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.