POO

dear diary,

today i came to lab and saw that all my cells and media were contaminated.
today was a bad day, diary. a very very bad day.

Which country are we in?

So what exciting news warrants this post? From the shores of a now distant and recently FIFA-outed nation...a girl has arrived. The girl who actually got me out here and with whom we bemoaned the horrors of chemical engineering (what the hell is chemical engineering anyway?) and the doomed life of all MIT students (and yes that includes you. unless it doesnt).

anyway.

Monica is here now. and here is Monica:

new frames and a new 'do and replacing those two asian peace signs with two thumbs up (way up!). don't be fooled by the slightly strained look she has in this picture, she thinks the next month plus some change is gonna be AWESOME hanging with me.

Which actually reminds me. Monica took German in high school (vastly superior and more useful in my current situation than the Chinese I took)---and upon her arrival helped me learn a phrase (a superior and useful phrase, of course) that I will be sure to use for the remainder of my stay in Deutchland: Ich bin uberwaltigend.

true story.

please translate that in a new tab.

Anywho. hanging w/ Monica is fun and it's great having a kid who I can talk to in English! We have a slightly ambitious and not-so-slightly fund-draining travel plans for July. If next you see me I am in rags and am diving for loose change on the street, you will know it was done in the name of culture.

no. sorry. that's just me being melodramatic and cheap.
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Lab Tales

So I suppose I don't talk about lab. My mom points this out with an accusatory, wagging finger (yes, Mom I will call you out on this here). Actually I lied. I'm not really sure if she does the wagging finger bit. But she does the gchat equivalent. And yes, I gchat with my mom. Ich bin uberwaltgend.

Anyway.

So I guess I should have a little spiel about lab and what I am doing. Let's see. So I managed to kill off the majority of one of the cell lines I'm growing. This is a bad thing. Also, my q-PCR on the cell samples from last week failed. This is also a bad thing. yay research.

the up-side is that we think we know what went wrong. i'm going treating my two remaining cell lines w/ cancer-inducing growth factors and am going to run the test either tomorrow or tuesday. I will then start another experiment on Tuesday/Wednesday using the same two lines and will hopefully get two new lines (and my killed other line) up and running next week.

There, are you happy now, mom? I bet she nodded off while reading that. My mom has a funny habit of falling asleep while you're talking to her (HEY LIKE TIAN) unless you're talking to her about boys, clothes, or money. The first two make her a 15 year old. the last one just makes her Chinese. or Jewish. what other stereotypes are associated with this?

But I digress.

Lab is fun. People in lab are fun. etc. etc.

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Basel

This weekend, Monica and I day-tripped to the city of Basel. Why Basel you say? Let me list the reasons that we started out in the morning with: 1) Basel was in Switzerland and neither of us have been to Switzerland. 2) Basel was super close. and...that's it. Don't get your hopes up with the rest of this reading.. Basel was a let-down. Kinda like a dress that looked super good in the dressing room but kinda floppy and yucky after you buy it and decide to wear it out. (my mom would be proud of that metaphor)

Did you know that Basel spans the Rhine river, making it rather difficult to say whether you're in Germany or Switzerland? And in all honesty, Basel is kinda exactly like Freiburg. it's a small town with a cathedral. The only thing that's different is that half of it is on one side of the Rhine (in Switzerland?) and the other half is on the other side of the Rhine (in Germany?). Nobody knows. (well that's a lie. people would know. I just don't know and have not googled it yet)

Here is a photo-chronology of our trip to Basel:

We are befuddled by the map. We do not know where we are. This is a constant theme.

A thing about Switzerland: everything here is expensive. about 4x what they cost in Freiburg. And since Monica and I are poor starving students and cheap, we end up going to the grocery store to buy (discounted!) bread and (gouta?) cheese to eat for the entire day. This was a good idea in theory, but ended up being a bad idea in actuality because 1) we walked around all day in the hot sun, effectively spoiling the cheese by the afternoon and 2) we are both lactose intolerant. but less of #2 and let's press onward, yes?

We find the cathedral.
ok. Can I just ask a question? (I hate it when I ask 'can i ask a question' before the actual question) What is it with Cathedrals being a huge tourist attraction? It's a church. it's just a special looking house. and it's common enough in all the cities. and yes they are pretty, but after you see a gajillion (in my case four total) is it really still awe-inspiring? Sorry. I should be more appreciative to culture. but like i said: moderation.

We entertain ourselves outside the cathedral instead.

We get tired of all the serious tourist stuff and we find a playground. Actually..we find playgrounds four times. We find as many playgrounds as cathedrals. (I approve of only one of those things) One playground had this cool rope/web contraption (see above) which was excellent for climbing and balancing! We see-sawed (which looks fun but really hurts if you are too vigorous...and we were a little vigorous) and swung and found a trampoline-looking like baby swing and made friends w/ a gorgous German baby girl (even their babies are beautiful beautiful).

Do you know that playing a dumb tourist has advantages? case in point: wandering lost into a museum, taking some pictures, before a guide asks you if you paid the 10 franc entrance fee, and you say 'entrnace fee? oops we're sorry, we're just tourists and didn't know! please excuse us.' This picture was taken at the contempory art museum. (i really am tired of most museums, but some are kinda cool) the neat thing about these displays were that they were INTERACTIVE. and not just interactive in a boring way, but in a way that appeals to anyone who has an ounce of curiosity. every contraption was hooked up to a big red button. now don't even lie to yourself. how often have you seen a button and had to refrain from pressing it because you didn't know what would happen (technology is tricky like that.)? well in this museum, they WANT you to press that (enormously tempting) red button. in fact...the PURPOSE of the entire art rests on YOU to PRESS that red button. you MUST press that button in order for culture to continue. and hey. After the playground, we needed to up the culture a little bit (maybe). the button did not disappoint (except the one that was broken)--once pressed, the pieces began moving and whirring and buzzing and twirling in a highly satisfactory nonsensical manner. oh, art.

oh. yes. after the contemporary art museum we get lost again.

So the rest of the trip ended up with us finally paying admission to the natural history museum (nothing compared to the one in new york...but still fun to see all the dinosaurs. which really. I never thought that much about the wonder of dinosaurs. but they were gargantuan. my mind kinda reels when I think too much about it...how such large beasts ran amuck around the world! i mean. these things were lumbering giants! if you think about evolution and how everything must have evolved from tiny cells from this primordial soup in the very beginning....then to these massive things....i mean. humans and all the other modern day animals...we're pretty small comparatively).

After the museum, I was kinda tired. (i am old after all) and it was humid and so I was like *phew* i am so ready to bounce outta here. that is after we get...

Chocolate! eating Swiss chocolate in Switzerland!

All-in all this is a summary of our trip to Basel:
1) don't eat a lot of cheese if you are lactose intolerant.
2) cathedrals are like museums
3) playgrounds are not like cathedrals or museums
4) buttons are cool. big red buttons are super cool.
5) just beacuse you have a map doesn't mean you know where you are.
and
6) chocolate makes everything worth it in the end.

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ALSO, in case you don't care: Germany beat England

fin.

The only time PHD students leave lab is for Soccer

Today was the FMF cup. What FMF stands for? I do not know. Even though everyone here is super helpful and tries to help me learn German, it really is for naught. Each time they teach me a word, it ends up them saying it, me repeating it after them, them pausing and saying it again to correct my pronunciation, me saying it again in the same way as before, them saying it, then me saying it wrong (repeat indefinitely)...until either I say it correctly or they give up. Unfortunately...even when I do say it correctly, it poops out of my head the next minute.

Anyway.

Today 10 different research groups sent out a band of troops comprised of their very best to compete for glory and honor...the title of the FMF cup. Actually, this so-called "band of troops" was really anyone they could scrape together. Or maybe that was just our lab group? In any case, whatever my lab group's overall mission was, I think the real winning strategy was to put out a decent showing, but poor enough so that we play only the minimum amount of games, failing to make it to the semi-finals/finals, but hitting the BBQ buffet line first.

It's all about having priorities straight.

For someone who has never played soccer before, this actually wasn't that hard for me to accomplish. With other research groups having professional soccer players as PHD students made it even easier.

At least the BBQ was totally ROCKIN. yay sausage!

What is it with 80s music?

I think there's something to say about 80s music now that it is 2010. it was three decades ago that people began grooving to whitney (oh whitney), AC/DC, and bon jovi, yet their songs are as catchy as they ever were! can anyone say that they do NOT get a little bit jazzed when a DJ turns off the same old electro-r&b tunes and turns on some good 80s music? i for one say thank you taio cruz for your glorious auto-tune, but your songs just don't wake me up before i go-go, hit me with even their best shots, or shake me up all night.

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so it's been a couple of weeks since i last posted. i wonder if anyone even reads this. HI MOM.

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Greece

After my sister and I came back from Frankfurt, we sat in my room, twiddled our thumbs, and thought, 'be-jeezus, this is pretty not awesome.' With ready, adventurous hearts we set off to La Tours, a last-minute trip company in the center of Freiburg. 'Take us away!" we cried to the nice lady behind the counter. Luckily she spoke English. We left with two plane tickets leaving the next day in our pockets, significantly lighter wallets, and self-congratulatory thoughts about our cool spontaneity. unfortunately, these thoughts disintegrated into shock and dismay when we found ourselves in rainy and chilly Greece not only in a hotel where the total guest count was 11 people, but so far from the rest of civilization that we would have to take a 3 hour bus ride to get to any major city. our first day in Greece was spent sitting in our room, twiddling our thumbs, and thinking 'be-jeezus, we are pretty stupid.'

But then we remembered: wait-a-minute...we're Young sisters. While our Greece getaway was definitely not the adventure we initially envisioned, it was definitely a hilarious and memorable trip! I mean, who else can say they not only jumped into the Greek cultural dancing show, but was promptly rice-bagged and spun around by an older man in a skirt and then propositioned for an after-midnight rendezvous? And who can say they jumped out of a moving cab that smelled like urine on a dirt road? And yet on this same trip we also played darts with 3 year olds and danced the merengue with middle-aged French and German women. We met several interesting people, climbed the Acropolis, decided museums are really not all that it's cracked up to be, and seriously, how many pots can you excavate and still be jazzed about some broken pottery?

Culture? Yes please, but only in moderation.

All in all, Greece was a hilarious experience and I think I'd definitely like to go back with a little bit more planning and a little less buffets. After we returned, my sister went around Germany a bit more and then headed back to the states to begin her residency program and unfortunately, the growing up/ moving on process. too bad. she was such a good kid.

pics:

Beautiful water. The girl is ok.

Theater of Dionysos

Athena's Temple!

Cool pillar thingies. and us blocking it.

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Strasbourg

So once there were a few punks in Malaysia. specifically, in Kuala Selangor. of this group, three happened to be in Europe at exactly the same time. this is the story of an unlikely reunion. Diego goes to school an 8 hour bus ride from Boston, yet this summer, he is interning in Strasbourg, less than 1.5 hours away from Freiburg. Essentially, we are closer in Europe than we were back home. Furthermore, Tian who was studying abroad a year in Cambridge was running amuck with her fam bam in Europe as well. Miraculously even with the lack of a cell phone (sprint sucks) and show-stopping cell growth (don't ask), this last-minute trip was pulled off by a trio of fuddy duddies who began the day with high energy levels and then crashed by 11:00.



Diego and Tian are two quite amazing people. You should get to know them. Let me help you.

Tian is super patient, super clumsy, and super sleepy...yet spazzy at the same time. how is that possible? i have no idea. she manages. She has a tiny cube, takes a gazillion pictures (though less than the rest of her family she claims), and is an unnecessary tickler.

Diego loves people taking pictures of him, he has a slightly larger than medium cube, he has an absurd amount of european history tucked underneath his belt, and is pretty much the best tour guide you could ever ask for.

oh sorry. this is supposed to be a travel blog.

So Strasbourg.

After the obligatory yelping around that always begin reunions among good friends, we enjoyed the largest gay parade in Europe.

We saw lots of people.

And we made new friends.

In the middle of the parade, a man (which Diego claims to have had nipple piercings) was walking down the middle of the street, looked at me, and then left his group to walk straight at me to hand me a brochure advertising the infamous RubClub. (in actuality, another man had the piercings) Diego was jealous. This was either flattering (RubClub guys want me to hang w/ them!) or ego-busting (do i look like a gay guy?). In either case, this approach was much more welcome compared to later on when a couple of French women came up to me speaking in Chinese. 1) their chinese was better than mine. 2) they suggested converting to Christianity. (do I look like I need to be converted? I think the RubClub guys liked me just fine)

After more walking around, we climbed the famous cathedral! (392 steps?) We met an American couple who traveled all over the world (the woman was a dentist in the American navy). It's so inspiring and amazing how much they accomplished and how much the woman sincerely wants to work in healthcare and make a difference! It's really people like that who keep me excited about the path I'm heading on as well as show how down to earth they can be while still go on so many adventures even after graduating and starting the dreaded "real life"

At the top of the cathedral!

After that, we also visited the European Parliment:

So many flags!

By the end of walking around to all these places, we were all pooped (so old) and ready to call it a day. I headed back to Freiburg on the midnight express, and Diego and Tian headed back home.

Tian and her family also came to Freiburg the next day to chill w/ me (unfortunately after I gave them the wrong directions to Baden Baden the day before) and we went into the beautiful Black Forest going up a cable car thingy! Nature walks are fun. It was even more fun seeing Tian and her family taking a bajillion pictures. Unfortunately I didn't have my camera and I am now running out of steam for this section. poo.

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World Cup: Germany Vs. Australia

MIT is a little bit (and when i say a little bit, i mean a lot bit) apathetic about sporting events. In actuality, I think everywhere I've been to, no one has been really that ridiculously enthused about watching a team of sweaty people run around kicking or throwing any sort of bag of air. Germany is decidedly different.

Tonight I met up with several PHD students from my lab and from the lab next door to see my first ever soccer game....the first 2010 FIFA World Cup Germany game against Australia. Germans love their sports and it beats my high school's family fair by miles (or should I say kilometers?) In several parks around Freiburg, huge LCD screens were set up and hundreds upon hundreds of people poured onto the grace to watch Germany trounce Australia. Booths lined the perimeter and it is amusing to note that the beer booths greatly outnumbered the two food booths. In all honesty, I don't know anything about soccer and I really don't have that much interest in it. I came for the experience and this is what I learned:

1) it would be impossible to say what my favorite type of German is...but the drunk German easily makes top five.
2) i think in order to become a German citizen you not only need a healthy appetite for soccer, but you also need to learn all the cheers and songs they scream during soccer games
3) you would also need to know the rules of soccer and know when to boo/cheer
4) you might not like beer. you might not like drinking. but if you are surrounded by (drunk) germans watching soccer on a field you will drink and you will get drunk.
5) beer tastes better when mixed with sprite but it still sucks

I still don't know squat about soccer but screaming for Germany was still fun (4-0. ouch, Australia....ouch) However, regardless of the novelty, I still hate crowds and I still hate being enveloped in cigarette smoke. Thus going to another one of these public games is a big iffy probably not maybe. oh well.

ugh. worst than Disneyland

Check out Nele's fingernails!

Goal!

Phew. massive dump there. This summer is definitely starting off to be a fun one. Peace out.