Progress Report #3

Six weeks over and I'm half-way through my internship at OHB already. The first phase of my experiment is over but I need inspiration.

This is where a long walk or bike ride helps. So in a couple hours, I'm going to extend my biking prowess and attempt the 151 km Bremen-Hamburg trail. I'll be spending Canada Day in Hamburg with Christine, my classmate from Calgary.

It's a flat trail on paved paths through marshlands. The weather is cool and overcast, but I have my giant rain poncho. The only limiting factor is my seat - I spent a couple hours on it 2 weekends ago (50 km round trip to Worpswede), so hopefully it's used to it. If I get tired, I can always hop on the train at any stop - there's one every hour.

Then on to discover Hamburg nightlife. I'm armed with my camera and 2 sets of batteries.

Wait - here's inspiration! My office neighbour (with 47 years in the business starting with Mercury!) just gave me a referral to 3 contact names in life sciences / Mars missions and I have the application form for the ESA Mars 500 isolation study! By the time I get back, I'll have an engineering solution (I hope!) and I'll be dusting off the resume and making calls.

It's elementary, my dear Watson

Of the 18 known quarks, Quark the cheese goes best on breakfast cereal. It looks like whipped cream and tastes like mild yogurt.

This is an elementary food, simple to make from only 2 ingredients (milk and buttermilk to curdle it). In Germany, you find Quark-the-cheese in baked goods like raisin scones and mixed with fruit. Here's a little taste of my version:

You can try it yourself by following simple instructions.

On the other hand, you could say that Quarks-the-elementary-particles are in every recipe - they do come in 6 flavours ;-)

Although Shakespeare in the Burgerpark was rained out last night, this weekend is off to a lovely start. My landlady's friend just sold me her old rain poncho for €3. Now I can brave The Elements (feel free to sing along - one of the students did this one at talent night last summer), although it looks like the Sun right now. I'm heading out to find Worpswede and discover some of the local artistry.

Have a lovely weekend.

Week IV

Today my trip to Helgoland was approved. Wednesday, I travel by train to Cuxhaven where I catch a ferry to the island. The research director will meet me when I arrive. No bikes allowed on Helgoland!

While figuring out the travel arrangements, I learned the difference between a few small German words:
zu (to), like zu machen (to do something)
bis (to), like bis 9 Uhr (to 9 o'clock)
nach (to), like nach Helgoland (to a place)
ins (to), like ins Stadthalle (to a place, like a building)
It's the small words that always get you misunderstood.

On the down side, computer troubles continue to plague the ISS - the word "evacuation" has been spoke aloud. Let's hope the space cowboys can coral this one before they have to wrangle it to the ground. It's nice to see that the press is rooting for them.

A wee glimpse into my new world - a colleague who has been in space as a tadpole. Meet our resident "frogonaut."Week 4 endeth. I have advanced in the world of OHB - I am now in charge of algae. (I hope the algae aren't put out by this.)

Renee, pond scum wrangler.

Week 3 ends with a *bang!*

Weather here is, well, a force of nature. Although Bremen is only 150km from the coast, the North Sea is not as moderating an influence as the Pacific Ocean. The weather here changes by the hour - sunny (sonnig), windy (windig), overcast (unklar), interspersed with torrential downpours (Monsun) and lightning (Blitzen - now you know how the reindeer got its name).

I just heard lightning so close it hurt my ears. Check out the view from my balcony - reminds me of Trenton in the summer.
Today, while the rain was entertaining, it did nothing to cool things off. Still in the high 20's.

New words this week - drückend heiß (sweltering), regnerisch (rainy) and schwöl (muggy).

German 101

Today I got to my favourite part of learning any new language - the point when you think you know enough to "wing it." This invariably leads to catastrophe.

Looking around for an eraser, I asked my colleague a simple enough question "Hast du ein Gummi?" er, nein. Not quite - an eraser is "ein Radiergummi" Remember our German-word-arithmetic lesson from the other day

das Radiergummi = radieren (to erase) + Gummi (rubber)

Das Gummi, on the other hand, is entirely something else made of rubber. (Mother will empathize.)

I am getting used to the cordial German custom of hand-shaking - everyday someone from the lab or down the hall will pop in to wish us a good morning and formally shake each person's hand. Getting lots of practice saying Guten Morgen at least :-)

Something beautiful found in a pile of research papers today: an ancient but intricate creature called the radiolarian.
Go forth and explore the other sketches from Ernst Haeckl's 1904 Artforms of Nature. You will throw away your camera and dig out a magnifying lens.

Step into my laboratory

Today was my first full day helping in the lab. We were disassembling 4 Aquahabs after an exeriment that lasted several weeks. My work included running a bouquet of tests on the water quality (hardness and various chemicals), measuring plants and counting amphipods - speedy little critters when you're going fishing with a pipette (aka eyedropper)! Lucky the fish liked them or I'd still be there counting!

Forget German, I'm re-learning lots of English today, like titration, reagents and the difference between nitrites and nitrates. It's been a while since grade 12 biology and chemistry.

This is fun!

The importance of childhood exposure to science on career choices

Just a wee short note (aka ultra-micro-tome, which I just learned is an actual device for cutting really thin samples for a scanning electron microscope) - that's what passes for researcher humour after spending the morning reading about epitaxial morphology in Austromegabalanus psittacus (aka big barnacle) et al. And yes that is English. Mostly.
(If you look closely, the divers are the little specks being eaten by the barnacles ;-)

My Swedish colleague is just leaving to go on a 1-year contract at ESTEC in Noordwijk Holland in the Advanced Concepts Team. I discovered they have a biomimetics section - check out http://www.bionics2space.org/.

I can finally add "watched The Six Million Dollar Man" to my resume!
Of course, when I'm rich and famous I will hire a translator for you so you can understand what balbutio, er sorry, that's Latin for "I speak obscurely".

My first full conversational sentence in German to a colleague today - "Man sagt auf Englisch dass, sprechen mit selbst ist das erste Zeichen der Geisteskrankheit."