Under Pressure...

Dear timekeeper, 24 hours per day is simply not enough, please give me more. There is too much to be done: I just got assigned to two presentations today. One for next Wednesday and one for August 10th. I still have a pile of data to analyze and more experiments to set up. I also need some more brain cells to keep up with all of this. It has been hard to keep track of everything >.<

On another note, Carol is coming to visit Berlin tomorrow! I'm going with Dr. Gotthardt to pick her up and get brunch with her.

LILY

PS: Neighbor update: looks like she'll be gone for a bit, but my PI is encouraging me to talk to her about the situation in case it is some health issue or condition she is unaware of. I hope she's alright but for now, I don't really have the desire to/have time to see her anyway (last image of her was not too pleasant...).

The Stuff of Scary Movies (Tengo Miedo!)

Buch is no longer safe! I had a fright this morning. My day started early today when I woke up at seven because I needed to be at the microscope at eight. I was starting my usual morning wake up routine and stepped into the bathroom across the hall for a shower. When I walked back into my room, I saw a flurry of movement, nudity, and the German girl who lives next to me screaming angrily for me to get out. Confused and frightened, I closed the door quickly-- only to realize a second later that hey! this is MY room. What does she think she's doing? I opened the door and told her to put her pants back on and go back to her room-- clearly, this was an embarrassing mistake. After waiting for 10 minutes outside, she still did not come out. At this point, I realized this was not just a mistake on her part-- something was up. I opened the door and there she was, still half-naked and just walking around my room looking at everything. I asked her if she could please leave so I can get ready for work. She became distraught and raised her voice for me to get out. I tried to reason with her about why this room was not hers. I asked her if she was alright, if she was sick or needed something, because if not, please put some pants on and kindly leave. I offered her her pajama pants (which were for some reason on the opposite side of the room) and eventually shoved a towel at her hoping she would cover herself up--- nope. I was dealing with unreasonable craziness: she started grabbing things from the table and saying they were hers. "This is my card, this is my money!" I was running out of options. I grabbed the cards and money and firmly told her to get out-- no more reasoning with someone half-naked and clearly out of their mind. She refused. I stepped out to the hall and called for my friend to help. Maybe she saw the light or maybe she was scared but she finally left my room.

Whew. I'm locking my room up everytime I step in or out now! No more of this craziness. I'm not sure what happened: just a little disturbed that she's my next door neighbor and that she touched the furniture while undressed (ewwwww). I saw her making cake yesterday and even had a nice conversation with her! Wow, people are surprising.

LILY

Florence = Firenze?!

I did a power trip through Italy. 4 days = 4 cities.
So first up was Milano. I flew into Bergamo which is an hour outside the city. All I did in Milano was to go see the Duomo. Very very pretty, but I had googled it before and when I got there in person, I thought, yup, this is it!


Next up was Venice. People had told me that it's not very pretty but I always feel connected to any city with water (I was born near the water anyway). Venice was by far my favorite city with its canals, bridges (I like bridges too) and Venetian glass (these things were addicting to look at especially in large quantities: vases, beads, figurines, jewelry = serious eye candy for any artsy shopaholic).

Oh, of course, there was Rome! So much to be seen: Piazza Venezia, Trevi Fountain, Colosseum, Spanish Steps, St. Peter's... etc. It was impressive; the city was filled, absolutely filled with ruins and monuments and history. I was, throughout the trip, replaying those chick flick scenes set in Rome (I know, I know, dorky).

I spent 6 hours in Florence, during which time I explored the city without a map! (only with directions from random Italian shopkeepers and also with my own poor sense of direction!) I managed to see a lot but also managed to get bogged down at the Mercato Centrale (oh dear, Italy was shopping heaven but don't worry I had a budget and a limit to how much I could shove into my poor backpack). On a side note, I would like some of that fancy jewelry from the city when I'm older: the pieces were dazzling and original in design not to mention too expensive for me!

Now that I gave you an overview of the trip, let me make you high school yearbook-esque list of the best and worst:

Biggest disappointment: The food! Remember how I was excited? Well, I set my standards too high. I had one good pizza (the texture and flavors came together nicely) but the rest of the meals were... eh. I didn't feel like it was too different from the Italian food I can get in Berlin.

Most worth it: OMG, gelatto! We ate gelatto everywhere, thanks to Polina's handy gelatto map (yes, made for her (+me) by her!). In fact, we even ate two gelattos in a row= we love it!

Moment when I lost (a little bit of) faith in humanity: Remember how I was a crime magnet in Paris, well, Italy was no exception. I was stepping onto the Metro in Rome when all of a sudden, I felt someone push up really hard against me, then I felt my bag being unzipped. I hurriedly stepped onto the train and grabbed my bag. I looked down to see a small Gypsy girl, who gave me a flicker of a look of fear and then it turned into a bold stare. She started screaming at me and waving her hands so that I could not say anything. As she kept on yelling 'Chino' or something of the like, I told her to stop. She slunk away eventually, off for another purse (her mom, the baby, and an older brother were also there, I guess to help in the operation.) How sad, she is not helping the Gypsy image. She was too young to be rummaging through people's purses. Why does one person have to gain at the cost of another?

Silliest A-ha moment: For the longest time, I could not figure out why my Eurorail map of Italy did not have Forence on it (isn't it a major city?). I knew that Florence was approximately midway between Rome and Milan but on the map, there was only Firenze (also please realize that I was thinking of the centaur in Harry Potter + I was saying fire-enz). When Polina handed me the train reservations she made for me, I was confused and said, aren't I going to Florence not Fire-enz? That's when she laughed at me and then clarified this whole thing. Oooops, least I learned something.

Best memory of the trip: Polina <3 and I dashing through the streets of Venice to our hotel while the rain was pouring =) We weren't sure when it was going to stop and dodging underneath buildings and alleyways was so much fun. We were soaked!

LILY

Italy-- Check!

Hey guys, I'm back to Germany, but tired and busy with work. So details later.

LILY

Dove è il treno?

Equipped with my spanish skills and my ability to add an "e" sound onto the end of a Spanish word, I am off to Italia for 4 days. I will be flying into Milan, heading to Venice to meet my favorite Russian (Polina :)!) and then heading to Rome and hitting up Florence on my way back to Milan. See you all later! Don't worry, I'll eat your share of pizza, pasta, and gelatto, suckas :P

Be back Monday night!

LILY

Guess What This Post Is About?

I think you see my trend. I work. I work and I have been working, so here is picture of the administrative buildings of the Max-Delbruck Center for Molecular Medicine. The MDC campus in Berlin-Buch is actually quite large especially for Europe (I was told). Large by European standards is nothing. I can walk across the campus in less than 15 minutes at a leisurely pace so don't worry U of A, you're still the mammoth. However, I quite like the campus ( they devoted a part of the budget to art, which adds a nice touch, although occasionally if you stop to look, you wonder what the artists were thinking about when they made these sculptures...) The MDC houses many research groups and buildings including one called Biotech Park (I pay rent there, but I keep expecting an amusement park every time I step in).

When I first arrived in Buch, my PI told me about how the MDC started... It was a long long time ago or maybe not so long when the plague was rampaging across Germany, those who contracted the disease were sent here to the outskirts of Berlin to be treated and naturally research and medicine go hand in hand so more and more scientists came out to Buch--- the cowless outskirts of Berlin.

LILY

I See Red Everywhere

I just finished analyzing the data today. We use a dsRed fluorophore, which means that I get to stare at a screen with red cells all day, everyday. I'm seeing red, people... seeing red. Okay, now I'm off to get some dinner. I'm tired.

LILY

My New Expensive BFF

I have already written about my BFF a few posts ago, but I feel like I need to establish how big of an impact he has/will have on my life. He controls my life (well, my work). I'm talking about the microscope we use for my experiments. I'm hoping that he will be nice because then data will be on its way >.<

LILY

Fruit Galore

This, my dear readers (who never bother to comment), is a physalis --another fruit I have fallen for in Berlin. My mentor introduced it to me the other day. It certainly packs a punch: it has a very distinctive flavor. I think I have seen it before but always thought that it was only decorative.

You apparently may know it as a cape gooseberry?

LILY

Monsoon Hits the Big B

I woke up to rain yesterday, got out my extraordinarily flowery Asian umbrella (thanks Dad for leaving me the most embarrassing umbrella, thanks Mom for buying it, and of course me for being too lazy to get another one) and walked to work (That's the building I work in by the way). As with everything new, the experiment setup took longer and my mentor and I anticipated. At one point, the incubator on the microscope was making a high-pitched beeping at us (just the type of noise that crawls through your skin, into your skull and promptly sprawls itself out on your brain and makes a picnic there while your brain is screaming: please make it stop! ). Then other various problems occurred, but in the end we triumphed! (Restart the system when you don't know what the heck is going on... that was my advice for the problems and it worked for the most part :) )

Today I set up another overnight microscope experiment (I'm getting better with the set up and the really expensive microscope). For the rest of today it's onto more cell culture and preparations for next week!

LILY

Crunch Time!

As my time here is coming to an end, things have picked up at work. The mice are making babies and I'm getting more cells to work with. This means that I have been working late with packed work days. The only people I have been hanging out with are my mentors/colleagues.

I just spent the last hour struggling with picking mouse embryonic stem cells (this is as in I have to literally go in with a pipet and take the inner cell mass of the hatched blastocyst). My mentor had to leave early so I did it by myself (but he has never done this either so his presence probably wouldn't have mattered much). I tried my best and (this maybe tmi but) I was sweating so badly. It was hard to get the microscope, pipet, pipet tip, and the petri dish to line up and do what I wanted, but I think I managed. We will be seeing the results tomorrow. Oh yeah, did I mention? I'm working the weekend!

LILY

Confessions of a Glutton!

One month exactly from now I'll be on a plane back to the States, so now I feel that it's only proper that I confess >.<

1. I'm a choco-holic: note the piles of boxes and wrappers. It had no cure, every supermarket visit started with a creed: I will NOT go to the chocolate aisle and will NOT linger there and eye all the treats, gingerly pick up each one, turn them over, examine them, analyze benefit vs. cost, and end up with an armful of chocolate that say fett 4,5% (4.5% fat). Then as I walk towards the juice, something catches my eye: is that the glint of the wrapper of that chocolate I had last weekend? Oh, but look at the one next to it: I've never tried that one, oh and that one, and the other one .... then the chocolate avalanche hits my cart and I'm done for. The only things that's slowed down this hobby of mine is the hot weather (correlates with appetite decrease, thank goodness) and the scale that mysteriously appeared in the guesthouse bathroom one night. (It steadily told me that gluttony = gaining 4 kilos in 2 weeks and that sluggish feeling I was getting, it was related to this lack of exercise plus engorging myself with treats). For now it's under control, I only have two pieces of chocolate a day (but the chocolate here is too good. I will miss it dearly.)

2. I'm a doner kebab-holic: these things are good. Every time I'm too lazy to cook, I want one. It also does not help that they are only 2,50 Euros(that's two euro fifty for those of you unfamiliar with how the punctuation works here).

3. Potato-holic: been getting my share of starch lately. Those of you who know me know that I <3 potatoes but seriously, German mensa, please stop feeding me five potatoes per meal and send me running for the salad bar!

4. Erdbeer: German strawberries are also very good and a much healthier hobby, although they go bad very quickly as well.

5. Raspberries: This is the only time I will admit to betraying my favorite fruit strawberry because I think the raspberries here edge them out! It's sooooo good. I also admit to buying them and not waiting to wash them and just eating them all on the way home instead of waiting... :/

LILY

Tortillas Espanolas--- Autenticas!

Last night a guesthouse mate (de Espana) showed me the ins and outs of making the famous Spanish omelette (tortilla espanola). We made two giant ones for her lab barbecue today. What goes in a tortilla espanola? Potatoes, onions, eggs, an inordinate amount of oil (no worries, most of it is drained out) and a pinch of salt. Here is the basic recipe:

1. fry potatoes (washed, peeled, cut up) in lots of oil until soft
2. add onions and fry until clear
3. drain the oil out
4. beat the eggs and mix in the potatoes and onions
5. pour mixture in a non-stick pan with a small amount of oil
6. cook one side AND flip it! (use a plate... it is a formidable task... I watched her do it.)

I probably forgot a few things here and there but you get the idea. Oh, and make sure to mix in lots of laughter and some new Spanish vocabulary (including curse words).

Enjoy, guten apetit!

LILY

When the Cat's Away...

The mice play! My PI is on vacation starting this week, but don't worry the mice aren't playing (they are being experimented on). I spent yesterday morning and this morning searching for blastocysts that I flushed out of mouse uteri. They look exactly as they have been depicted in the textbooks with the inner cell mass and the zona pellucida. Then hopefully they will hatch and I can make ES cells again!

LILY

The Florence of Germany

Yesterday I was in Dresden (I read somewhere that it was the Florence of Germany). Indeed, it was very pretty. There is a river running through the town and the town is divided into an older part and a newer part. We mainly stayed in the older part and explored the gallery and museums housed in the Zwinger Palace. In the gallery, I saw works of Raffael, Rembrandt, Van Dyck, Van Eyck, Rubens, Vermeer, and Durer among others. We also spent sometime looking at the armory and porcelain collections.

The weather was so unbearably hot! I think I was delirious for a good part of the time when we were walking. It was fun and I would definitely recommend it as a place to visit if you're ever in Berlin for a while (it's only 2 hours away by train)!

LILY

70% Failure

Pretend like I posted this on Friday:

Last night, I attended a presentation, dinner and movie for the end of the Transcard Program 2009-2010. The Transcard program is for graduate students who are doing their thesis in the cardiology field. It is a seminar series (at least for the first year) to expose the students to a wide variety of topics in the field. I have also been attending these seminars.

My PI gave the last talk for Transcard where he summarized the goals and visions of the program (he is a director of the program; it is new and in its first year). Then we had pizza while watching a documentary film about the life of Nobel prize-winning neurologist Eric Kandel (In Search of Memory). It is a great movie especially for a science crowd. In the movie, Kandel pointed out the struggles of his life and which events he remembers the most: playing with a blue toy car as the Nazis came knocking or saying goodbye to his parents as he and his brother first left for the United States. He also describes his career: science is 70% failure. This we talked about during lunch. I accidentally quoted it as 80% failure and my mentor joked that maybe when we all lower the failure rate to 70 then we'll be the ones with the Nobel prizes.

So there: I knew this already but it's good to be reminded, especially be a Nobel prize-winner, sometimes science is about persistence in the face of multiple failures.

LILY

My Direction = Gloom Town

I'm not feeling terribly well. (Don't worry, I'm physically unharmed!) The weather has been gloomy the last few days and last night's game was disappointing. Things are work are not going as smoothly as planned. To top it all off, I am getting reminders about how quickly my time in Berlin is ending (people keep asking me when I'm leaving... )

LILY

With the Octopus --Not-- On Our Side...

Today is a big day. If you don't know what I'm talking about, then you have not been following the World Cup and you have ignored all the World Cup news. Well, if that's the case, don't worry! The enthusiasm here is making up for it! Everyone ten minutes, the conversation strays to the game (Germany vs. Spain Semifinals). Where are you going to watch the game? Who are you going with? Do you think the meeting is going to take long tonight? The game is at 8:30 pm Berlin time and tonight we have knockout night (once a month). Everyone is anxious that the meeting will run long but the presenters are aware of this anxiety. I also made brownies for the meeting, so hopefully that'll help.

Back to the game: everything looks good for the German team this year, however, an octopus that predicts the outcome of the games is not on Germany's side this time. Paul predicts that Spain will win and he has been 100% right about the German games in the World Cup so far. I will just have to wait and see!

LILY

Oh, and correction on my post about passionfruit. I actually had gooseberries (stachelbeere). Really good!

New Hobby: Apfelstrudel with Vanilla Sauce

Since I have such an obsession with food, let me share with you a few details about German food.

1. Currywurst: It's a sausage with curry ketchup, served with fries or a bread roll. I have had it twice and that's that. Every time I have one, I end up realizing that it's not really that impressive. But if you're in Berlin, you have to try it!

2. Potatoes: Almost every meal I have had at the mensa contains potatoes. Once I even had potato fried with bread crumbs as well as mashed potatoes.

3. Bread: the Germans also take their bread seriously. Do you know how to tell the difference between German and French bread? If you can use it to kill someone, it's German bread. I lugged one home once from the supermarket and my back was sore.

4. Meat: The German diet also contains a lot of meat. For a German meal at a restaurant, I had hunks of pork with potato dumplings.

5. Apfelstrudel: my new favorite since I had one last night with vanilla sauce. It was warm and scrumptious. I even liked the raisins in it (I usually don't like raisins messing with my desserts).

Food is heavy here. I'm feeling it.

LILY

Strandbad Wannsee: Cooling Down in Green Waters

Sunday, I had breakfast with my mentor and his boyfriend on their lovely balcony. (It was beautiful: the breeze was blowing ever so slightly and we were enjoying a simple but delicious brunch surrounded by the colorful collection of plants that my mentor kept). We then visited Lake Wannsee and the beach that was open for swimming. It was a popular destination since everyone needed a good cool-down session. I have never been swimming at a lake before so this was a first. The major difference for me was that the water was green and shallow and was not salty (I didn't taste it on purpose!). It was a nice and relaxing way to not melt and end the weekend!

LILY

Fußball Spiele

Saturday at 4pm, we sat down to the Fußball Spiele (soccer game). We watched it at a restaurant with an Argentinian couple (I felt bad for them) and a table of enthusiastic Asians who cheered whenever any team neared the goal. It was needless to say, amazing, the German team made it look easy -- four times to be exact. Afterwards, the city went nuts--- with a score of 4-0 people went out, screamed, waved flags, exploded loud things, blew horns in people's ears, sang songs, broke bottles, drank too much and ran around. We were near the Zoo station in West Berlin, so this was the party was at! After every game, people were hurrying somewhere and I finally figured out that the people were hurrying to West Berlin where the streets were blocked off so people can celebrate properly!

LILY

I Believe in Air Conditioning (I do, I do!)

This weekend, I melted (It was hot and Germans apparently don't believe in air conditioning except for the air conditioning used for the machinery in our lab because machines need to stay cool, but... humans? nah!).

On Saturday, I visited Potsdam. We walked around the Sanssouci Park where the Sanssouci palace is located. Sanssouci means 'without sorrows'. I could see why, if I lived in a place like that I think quite a bit of my sorrows would dissipate. The park was green and natural. As we walked up to the palace, small, golden blooms of the nearby trees blew everywhere covering the small streams and the path with a sheet of sunny yellow. We sat down at the benches to admire the view: green, terraced steps leading up to a simple yet elegant yellow summer palace (magnifico!). Upon closer examination, we saw golden gazebos and the tomb of Frederick the Great (lucky Prussian king who summered there!!!), buried alongside his prized ducks (this guy was apparently crazy about his ducks). We then wandered through the park which was filled with other impressive structures.

LILY

Maybe I Should Have Taken Art History...

Every Thursday after 6pm, the national museums in Berlin are free. I have known this fact since the beginning of my stay but I have always managed to find something "better" to do with my Thursday evenings-- but no more! After visiting the Louvre in Paris, I have decided to bring some more art and culture into my life in Berlin. From here on out, yell at me if you see me online on a Thursday evening because I should be getting cultured instead.

For my first Museum Thursday, I naturally headed to the most famous museum of them all-- the Pergamon. (I was joined by a fellow museum buddy.) This museum is not full of wimpy paintings, I was told, it houses big gates and statues. This was correct, however, after seeing the Louvre, I was not as impressed as I should have been. Instead, I was just wondering how anyone bothered to move these huge monuments inside these buildings... must have been heavy. Since we were on Museum Island anyway, we made our rounds to the Bode and Alte Nationalgalerie. We finished these museums relatively quickly--chatting our way through. It went something like this: take a picture, oh wow, that's a big statue, hey look it's baby Jesus, oh there he is again but with Maria, oh no he's being crucified in statue form, and then in a painting, oh hey! look at that gold neat-o box thing, hey, what's that metal bowl with the intricate designs... and then my friend comments "that looks old" and I agree. Finally, we both look at each and admit that we wish we had taken some art history so we knew what we were looking at instead of just giving everything a cursory glance. Maybe I'll have better luck with something like a chocolate museum...

LILY

Biergarten Offen!

Yesterday it was one of our member's last day in the lab. As is tradition, the person who is leaving makes a small party him/herself. (I found this strange; shouldn't other people celebrate by throwing you a party? Guess not...) We had a very nice lab picnic, food courtesy of the member of the lab leaving. I tried a little bit of everything at the picnic, but everyone kept on insisting that I try Roquefort cheese. I was no chicken, so I slathered a portion on my bread and took a decent-sized bite. That was when I noticed my PI with camera poised ready for a reaction. Then my taste buds sent signals to my brain indicating that I had mold in my mouth. I paused in chewing and my salivary glands kicked in trying to drown out the taste. Against my natural reaction, I quickly chewed the bread and swallowed. With my eyes slightly watering, I looked up and everybody was laughing. I don't like bleu cheese to begin with and this special "cheese" (someone said Roquefort is not cheese, I quite agree.. I suppose it's an acquired taste) was yuck-O! I also found something I liked at the picnic although I don't remember their names anymore. Directly translated from German, they are hedgehog berries. They look like grapes with small harmless spikes on the skin and tasted of kiwi and the appearance of the gut reminded me of passionfruit. On second thought, perhaps they are passion fruits; I have never actually had fresh passionfruit. They were YUM... I had a whole handful!

After work, we went out to dinner and also to a biergarten to celebrate. This was my first real biergarten. The experience was good because I was with fun people. A biergarten consists of a lot of tables out in the open where people can drink (what else?) beer! This particular one was lit up with strings of incandescent bulbs. Under their cheery yellow, people smoked, talked and laughed.

LILY