There’s a certain time in May, every year without fail, when the Regional train that takes us from the city to work, suddenly takes on a funny odour. Sickly sweet, the smell of hot, stale fruit wine.
And every year we say to ourselves ‘we really should go to the Baumbluetenfest before we leave Germany.’ Read More
I’ve been having a bit of a mustard moment recently. Couple that with a healthy belief that our walls are too white, and it seemed for a while somewhat inevitable that we would very soon have a mustard coloured living room, and a fairly unhappy Andy (I assume unhappy, because, let’s be honest, mustard really isn’t an always and everywhere colour). Read More
In another episode of ‘scientists do craft to distract themselves from their terrifying professional lives’, I present to you my fimo flamingo friend, kindly made by fellow Phd-er, Mercedes. Read More
Gal is pretty much the reason that office work is not as tiresome as it should be. Sure, the alleviation of boredom that Gal brings correlates pretty meanly with an alleviation of productivity, but you guys, thesis writing is soooo boring, I take what I get.
One of Gal’s many talents is the ability to accurately throw stress balls at my head, full velocity. It’s such a skill that I think he put it on his CV, and we’ve now both taken to wearing safety glasses in the office more often than in the lab. Which leads to the point that, when Gal told me that I absolutely must visit the Britzer garden, I got on my bikes, and visited that darn garden! Read More
A couple of weekends ago, Andy, whose surname pretty much directly translates into English as ‘Cherryblossom’, marched us off to an event honouring the family flower.
Which a child tells you that their new and greatest love in the world is a tiger, skateboarding, drawing mustaches on oranges, or Disney’s ice queen, you can choose to believe that, probably, eventually, they will grow past this phase.
When a grown man travels to Mull, falls in love with puffins, starts religiously watching a puffin-related show aimed at children, and spends (presumably) hours in front of the mirror perfecting his ‘concerned puffin’ look… well, there’s not much you can do except sit back, watch, and occasionally feed the flames of his peculiar passion. Read More
If you follow me on insta, you know that I almost all of my photos that aren’t of Andy drinking spearmint milkshake like a tiny hummingbird, or of me accosting whichever cat stumbles into my vicinity, are of plants.
So here it is guys! The obligatory ‘spring is coming to my country, my heart, and my balcony’ post of 2016. Read More
Did I ever mention that, instead of studying plants, I nearly did my PhD on coccolithophores? If I did, you maybe forgot, simply because the word coccolithophore is such a ridiculous mouthful. The name of the coccolithophore species I was going to study is Emiliania huxleyi, which isn’t really that much better. E-hux for short. Read More
The weekend before Easter, Andy and I popped up to Amsterdam to visit Ikumi.. and on the day we flew out I stumbled across an amazing fabric market. I told Andy to ‘go on ahead’, spent about a hour touching and cooing and stroking, and many euros (although surprisingly few for the amount and quality of fabric), and an extra check-in bag later, we made it home to Berlin. Read More
Last month was undoubtedly, the worst month of my Phd so far.
Germany is good, don’t get me wrong, but experimental science can be the most heartbreaking of quests. The worst part is when the input doesn’t equal the output. When things don’t work, and you don’t know why. At these times, we scientists unanimously turn to our other lives.
We swear to become bakers. Crochet tiny animals from twine. Start knitting, drawing, felting, sewing.
And grand desserts parade from our kitchen. And the freezer is full of falafel. And the house never looked so clean.
We want to do something, that does something. That produces a tangible product.
Like a mobile! Read More