Jingle Bells, Batman Smells...

So it's Christmas spirit all around. Berlin is officially a Christmas-crazy town. We are pretty much surrounded by Christmas Markets and light-covered-trees. There's all sorts of chocolaty, marzipany goodies in the shops and people walking around wearing Santa hats. In the flats accross from us I think there are at least 50% of windows that have electricity-wasteful-horribly-blinking lights. But on the upside there are shops which are open on Sundays in December - that's amazing in this country!

Due to our slightly new-flat-everything-gone-silly lifestyle in the last couple of weeks, we haven't kind of actually seen each other. Yeah I know - we live in the same flat, catch the same train (but at different times of the day), and even poo in the same loo. BUT pretty much 101% of our conversations revolve around washing machines, colours of tiles, types of floors, our annoying mobile phone provider, colour of the new kitchen, colours of light switches (did you know they also come in gold, and some can be made of porcelain??????), our annoying electricity provider, etc. etc. etc. You get the picture.

This Thursday we decided to sneak out of this drastic cycle and went out on the town. We had dinner in a "totally a Denis type of place" Bulgarian restaurant which is tucked away on one of the corners of our big street accross from the Bulgarian Embassy. We were the first (and some of the only) customers, but that didn't matter. The food was great - yummy hearty soups, a cheese plate, a salad and a bottle of wine filled us up for taking a stroll afterwards. We walked to Brandenburger Tor and followed Unter den Linden towards Babelplatz and ended up at one of the Christmas markets next to the Opera. We got a Schokoball (it's this chocolate with pastry thing rolled into a ball the size of your two fists)... we had these at Rothenburg ob der Tauber back in 2004 and let me tell you - THEY ARE GOOD!!! And then seeing as the temperature dropped to something around 0, we had to have Glühwein mmmmmmmmm. Here are some pics from the evening...





Oh, and in case you didn't know, and I didn't either 'till about 5 mins ago, there's actually...

AUSTRALIAN JINGLE BELLS

cho: Jingle bells, jingle bells, jingle all the way,
Christmas in Australia on a scorching summer's day, Oh,
Jingle bells, jingle bells, Christmas time is beaut.
Oh what fun it is to ride in a rusty Holden ute.

Dashing through the bush in a rusty Holden ute.
Kicking up the dust, esky in the boot.
Kelpie by my side, singing Christmas songs,
It's summer time and I am in my singlet, shorts and thongs. Oh.

Engine's getting hot, we dodge the kangaroo,
Swaggie climbs aboard, he is welcome too.
All the family's here, sitting by the pool,
Christmas day the Aussie way, by the barbecue. Oh..

Come the afternoon, Grandpa has a doze,
The kids and Uncle Bruce are swimming in their clothes.
Time has come to go, we take a family snap,
And pack the car and all shoot through before the washing up. Oh..

Three Years?!!?!?!?!?!

just read this article on The Age, and it's fairly freaky if it's true...

"It has been revealed that the average female spends three years getting ready to leave the house. That's three years during their whole lifetimes, not just for one dinner party ...

Research found that the average woman took one hour and 12 minutes to prepare herself for a big night out. That's 22 minutes showering and removing unwanted hair, seven minutes applying moisturiser and fake tan, 23 minutes doing her hair, 14 minutes applying make-up, and six minutes putting her clothes on.

On top of that, the typical woman spends another 40 minutes a day getting ready for work and three months of her life choosing handbags and the ideal pair of shoes to wear."

Perhaps I should wear less make-up and spend more time doing something else... but what?! :)

Polina has gone into a poster frensy!!!

that's one good thing of being back at uni... and it's not 8am lectures... it's the poster sales. Man - I missed those. I remember buying my first Jim Morisson poster... ahhh... those were the days. I might've been under 20 back then... :)

well today I went crazy and bought four posters. I don't even know that we'll have enough wall real estate to hang them all up on... plus they need to be laminated.

hmm... the older guy who's also doing a bachelor is silling on the row in front of me (I'm waiting for a stats tutorial to start) and is burping... REALLY REALLY loudly... yuk!!!

Anyway... back to the posters... here are the smaller versions of the ones I got :)



PS: I got inspired by the second one there... it's huge... I think it's like 2 meters by 1,5 meters, or whatever the standard sized for posters are... oh yeah - they go by paper size.. so I think it's A1... 'Eating above Manhattan' is also A1 and the other two are A2.... mmmm posters

PPS: be sure to open the Mind Warp one... it's too freaky

Demolitian Man (the walls and himself)

So Saturday rolled around and we figured it would to be good to let out some built up tension from the week gone by, especially after Polina's good experience on Friday...

So the hammer, me and me wife beater got together and had a bit of a party, unfortunately the walls were built in different thicknesses, hence at one point the hammer went through easily. This is not really a problem, except that the bit where my hand impacted the wall, followed by the hammer handle not to mention a touch of momentum, was in turn much thicker. This combination basically caused my right index finger's bone to burst like a ripe tomato. This in turn caused an outburst of cursing and a trip to the doctor downstairs, seeing as he did such a good job on Polina the day before...

After we got back from the doctors I did a bit more hammer swinging, albeit left handed which is not really so much fun, but we wanted to get stuff done...

Then we cleaned up a bit, got the place stylish for our guest and had a bit of a building site shindig, was darn good to put a nice cold beer on that finger...

Seeing as the whole place is basically a ruin we bought some paints and let people get creative on the walls...

So that's life in the home renovation game two days, two wardrobes, four walls, two broken fingers and a case of beer...

The story of the finger continues...

So I got home and cooked meself some buckwheat for lunch and looked at my finger and it looked like a pretty big red sack... so I thought to meself... hmm... did I actually fark smth up?? And seeing as it's Friday - hence no docs will be working tomorra, I decided to get it checked out. My GP was already off, so went to the emergency doc who also happens to be a surgeon... got in right away... actually I was only there for prolly 5 mins, but they managed to x-ray my finger twice and put some cream on it and bandage it up with a funny plastic thingie so now I can't bend it. He said it should get ok by itself, but I have some sort of a cyst on my bone so need to see a bone specialist on Monday. Oh and if it gets really painful between todat and tomorra morning he is still there from 9 till 12. I was actually smiling when I got out from there... I mean I never broke anything before and having almost a cast feels so new and strange. It's bad timing though cos means I can't do much more demolishing :( But I can still take off wallpaper tomorra!



btw, this whole post was typed with my right hand... pheww

Do you see what happens, Larry?

..when you give Polina keys to the new flat, and a hammer, and a chisel and a crowbar.... DEMOLITION!!!

8:30am - get 5 sets of keys, read the meters, argue with the seller woman why she still hasn't sent us the rest of the documents which we need
9:30am - wheel in a supermarket trolley full of beer and tools from our renting flat into our new flat
10:00am - Demolition begins...
11:47am - I noticed that I managed to do something funny with my finger... yes I know... I keep on doing "something weird" to my fingers ALL the time. But this time I have a feeling that I poped a vein in there, from holding the chisel too hard... 'cos it feels almost bruised... you can't see very well though (photo at the bottom of the post) but inside there's almost like a little bubble of blue blood... yum! That didn't stop me though, and I went on destroying....
13:00pm - two old wardrobes out, two doorframes out, and I even managed to make a hole in the wall - WOW!!! I'm Excited, with a BIG 'E'!!! What an amasing cathartic experience - VERY much recommended.

Notes to self:

• no need to buy make-up powder, because all the stuff that comes off the walls covers the face really well
• doorframes are much better attached (with what looked like nine inch nails) and are much more complicated than I thought in the beginning
• there's a lot more crap when it's off the walls, than when it's on the walls

There's one more thing I can say... I LOVE THAT CROWBAR!!!

Dining Room Before: Dining Romm After:

Doorframe... or lack thereof:

My poor little finger...

Gentlemen prefer blondes!

Australians all let us rejoice!!!!

Yep I did the duty to my country and dragged my arse today to the Aussie Embassy to vote!!! I'm very proud of meself. I have my fingers and toes crossed, that the bushy eyebrows retires... hmmm....

speaking of Aussies... had a chat today to the guy who was giving me out the ballot paper... had a bit of a laugh with him - where did the name 'Jagajaga' come from... for those wondering, that's the name of my electorate. So I suggested that it's Aboriginal... and he suggested Drunk Irish... aahh... love Aussies.

speaking of Aussies even more, I found out today that there's an AFL club here in Berlin... and it's called... wait for it.... Berlin Crocodiles... :) In fact almost every big city in Germany has an AFL club... I was even slightly upset that we missed the Grand Final broadcast that happened in the end of Sept. But then I reminded myself that I don't actually like AFL and think that most ppl who do are yobs... hmm. Perhaps I am just still nostalgic???

Tourist or Traveller?

I'm getting into this whole Backpackers Blog on The Age... and came accross this today... of course being me, I took it and scored..... 27!!! yey... I am a traveller!!!

http://blogs.theage.com.au/travel/archives/2007/08/tourist_or_trav.html

Mano amfibija su oro pagalve pilna ungurių

That's "My hovercraft is full of eels" in Lithuanian ... something I found amongst 'useful phrases'... who knows... may be it'll come in handy this weekend, when we'll be parading the streets of Vilnius.

Pay it forward... from Zoya and now to you... the world :)

I will send a handmade gift to the first 3 people who leave a Comment on my blog requesting to join this PIF exchange, and who make the same pledge on their own blogs. I don’t know what that gift will be yet and you may not receive it tomorrow or next week, but you will receive it within 365 days, that is my promise! The only thing you have to do in return is pay it forward.

First Snow!!!

Yep, yesterday it started snowing. Although yesterday it was still more of a very wet half-rain, half-hail, half-snow (hang on - I think there can only be two halves in anything, oh well...). But today it is perfect - big snowflakes and the whole of the city landscape looks like it's now proper winter. Even though some trees still bear the bright red and yellow leaves. Some pictures and video of the occasion... perfect weather for the Cat Empire concert tonight!

Home owners...

So the saga has finally come to an end. Yesterday we signed our lives away, at least for a while. We are now the proud owners of a flat in Berlin. The building directly behind where we live now, one floor up and on the opposite side. So we'll have a view of the Fernsehturm and the Berliner Dom:

The place is 100m2 (so twice as big as where we are living now) and is currently decorated in the quaint DDR (East German) style of 25 years ago (read it's a hole). I'm sure that at some point Baby Poo Brown (BPB) was in, but it sure as hell needs to be out now:

There's a lot we need to do to it to make it how we want it, some walls need to come out, some other walls need to go in, the floor has to be redone, a (new) kitchen and some changes to the bathroom. Not to mention actually buying furniture, plates, towels, etc... Somehow we get the feeling that this is gonna be a bit like building the shed before we left Australia...

Here's a few pics of the current setup, the guest bed (yes that's a hunk of foam duct taped to the floor - WTF?), thankfully neither the old kitchen or the BPB wallpaper are very well attached:

So this is roughly what it should look like before and after:

Wish us luck, or drop by and give us a hand ;-)

Psychobiology???

In less than two weeks I am supposed to do a presentation on "Neuropsychologische Aspekte von Aufmerksamkeit, Bewußtsein" (Neuropsychological Aspects of Attention and Consciousness) in my Biopsychology Seminar. But even before then I got quite interested in how different parts of the brain work, so I went into the library and the only book in English that was actually an introductory book happened to be from 1973. I didn't think much of it and sat reading it on the train home. Man - I mean may be the concept of ethics is a totally new thing, but I was somewhat fascinated and shocked by the kind of experiments scientists used to do back in the 1920s or 1940s.

A lot of scientists were interested in how the brain works, and what do different parts do - how they interact with each other, etc. So naturally the way they went about doing it, is simply by removing various parts of the brain in various animals (mainly rats), and then sit back and look at what happens. Here are some great examples:

So here they've basically chopped out part of the rats brain and worked out that this was the reason it couldn't stop itself eating and hence got so fat. Looks kinda cute and fluffy actually - in a morbid kinda way. But then they say that the same effect can be achieved by feeding the rat Aurothioglucose... I mean - what was the point of chopping the poor things' brain?!! Then of course it goes to describe what brain waves starving or overweight rats have... or ones that they've refused to give water to for days on end. hmmmm...

Here "the bare tip of an otherwise insulated wire is inserted into the target brain area (hypothalamus), and after the animal has fully recovered from anesthesia a tiny current is passed through the wire... this procedure elicits various types of agonistic behaviour in cats"... yeah no sh!t - the poor thing has a wire stuck in its brain and is being zapped... I'd be pretty pissed off too!!!

And this one... I actually kind of found the idea behind the experiment quite interesting. That if both animals are experiencing the same sort of negative impact from whichever source, that their immediate reaction is to assume that it's the other entitiy. I wonder if this experiment would be replicatable on humans. Although I would think that people might actually talk to each other and work out that neither of them is responsible for it.... who knows. But just the idea of it... I mean how does one come up with an experimental setup like this??? "Ah yes... I'd like to test how agonistic behaviour comes about - right! Of course I'm just going to put two animals in a cage and electrify the floor - brilliant!" I mean right now I have no other suggestion, but I still think it's cruel, and from what I can gather - they didn't actually get all that much out of these experiments.

Dunno... I was just fascinated by this and here's something from Wikipedia "Animal testing or animal research refers to the use of animals in experiments. It is estimated that 50 to 100 million vertebrate animals worldwide — from zebrafish to non-human primates — are used annually and either killed during the experiments or subsequently euthanized. " and also this: "In the U.S. in 2004, 615,000 vertebrate animals (not including rats and mice) were used in procedures that did not include more than momentary pain or distress, according to their Animal Care Committees. Around 399,000 were used in procedures in which pain or distress was relieved by anesthesia, while 87,000 were used in studies in which researchers planned to cause pain or distress that would not be relieved." hmmm... something to think about.

Speaking of student life...

Some notes I have to report after completing three whole weeks of study at a Freie Universität Berlin.

1. Unlike the small portable microphones that we're used to from our lectures in Australia, these German professors have the complete opposite. Imagine a normal microphone - such like a singer would use, but say without the post (obviously). Now imagine a neck chain. Now imagine this microphone suspended on this neck chain by a triangular construction. And there you have it - lecturers here walk around with this huge thing dangling on their necks 1.5hrs straight...
2. All rooms in my building have WiFi... which makes it really distracting especially in boring lectures. I just turn on my laptop and whooosh...
   
3. Here are some pics of my building at uni, and the adjacent library - it's the Philology Library, or "Brain" for short. It was actually designed by Lord Norman Foster - the same guy who did the Gherkin Building in London or the Russia Tower in Moscow. Actually pretty funky inside too...

Playing Furniture Tetris

One thing that a student needs is a ... beer... no! A desk! For lack of space, my inventive Jack has resorted to the following construction - as you see, probably not the most stable, longlasting, or comfortable. This has been our breakfast, mid-morning snack, lunch, mid-afternoon snack, dinner, supper, mid-night snack table, which on top of serving food, served many more purposes...


But yesterday all that was about to change - we went to Bauhaus (local Bunnings equivalent) and bought an Arbeitsplatte (Workbench), green chair, green filing draws named Greeny... and prior to that Jack acquired five extendible/telescope legs from IKEA. So over this weekend Jack, the Arbeitsplatte and a drill named Jadd (Jack's Australian Drill Double) got together to attach legs, polich the table top and varnish it...



Loungeroom Before






Loungeroom After





My brand spanking new desk, with chair and draws... yey!