, the karaoke meister, was chief instigator, and managed to convince a good crew of aebians to converge on a not so awful karaoke option.

with our central position and supercheesy stylings, i think you could say we lent the evening a rather special feel. my personal highlights were mario's 'just a gigalo' encore, the random guy from the other group's 'dreadlock holiday' (he was a true master of the groove), and my own humble gasps through some eminem. i don't think i'll be able to live happily again in a place where i'm not special in having the advantage of native english skills.

italia

2005-05-09T22:30:00.000+02:00

venice

bologna

cinque terre

coffee

2005-05-02T20:39:00.000+02:00

was playing around with my camera at morning tea today, and took this cute little snap of martin enjoying himself.

ahhh spring

2005-05-01T22:29:00.000+02:00

vadim, mario and friends decided to make the most of the simply gorgeous spring day by heading down to werdinsel on the limmat for a lazy afternoon bbq. the sun was almost too hot for us (and definitely too much for vadim the siberian), but what a perfect way to spend a sunday afternoon. toasting up some tasties, a few beers, some badminton, and lieing on the grass with friends. the ride back up the hill to höngg was also made a bit easier by some helpful bastards who relieved my bike of my pump and headlight. i'm obviously just way too trusting.

diana and mario cooking up some argentinian caffeination for us

christina partaking

and vadim being all sporty

probably too high to be useful

2005-04-24T20:36:00.000+02:00

was doing some random placebo surfing, and came across a page google summarized as:
"36 degrees - probably too high to be useful"

unfortunately the reference was to a compilation album of ascending numbers. that was a bit boring :)

hills hurt

2005-04-23T12:31:00.000+02:00

it was rather bizarre catching the 8:30am s-bahn from zürich hb with 400 other runners on saturday morning. i, however, was mostly incredibly relieved to actually be on board, after getting briefly but completely lost trying to find the distractingly simply named 'platform 1'. being swiss, there wasn't so much friendly banter going on amongst the punters, but there was a certain feeling of early morning pre-race camaraderie in the air as we queued patiently for the gondola up to our start.

the sola is incredibly simple, pure and elegantly organised. perfectly captured from the swedes by the swiss. 15 runners per team, 600 teams, a continuous day-long running relay circling the (hilly) forest in and around zürich. and of course never an organisational mistake.

as said, mine was the superfun 14km leg around the backside of the uetliberg. the first 4km were smooth downhill brilliance, and i was cruising at 3:30s. then came a short very sharp climb that really knocked me about. i was almost getting things back together when the second big hill hit at 10km. ouch. luckily the 3km home was more sweet downhill firetrail. running fast is so much fun! if only i had had the strength on the uphills as well.

some power-napping brought me back to life for the relaxed bbq at microbiology in the evening (good for some well-deserved teammate back-slapping and congratulations), which was a good warmup for the sola party in at eth zentrum. farnoush and i made the most of the sleepy live band and the only dance option, the 'latin' room, but definitely enjoyed the smokefree atmosphere - yay for sporty types!

all psyched for sola

2005-04-22T21:13:00.000+02:00

which is all day long tomorrow. what's not so good is that since i'm running the 5th leg, and it starts way down south of zürich, i'm going to have to be out of bed in the morning on a saturday. hmmm. sleep vs racing. it's a tough call. but microbiology is putting on free beers for the team tomorrow night, so i think that could possibly pull me out of bed in the morning in time to make it to the start.

i've got some old skool 1991 red hot chili peppers on at the moment, and they are totally da man. not quite the rock sex god brian, but damn funkay. (i love brian though, so it's pretty tough competition).

it's not that bad after all

2005-04-12T20:32:00.000+02:00

so sajid actually got his visa today! apparently it was his swiss professor's rather frank conversation with embassy officials that sped the process up from a month to just over the weekend. it's kind of like 1 hour photo developing. sometimes when you went to pick up a roll they hadn't even started being developed, and yet still managed to be ready in less than 5 minutes. thank goodness for digital cameras.

in the final weeks of preparation for the sola relay next weekend, greg and i went for a 14km 'time trial' this afternoon. (i get to do the nice looking 14km 5th leg in the microbiology institute's team) the idea was to get a feel for pushing the pace, since it's been too long since either of us had raced. ouch. the first 5km was fun in just under 20min, we eased up a bit through the middle, and tried to bring it home strongly. i felt rather pathetic finishing up a very marginal hill, but 57:50's not so bad. put me in a proper race situation next weekend and i'll eat the miles up :)

never trust an indian

2005-04-08T21:43:00.000+02:00

...is what the u.s. government is seeming to preach at the moment.

in a monumentally unfair situation, sajid hussain, husband of my lab-buddy saba, won't be issued an entrance visa to the u.s. to let him present his phd work in a speech at the largest cancer conference in the world in anaheim week after next. 3 months ago he applied for a visa, but was told applications were only accepted 90 days before travel. so 90 days later his papers were in. but now the embassy in bern has said that his application has only just been sent to washington, and that they severely doubt it will be accepted in time for the conference. since you have to give a conference organiser a week's notice to not turn up as a speaker, that pretty much closes the door for sajid.

why? because he's an indian, and the u.s. is afraid indian/chinese spies will steal the secrets to american technological supremecy? because his last name is hussain? either way, this sort of shit is so 20th century geopolitics dressed up as 'national security'. i hope countries that practise exclusionism realise what they're doing before they die a fearful and stagnant death.

poo

2005-04-07T20:55:00.000+02:00

zürich is a fantastic place sometimes. where else can you get a free tour of the sewerage system, complete with funky orange overalls, thigh-high rubber boots, friendly rats and freshly flushed crap? i can think of many places where you could get the individual parts, but getting the whole smörgåsbord at once is a bit of a treat!

some friends of reto had organised the tour (you just need more than 10 people to get a free booking with the zürich sewage treatment plant!) so he, martin and i trepidatiously tagged along for a long lunch. after getting changed into the super-funky gear, we caught a special bus almost into the centre of town. waving to the kiddies skipping school while wearing our special quasi-firemen outfits was a treat all in itself. then it was down a manhole on the side of a stock-standard street, and a 500m wander downstream. i was last in line, and there was a cute friendly rat tailing us for a bit. i felt a bit sad though, since there's no way out of there, even for a crafty rat, except for when the next rain big comes... he seemed quite happy sipping at the turbid wastes flowing past and frollicking in the sporadic explosions from minor side tunnels though. mmmmm.

fresh air has rarely tasted so good as upon my emergence from that dark underworld. and to think whenever there are houses around, those tunnels are below us all the time...

goodbye :(

2005-04-01T20:02:00.000+02:00

4 people left the aebi group yesterday, which is a pretty big hit for a group of about 20. patricie was my closest supervisor too, and was great fun to have as a lab buddy. she's off to start in a permanent position at the university hospital zürich, so at least she's close by if i'm desperate for some yeast help! mitch was always an impressive scientist and personality, and has leapt into his own start-up company. good luck! christina is only moving across to the nextdoor building, so i'm sure we'll see her round a bit. and marcela is moving to a company. i will really miss her smiley cheerful presence.

we had a great farewell apero last night, so i wasn't too keen on getting up in time for today's practicum, where i had to supervise a group of 2nd year biology students in their first ever microbiology practical course! my group was nice and friendly though, and luckily the most taxing part of the course was only making yoghurt and sauerkraut :)

snow to mud

2005-03-28T17:06:00.000+02:00

now that the sun's back and all that slushy slippery snow is gone, i made the most of the superlong easter weekend to get out and dirty mountain biking. my legs felt the 4 month break from riding, but that's kind of the point... and how much fun is burning up firetrails and cruising down sweet smooth singletrack (with a liberal sprinkling of mudpuddles)!

toby's evil genius

2005-03-26T12:56:00.000+01:00

this is pure genius.

www.savetoby.com

'Toby is the cutest little bunny on the planet. Unfortunately, he will DIE on June 30th, 2005 if you don’t help.

I am going to eat him.

I don’t want to eat Toby, he is my friend.

However, God as my witness, I will devour this little guy unless I receive 50,000$ USD into my account from donations or purchase of merchandise.'

(he says) people have actually paid lots of money already!

and other people are getting really shirty that he's a complete bastard:

VEDA STRAM: That people will threaten to hurt another living being, blackmailing people who care to send the money so they won’t hurt them, is just disturbing. (www.abc.net.au)

come on please - go home and eat your abatoir-slaughtered cow.

all power to you tobes!

(make sure to check out the recipes and pictures on www.savetoby.com!)

rain in the springtime

2005-03-24T21:59:00.000+01:00

it's raining outside now, so i'm happy :)

shy shell

2005-03-21T22:39:00.000+01:00

i was out showing my style snowboarding on the weekend (falling over lots (especially in front of big crowds), getting annoyed at the flat bits, and thinking i was way cool) at mt pizol, with michelle, who was down from england for the weekend (yay!). she was skiing, and didn't let me take any pictures of her. she said it was because she was too embarassed about how bad a skier she was, but of course we all know it was because she wasn't snowboarding.

my organisation was a bit of a debacle however. i'd booked accomodation in bad ragaz, but our train ticket got us to sargans, 5km short. so in our confusion we ended up having to walk 5km saturday afternoon and sunday morning, rather than face the wrath of the swiss ticket collectors. that was all ok though, since our time on the slopes was more than enough to give me aching muscles (and hopefully not a fractured rib...). plus the views were kind of pretty.

spring!!

2005-03-16T21:36:00.000+01:00

i find it so incredible that as soon as the snow melts, there are small flowers stretching upwards. sometimes they even seem to be flowering before the snow melts from around them. it makes me smile :)

zürich is the new brisbane

2005-03-13T20:25:00.000+01:00

that's right. there's no snow anymore, not that much happens, and they sell xxxx at the local supermarket.

snowboarding kicks arse

2005-03-11T21:59:00.000+01:00

just back from a day snowboarding in flumserberg.
sweet :)
although my arse is like a pile of freshly mown grass.
that seems completely par for a first day out though, and falling over is great fun!
we may have to organise another lab snow day sometime next week...

i had no idea my arse was covered in snow from falling so much

and everyone had fun (they're not just laughing at me)

motr

2005-03-10T20:23:00.000+01:00

ahhh the good old days. the memories keep flooding back. martin and i stumbled across some commodore 64 emulators for pc and mac, together with all sorts of classic games from the late 80s. monty on the run is simply the king. it didn't take much to get my touch back, but even with infinite lives i still can't get past the car jumps. whoever programmed this was a real mean bastard!

running at half mast

2005-03-08T20:10:00.000+01:00

whoops. half way through today i realised my fly zipper was totally kaput. luckily a combination of ultra-high-slung pants and stretchy jumper got me through the day with only a few quizzical smirks :)

true, it would have only taken 20 minutes to get home and back with a change of pants, but it gave me a warm fuzzy feeling knowing i was doing my bit for spreading cheer and sillyness.

heaven and hell

2005-03-03T19:46:00.000+01:00

cristina told me such a nice story today:

once there was a man who wanted to know what the difference was between heaven and hell. so first he dropped down into hell for a quick visit. everyone was incredibly frustrated, pained and angry - there was an amazing banquet spread out in front of them, but everyone was forced to eat with really long forks, so they couldn't get the food to their mouths!

a bit distressed by the experience, he next popped up to heaven to see how things were there. his first impression was of how happy and friendly everyone seemed, but to his suprise everything looked very similar - there was another amazing banquet spread out in front of everyone, and everyone was still forced to eat with the really long forks. the difference was that everyone was using their own long forks to feed each other.

isn't that just so sweet :)

martin, andy and flumserberg

2005-02-26T22:03:00.000+01:00

more skiing!

martin looking stylish.

after 'mastering' the blue runs last weekend, lab-buddy martin and his friend andy weren't going to let me do anything less than a red run today up at flumserberg. i was pleasently surprised at my lack of bruises and broken bits, but it was all a bit too exciting in the extra steep and bumpy bits! the weather was simply perfect as well - clear blue skies, perfect sun, and just a few degrees minus. i think i could get to like this mountain snow stuff.

mel and braunwald

2005-02-21T21:55:00.000+01:00

mel was wandering around southern germany on her mini-holiday away from berlin, and decided to drop in to visit me for a few days. yay for visitors! she did a good job of doing the standard zürich tourist route (altstadt, grossmünster, lindt chocolate factory) and then we decided to go sample some fresh swiss skiing snow at braunwald on saturday. it was awesome fun! the swiss trains run just as efficiently in winter as summer, and with the deals they have, you get one simple ticket for train and day skipass. we had to get up a bit ridiculously early to make it out to the slopes by before 10, but it was worth it for a full day's falling over!

mel was looking most classy.

and i was just super excited to be able to make it down both blue runs at the end of the day without a stack!

more egypt pics

2005-02-17T20:07:00.000+01:00

i've finally got my act together, and put up a page with a selection of my pictures from egypt.

it's here.

only problem is that it's on a free server with a small download quota, so it might not be working all the time.

egypt

2005-02-14T23:09:00.000+01:00

i've just returned from a fantastic 2 weeks in egypt. the trip was an organised tour with the imaginative traveller, and although i tend to be quite anti such tours, it was really an awesome trip, with the super-friendly people in the tour group really adding to the experience.

saturday

we started out over two weeks ago landing in cairo. it's a bit of a crazy city, with something like 18 million people (it's all a bit uncertain) crammed into the fertile bits as the nile reaches its delta and begins to spread out towards the mediteranian. there wasn't time for much except getting to the hotel, meeting the rest of the group (3 australian couples, 1 nz couple, and 2 other aussie girls, with a nz tour leader!), and getting some sleep. i was still in the midst of the flu, so wasn't really up to much more anyway.

sunday

sunday morning we were off! first to the pyramids, which rose out of the cairo sand haze just where the metropolis ended and the sahara began. their bulk, age and grandeur were almost overshadowed by the continuous sandy wind pouring off the desert and our first experience of egpytian sales-men and -kiddies. our tourguide had told us that a few firm 'la shakran's (no thankyous) would ward off most troubles, but it was still a bit intimidating.

we also had time to go down inside the burial chamber of the second pyramid. about 10m vertical down and back up again along a narrow steeply sloping tunnel brought us to the centre of the pyramid, with a rather plain looking stone room. with thousands of tourists a day cramming through, the claustraphobia and stale humid warmth was a bit much, but they were certainly amazing feats of imagination and organistation, just to ensure the phaorohs' safe passage to the afterlife.

the sphinx was just down the hill from the giza pyramids, so that was next on the agenda. we learnt that there is actually a sphinx for every one of the 97 pyramids in egypt, as well as 3 mini-pyramids for the phaoroh's wives and daughters. the real story of the lost nose was still unsolved though, since the tourguide (with a phd in egyptology) claimed it was fundamentalist bedohins in the 1800s, our guidebook said it was already reported by arab traders in the 11th century to be broken, and constant rumours of obelix or napolean being to blame.

a papyrus museum was next stop, and it was really cool to see a papyrus sheet being scrunched in a ball and soaked in water, only to be flattened out and dried again, ready for more writing. amazing stuff!

but the highlight of the afternoon was the egyptian museum. literally millions of pieces (anywhere you dig in egypt turns out to be an archeological site), ranging from incredibly intricate small crystal sculptures to granite sarcophogi, larger-than-life-size but perfectly lifelike pharoh sculptures, and actual mummies. the most shocking thing for me was that almost all of these things were just out in the open air, with only signs please asking people not to touch, which of course worked only about 90% of the time. it feels hugely frustrating to contribute (even if just by walking by and breathing on them) to the distruction of these monuments that have survived for millenia.

our tourguide (the phd in egyptology), became very conspiratorial at one stage in front of an old (!) looking mummie. apparently this pharoh was 90 when he died, but had had full-blown leukemia since he was 40 years old, without any symptoms! tissue samples have been taken and analysed, and the genes responsible cloned and characterised, which will lead to radical treatment and even cures for leukemia in the next year or so! all of this if the tourguide is to be beleived. i'm sure he knows his stuff about egyptology, but he seemed to be even better as a storyteller...

Monday

Overnight train trip way down south in egypt to aswan was long, and with the 3 hours of delay throughout the night even longer. there was still an afternoon of fun to be had though, so michelle, kylie and i went on a hunt for the ferry across the nile to visit 'the tombs of the nobles' the ferry was very hidden, but we tracked it down and crowded on. halfway across i realised that although the front of the boat was very spacious, it was also (almost) entirely female. i just stayed hidden beneath my sunnies and hat, and think the only real harm was to a young girl sitting near me, who was staring at me the entire way across, wondering how on earth western women could be so ugly...

the sahara comes literally right up to the nile, and the feluccas on the river made us very keen for the felucca cruise downstream in a few days time. the tombs were also quite cool - carved out of the solid stone of the hillside, and with some amazingly well preserved painted sculptures on the walls. it was also reassuring to see some egyptian tourists out looking at the same things we were!

tuesday

abu simbel is an amazing site. but to get there was a bit of an effort. up at 3am to meet the tourist bus convoy at 4, and finally out down near sudan at 7. (tourists in southern egypt have to travel in groups, with police escorts, since the 1997 shootings and bombings. it's a bit annoying, and having all those guns around me just made me nervous.) at abu simbel is a temple to the greatness of ramses II, carved out of the solid rock hillside (although there was probably originally a cave there also). it's quite big. also quite impressive is that in the 60s, egypt built a huge dam in the upper nile, which would have flooded this, and many other, ancient monuments. so unesco got together and moved them up out of the reach of the waters. they basically cut up a hill into 2x2x2m blocks, moved them up the hill, and rebuilt them exactly as they were. not a bad bit of engineering.

there were lots of engravings inside the temple showing how cool and strong ramses II was. by the looks of things, he was really into trampling his foes, smiting his foes, sacrificing his foes, and hanging out with the gods. good on him. he did build a temple for his favourite wife right next door though, so he was a bit of a ladies-man also.

wednesday

ahhhh. life on a felucca is as it should be. nothing to do but sit, read, snack, sip, sleep, and soak up the slow rythmn of tacking down the nile. having to pull over to the side to go to the loo didn't take too much getting used to, and the food served up by ali baba and mohammed was rather tasty.

thursday

more life on the felucca. much the same as before really. we also stopped off at the temple of kom ombo, where sobek the crocodile god used to hang out. there were some really cool heiroglyphcs too.

friday

um. life on the felucca is the best.

saturday

no more felucca :(. but edfu and karnak temples were on the cards, and were mighty impressive. they are big. they have lots of engravings of pharohs slaying and smiting and being all chummy with the gods. karnak was a really interesting insite into the construction of the temples too - lots of mud-brick scaffolding was used to put the stones up, and then gradually torn down afterwards. the cash ran out during construction though, so there were still bits of the scaffold left! pharohs must have had difficulties balancing their project management skills with their egos.

the suoq (bazaar) in luxor was brilliant. so much less hassle than in aswan, and so much better prices - it was great fun! we were probably much better practised at our bargaining skills as well, and hunting in a pack also helped intimidate the shop owners :).

sunday

we got to ride donkeys! they're so cute and friendly! and they go pretty fast too (if they want to). since i was the tallest in the group, i got the biggest donkey, and he just wanted to go fast. it was great! we also visited the valley of the kings, but the donkeys were the highlight of the morning.

monday

dahab is a long way from luxor, but we made it after lots of bus, VERY rough seas crossing the gulf of suez and more bus. dahab is chilled. still lots of hassle, tourists and salesmen, but since you can just sit on cushions right next to the red sea downing the mango juices, it's much more bareable. it was very windy though, and i wished i was a windsurfer, since they looked to be having all the fun.

tuesday

bit of snorkling (very nice!). bit of relaxing and wandering around. very nice really.

wednesday

not much again. very nice. there was an egpytian hairdresser across the road from the hotel, so i gathered my courage and ventured in. he was the friendliest hairdresser ever, and for the princely sum of 15 egyptian pounds ($A5) i got a very classy haircut. then for free (it really was actually), he through in an egyptian beauty treatment, which involved twisting and untwisting a piece of string across my face to 'epilady' out all my offending hairs. i didn't know i had hairs inside my ears, but it hurt, so i don't anymore! luckily for him the whole procedure was so fast i didn't have time to understand what was happening and react ;)

it was jenny (our tour leader)'s birthday too, so we had a bit happy birthday dinner and a nice big cake for her at a local favourite restaurant. good fun.

thursday

michelle and i finally managed to organise a trip out to a canyon in the sinai desert. bob (seriously!) our egyptian tour guide showed us round, and his mate mohammed came along for the freeride as well. good to have some more egyptian tourists around again! the canyon was really cool, and the desert was incredibly silent. we hung out at a beduin oasis for lunch of tea and bread, and blended into the scenery for a bit. it was embarassing to watch the groups of tourists arrive, looking so out of place and gawky, especially when i realised that's exactly what i looked like. the kids in this oasis settlement don't go to school, since it's too far away, so all they learn is a few tourist phrases, to be able to sell trinkets. so i felt guilty either way - buy something and cement their lifestyle, or don't buy anything and not give them any freedom to choose at all.

friday

we'd moved on to st katherine thursday arvo, so we could rise at 3 to go climb mt sinai for dawn!! the climb was chilly, but not too long, with spectacularly clear skies and stars, and the looming presence of mountain shadows above us. sunrise was cold, and pretty, but the chanting/hymnsinging pilgrims were the most fascinating fixture. the koreans were a bit out of tune, but very enthusiastic, and the chanting group of europeans was quite offputting. being where moses got the 10 commandments, it is a sacred site for muslims, jews and christians, so it should be popular i suppose. i was very impressed myself by the huge climbing potential of the region. the rock seemed to be generally supreme, and the peaks looked straight out of a (desert) mountaineering magazine. mmmmm.

st katherine's monastery had a special feel about it. the mood of comtemplation and sacrifice was tangible, and the burning bush (moses's buddy) was still looking very fresh and green. there was a perculiar lantern there though, which showed 666 from every angle. maybe it's just me...

then followed a 6 hour bus trip back to cairo. the suez canal was interesting. you don't see that many freighting ships so close together every day, and the puppies at the road house were very cute :)

friday night back in cairo we went out for a group goodbye dinner on a cruiseboat on the nile. the service wasn't great, and it was a bit spense, but there was a belly dancer who pulled me up on the stage to shake my booty! i was pretty stoaked, but i think she was a bit disappointed that i didn't really have much to shake.

saturday

michelle and i bid farewell to all our new co-imaginative traveller buddies, and went about exploring cairo by ourselves. the egyptian museum deserved more than just one more visit, and filled up half a day without even trying. incredible stuff. we wandered a bit further into the centre of cairo, got rained on (which doesn't happen all that much in egypt!), bought yum felafel sandwiches for lunch for 10 cents each, and finally made it to kahn al-kahli, the big cairo suoq. lots of fun, lots of tourists, lots of hassle. the mosques of islamic cairo right next door were impressive too, and people were much friendlier on the mosque side of the road than the tourist suoq side.

we had some yum and filling trusty kosheri food for tea, sadly our last dinner in egypt for a while.

sunday

shell flew out at 11, so we caught a taxi together out to the airport at 8. then i got to hang around until 4. cairo airport is one of the most boring places in egypt. but at least it was relaxing, although with not quite the same ambience as a felucca :)

revenge of the snow chicken

2005-01-27T15:58:00.000+01:00

the schneepoulet had a bit of a mishap with the high winds last night.

but we fixed it up, and now it's flying happy.

larry and sergey

2005-01-26T22:07:00.000+01:00

martin and i were off to our bioinformatik I class, when we were assaulted by posters screaming at us to go instead to the main building of the ETH to hear larry page and sergey brin of google fame and fortune speak for an hour! not much can be done to turn down such an offer.

the room was so completely chock full that we could only just get through the door, and would have had to walk up a staircase full of people to actually see the stage. we figured we could still hear though, so stayed put. i was then rather nonplused at the group of students who then bustled right past me up the stairs, and was about to launch into some heavy scowling (swiss-style) before i realised that they were in fact da man. wow - i almost abused celebrity billionares.

the talk was not so exciting - basically a geeky, non-polished sales pitch to get computing and engineering students to apply for jobs with google. i'm actually amazed they feel they need to do press-the-flesh type shows, but i suppose it doesn't hurt their celebrityness. the most interesting comment they made was the dream of search engines morphing into artificial intelligence - if you could ask any question (of the web), and get an answer that was correct or at least 'intelligent', you're getting quite close to ai!

schneepoulet!

2005-01-25T21:59:00.000+01:00

with all the recent snow in zürich, there was nothing cristina and i could do to stop ourselves making a snowman outside our lab this afternoon! the only problem was that being from sicily and brisbane, we didn't really have that much relevant experience. luckily some strategically placed lab supplies brought the monster back from the dead to become the super cute zombie snow chicken!

hiren in da house!

2005-01-23T21:51:00.000+01:00

no more parents :(

they caught the plane to hong kong on tuesday night, and just as their plane was taking off, it started snowing in downtown zürich. just the thing my mum had wanted to see for all of the two weeks she'd been here, and had instead received brilliant warm and sunny winter weather!

so later tuesday night i had to make the most of the free time, and was back late in the lab with martin, cooking up some deviously genius experiments.

but then hiren arrived within 24 hours, so i was back to having some company at home. hiren was a bit slacker at the washing and shopping than my parents, but was quite the devil with the indian-style curries.

we did most of the usual zürich tourist things (see below), but also checked out up near the zoo on zürichberg, and around the zürichsee a bit more. hiren was also a bit more at home on the powerbook than my parents.

more italian mountains

2005-01-16T21:44:00.000+01:00

being once again perfect weather, there was no other option but to head upwards again. we headed south-eastwards from trento, up branching valleys until we hit snow. the walk was actually quite popular, so there were plenty of people around to make a nice walkable trail through the ~1m deep snow. it was all pretty steep too, which made for lots of fun in the icy patches! luckily mum's a bit of a star, and flew through it all :)

after some cups of fresh tea and lemon at the hut at the top of the walk (and the bottom of the basin surrounded by very nice rock spires), it was a slip-and-slide back down again, and onwards to trento.

it was fantastic to catch up with francesco, and also his mum and dad, in trento. they are amazingly friendly and welcoming. it's also brilliant how much can be communicated, even if his parents (claim they) can't speak too much english.

schneeschuhe tour!

2005-01-15T21:38:00.000+01:00

sorry, i'm just don't know what snowshoes are in italian. however, i am mildly distressed that after living in switzerland for 6 months, and never learning any italian, i can still understand more italian than swiss german. hmmmm.

the snow-shoe walk up in the mountains above sopra monte was simply stunning. firstly we woke up to a brilliant morning,

then headed up the mountain, donned the shoes, and hopped up and down the mountain. it was great!

this all made us a bit chilly and tired, for which hot chocolates were clearly the best remedy.

milano

2005-01-14T21:29:00.000+01:00

mum dad and i were heading down for a long weekend in milano and trentino, visiting francesco and fam, and had just passed through the very cool super-long gotthard tunnel through the alps, when i realised i didn't have my passport with me. shit. luckily the italian passport control man seemed to think all the forms i would have caused were too much trouble.

so we arrived safely in milano, which was a bit chilly and foggy. but that was all ok, since we had the (currently) local guide francesco to show us the sites. that it was the first time he'd seen most of them as well (he must work in the lab way to much!) didn't make it any less fun!

nice pretty green park near the castle, small churches from the 5th century (!), and the most impressive doumo cathedral filled the afternoon, along with some v yum italian coffee!

(ps to see more pictures and older posts, click on the archive button for the relevant month at the top right of the page)

bern for a day

2005-01-10T23:22:00.000+01:00

was where mum and dad were today. lots of fun for the whole family to be had there, checking out chocolate shops, gazing out towards the mönch and jungfrau, or wondering about the kinderfressen, a statue raised in memory of the baby skeleton remains found buried in a tunnel between the city monestry and nunnary.

zürich walking tour

2005-01-09T23:16:00.000+01:00

the weather was so nice, and we had 4 hours till we were scheduled to meet up with moni, so we rather naively decided it would be a great idea to walk from my place at höngg into central zürich. it was actually a really nice walk, and only took 2 hours or so. great way to spend an afternoon, as long as the chocolate supplies lasted!

then we met up with moni, who was an exchange student from just outside of luzern living with my parents for 3 months in 1999. was great to catch up!

mt rigi

2005-01-08T23:07:00.000+01:00

the weather has been simply stunning the past week, and it was similarly this weekend. we made the train trip from zürich up to mt rigi, which is aparently the most visited mountain in switzerland. it's right between zug and luzern lakes, and really close to zürich, bern, and luzern, so i suppose that's not too much of a surprise. that the view is rather superb probably doesn't hurt either.

we had lunch...

...took quite a few piccies, since as said the view was rather nice...

...had some glühwein...

...and headed back to zürich nicely sunned.

parents in da house!

2005-01-07T22:36:00.000+01:00

my mum and dad have been staying for the past week, doing a very good job indeed of keeping my little flat spic and span. it's great having someone to do the grocery shopping during the day!

i've been poddling off to the lab, and let them wander around, doing all the usual zürich tourist things (the old city, uetliberg, cruise on the lake, climbing the grossmünster).

more fun planned for the weekend though!

christmas presents

2004-12-31T17:54:00.000+01:00

please go to Tsunami relief.
or even better, unicef.

gorgeous sunsets

2004-12-30T21:51:00.000+01:00

are one of my favourite things, and zurich was extra lucky tonight. there was only saba and me still around in the lab though, so we felt very lucky to be able to sneak out into the snow to enjoy ourselves for a few minutes.

happy christmas!

2004-12-29T21:37:00.000+01:00

so i was off to visit shell in portsmouth (not southhampton!) for christmas. it was nice to get out of zurich for a bit - had been a while. and of course great to catch up with shell for at least a long long-weekend.

christmas was pretty fun, but we got out of portsmouth as soon as we could, and headed to brighton for a few days. brighton had quite the party town reputation, being the hometown of fatboy slim and all. and it did actually seem quite cool. certainly much more so than zurich.

although the weather was spectacular for mid-winter...

...the english really do have things to learn about beaches.

micro party!

2004-12-21T14:08:00.000+01:00

the annual microbiology christmas party was on monday night, and what a fun occasion it was. the first years at the institute always get to organise things, and since i was the only native english speaker amongst them, i was dumped with being mc for the night, which turned out to be fantastic fun! here are a selection of piccies from the later parts of the evening.

jo's adventures in zurich

2004-12-19T22:56:00.000+01:00

jo was nice enough to want to check out zurich on the weekend, and it was lots of fun having some aussie company for a bit. the weather turned out to be not the most fun for us, so we didn't get to go up uetliberg to check out the view over the alps, so spent most of saturday hanging around drinking coffee and enjoying a bit of darren and the cats.

sunday morning greeted us with at least a 10cm dump of snow, and although it was rather quickly melting away, it was very pretty!! we managed to drag ourselves out into the cold and rather damp afternoon for a wander around the lovely honggerberg forest.

EARTHQUAKE IN ZURICH!

2004-12-06T23:09:00.000+01:00

that's right, early sunday morning i was shaken from my slumber by a 5.2 richter scale earthquake! most excitement.

francesco was up visiting from milan for the weekend, and we'd just gotten home from the nelsen and were peacefully sleeping when i was woken up by what i thought was a truck rumbling past outside, along with quite a bit of a jolt to the bed. but then it all stopped and i was quite happy to go back snoozing. only today reading 20 minuten did i realize that it was in fact a real live earthquake. they seem to be lots of fun, as long as no buildings collapse.

the rest of the weekend was great fun - cool catching up with francesco about 7 years since i last saw him when he was an exchange student living with us in sunnybank. all sorts of memories and thinking about the future - he's of sciencey bent as well, and working out where to do his phd next year. it's such a good problem to have too many options.

crappy quizes

2004-11-29T22:07:00.000+01:00

ok this is the first internet quiz i've taken, but it was the best idea i've seen, so i was kind of drawn. i'm not really sure i like the result though.

Which File Extension are You?

yay for published articles!

2004-11-26T17:53:00.000+01:00

finally some of the work i was doing at psl in sydney has been finished and accepted for publication by biochemical journal. it sure has been a bit of a struggle - plenty of emailed versions back and forth between me in zurich and various people in sydney. now hopefully people will read and like it!

"mucin glycosylation changes in cystic fibrosis lung disease are not manifest in submucosal gland secretions" Biochem. J. (2004) Immediate Publication, doi:10.1042/BJ20041641. abstract.

so what does it all mean?

people with cystic fibrosis produce lots of mucous, especially in their lungs, and are very prone to serious and chronic bacterial lung infections. quite a bit of research has been done on the mucous they produce, since their could be something different about cf mucous that makes it easier for bacteria to grow there. one of the main sources of mucous in the lung (everyone's lungs) are the submucosal glands, so we analysed mucous from these glands from people with and without cf. but we didn't find a difference in the glycosylation, even if people had cf, had smoked for 40 years, or were otherwise healthy! so that means that the differences in the glycosylation of mucous in cf are probably caused by the infections they have, not the other way around.

weekend in amersfoort

2004-11-09T20:52:00.000+01:00

amsterdam for a weekend with shell was never going to be enough. but fun it was.

a bit of adventure to start the weekend off - after meeting up on friday night at amsterdam airport (shell from london, me from zurich), we headed down to the train station so conveniently located right under the arrivals lounge and jumped on a train heading towards amsterdam. unfortunately it only went towards amsterdam for a short while, before continuing on to amersfoort, halfway across the netherlands towards the german border! whoops. luckily we had lots of friendly dutch helpers to explain to the mean ticket man that we were just stupid tourists not evil fare-evaders. but then, when buying our ticket to get back to amsterdam, we met up with 4 other people who'd also just flown in and ended up on the same train! so this is clearly a conspiracy of the dutch rail authority to get stupid tourists to spend more on train tickets while in the country. amersfoot was a nice place to have visited once though.

saturday we were ready to explore, and first hit a fantastic little cafe "bagles and beans" with superyum bagels and perfectly acceptable coffee, with a very groovy view over a cute canal! the van gogh museum was then our first hit, and it was simply fantastic. i'd not realized before he painted all his work in 4 years, and most of the simply awesome stuff in the 2 years before he decided he was producing rubbish and shot himself.

saturday night we gobbled up some little-bit-too-yum spacecake, but still managed to make it to a fantastic indonesian restuarant (curtesy of the old dutch east indies of course) to feast on a HUGE banquet. yum!

sunday was rijksmuseum time, for some rembrandt and other stuff from the 1600s, the dutch 'golden age'. the incredibly life-like portraits, landscapes and still-lifes are all amazing, but seemed to lack something of the humanity of van gogh. maybe i'm just spoilt by photography.

unfortunately there wasn't time for much else on sunday, except for filling up with some dutch pancakes. yum again. but the bagels still won for the weekend.

amsterdam also has lots of canals,

steep steps,

and strange aliens

go google!

2004-11-03T21:09:00.000+01:00

uppsala 1996

how cool is google! i was an afs exchange student in uppsala in 95/96 and was good friends with alycia from minnesota (on the right in the picture). only we'd sort of completely lost contact until last week, when i managed to google her down, and get a reply! yay! brings back all sorts of fun memories from 9 years ago. almost a decade - that's a bit scary.