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!

We're very very lucky

This isn't something new to me, to us. It's something that we know implicitly but don't spend a lot of time saying explicitly. Perhaps it's my fever addled brain that's doing this but most likely not.

We're lucky to have to choose between two fantastic alternatives, more than that we're so incredibly lucky that our friends and families still love us and support us even when we make a choice that they'd rather we hadn't made.

We miss you all desperately the sound of your voices, the feel of your presence, the comfort and the hope that you have provided over time. And we know that you miss us too, that makes the choice to stay in Europe a bit longer hard, very very hard.

But, for now we've decided, for better or for worse as they say, to spend a bit more time here.

If you're ever passing by we'd love for you to stop in. Time really does fly, so far from you in Berlin. We miss you most acutely, early mornings and late nights. We really wish we'd see you,
without such long flights.

Jack and Polina

It all started at the passport control...

We landed in St Petersburg 40 minutes ahead of the scheduled arrival time and approached the queue to the passport control. While waiting we noticed a dark haired kinda-asian looking dude in a long black coat waiving at us from behind the glass inside the terminal... it wasn't KGB at all... it was just the good old Denis Vladimirovich (actually he has the same patronym as Putin) Matveev. In order to give the soon-to-be-married man a hug sooner we approached the passport control lady together... as we do everywhere else in the world without problems. As soon as I put both of our passports on her counter she gave me a grave annoyed look (typical in these parts of the world) and we had the following conversation:

Passport Control B^*ch (PCB): "Вы чё - сиамские близнецы чё-ли?" ("Are you siamese twins or something?")
me: "Нет а что, очень похожи?" ("Why, do we look alike?")
PCB: *giving me a slight grin, acknowledging that I also have a sense of humour* "Да нет просто у нас пасспортный контроль проходят по-одному" ("No, but here people have to go through passport control one by one")
me: "Ну вы знаете мы довольно много ездим и везде проходим вместе" ("Well you know we travel kind of a lot, and everywhere go through together")

On this note she stamped both of our passports and we knew that from here onwards our Russian trip could only get better!

After we arrived to our hotel Sever (North) and were met by a typical Russian lady Sveta who looks after the service. Typical why? Because throughout our communal stay there she prepared breakfast for us and insisted that we eat it. However as much as I am not a picky person when it comes to food there was only a limited amount that I was happy to consume. Our breakfast options included:
- boiled egg (which somehow ended up having grey white and grey yolk... it also smelled funny) - eaten only by me and only on the first day... after that my stomach (totally strong normally) decided it was going to follow suit with Denya (the poor bugger spent the first two days in bed having the runs).
- buckwheat and sausages - I was the only one to eat the buckwheat... the others had some sausages...
- custard croissant in a packet - I had that only once, and the others had that only once I think too
- youghurt (which tasted more like something in between custart and kefir) - towards the last day there was no-one to volunteer eating them
- packet muffins - that looked so unappealing that Robert was more happy to be guilt tripped, than actually eating one
- ham and cheese bliny (pancakes) - those were actually the highlight of our menu, and we all loved them
- our choice of beverages included either very bad coffee (Maxwell House or Nescafe) or very bad tea (a bag of which would only slightly tint a 100ml cup of hot water... very strange)... but thankfully Augusin came prepared with his own coffee, coffee machine and coffee cups.

But despite our somewhat limited menu at the hotel we managed to have so much fun and better food elsewhere (for example at the wedding overlooking the Peter and Paul Fortress) that it didn't matter at all.

On our first day after Denya went to the airport (again) to pick up Robert we all went out to a nice restaurant for dinner. We got to meet wonderful Vika and the unlimited-energy-ball that is Sasha. Vika was sick, so her, Denya and Sasha had an early night, but Robert, Jack and I continued to a nice bar Музыка Крыш (Music of the Roofs) which was right accross from our hotel - that made stumbling home at 3am in the morning, for the next five nights very convenient.

The next day Robert, Jack and I went to the Russian Museum and I had a fun time convincing the staff that we in fact were not with a group, but individual young people who actually like to see art out of their own interest and not because we were being forced to. I love the Russian Museum - somehow it's more cosy than the Pushkin Museum or the Tretyakovskaya Gallery in Moscow and still they have such amazing Russian paintings as Repin's 'Bargemen on Volga' or Vasnetsov's 'A Warrior on Crossroads'. After about 2 hours there we decided that we had enough art and culture for the rest of our trip and went... to the pub. Kate was supposed to arrive that evening too, but due to crappy weather in Chicago her flight took 24 hours more than expected and she only arrived on Saturday. In the evening we left Vika to her cold, and Denis to his "loose bowels", and Augustin wanted to catch up with Anna and her uncle, so the three of us found ourselves a cosy Georgian place serving amazing food. At some point during the evening Jack went to the loo and came back suspiciously grinning with the words "even if you don't have to go, you gotta go and see it". Some time later it was Robert's turn, who came back with the same expression. So I had to satisfy my curiosity too... this had to have been one of the funniest loo's I've been to. It was made out to be like an electric chair - sadly we didn't have the camera with us, so you'll just have to do using your imagination. But basically it had the arm and leg straps and also the thingie they put around your head... AND also an old school black telephone on the wall in case you get pardoined. Funny funny sh!t.

Day after that we went suit shopping with Robert and Denya (who by that stage has more or less recovered from the trots). Following that Denya went to the airport (yet again) to pick up Kate. Robert, Jack and I went to our favourite bar in St Petersburg 'The Idiot'. We spent a couple of hours consuming pikles, pelmeni, Seledka pod Shuboi (Herring under a Fur Coat) and fried black bread with garlic. The staff also treated us to complementary shots of vodka... so all in all we were well ready by about 6:30pm when we went to catch up with Kate back at the hotel.

Sunday involved a wonderful trip to Tzarskoe Selo and Ekaterininskii Dvorez (Palace). We got up early ( about 9am) and caught a metro to Vitebskii Vokzal (Trainstation)... after doing a bit of running around we found the regional ticket counters and acquired four (Kate, Robert, Jack and I) return tickets for something like 270 roubles (about 10 USD) - bargain. The train was an old old elektrichka (regional train) with wooden benches and dachniki (people going to their country houses... usually with lots of bags, or gardening stuff). We managed to attract everyone's attention with our laughter (which is just not a done deal on public transport in Russia), and my foreign friends with awe observed a perfect local male specimen, who positioned himself accross one bench in his black trekkies and a black leather jacket, which didn't close around his large abdomen. This barrel continued to consume vodka out of a paper cup for the whole time we were on that train... which would've been a good 40 mins. Robert and Kate were amazed at his drinking skills, and it was only after I told them that about 25% of Russian men are alcoholics they decided against playing that game at home.

We spent our day standing in line and freezing our toes waiting to get into the Palace. But seeing the Amber Room definitely made it worthwhile. The Palace is beautiful and imagining Russian Tzars and Tzarinas there made it almost a fairytale. We then went for a nice stroll in the beautiful park, admiring the autumn trees and lakes. Somehow it was exactly as I remembered it from my childhood - St Petersburg in autumn is the most beautiful place in the world. We also noticed a lot of people collecting maple leaves, and some even made hats out of them (URL for the photos at the bottom of the post). Then it was time for lunch and heading back into town in order to be there in time to organise a bit of a bucks/hens night for our soon-to-be-wed couple.

This of course took place in The Idiot, where our dears had to play a game based on their knowledge of each other. The questions were along the lines of "what colour should the walls in the bedroom be painted" where they both had to write and answer and if the answers matched they each got a point... or a question for Vika "Do a pantomime of Denis in the morning", and for Denis "Do a pantomime of how Vika behaves at an important social function". We all had fun and the best prize went to Denis in the shape/form of a fish-net g-string... which he was very happy to demonstrate for everyone... although only on top of his pants... damn! Actually a funny tangent to do with this piece of attire involved us (Robert, Kate, Jack and me) going into a Russian sex-shop... a complete new experience for me. We ended up in a tiny place the size of half of our lounge-room, together with about 4-5 other guys between the ages of 25 and 30 picking out naughty movies. As soon as we came in and started making jokes and laughing about plastic fists and bums that were on sale the serious male clientele somewhat disappeared or for those of you Harry Potter fans - disapparated. Man.. I felt really sorry for the young girl who was working there... she seemed somewhat miserable surrounded by plastic boobs and KY Gels.

Monday was the big day. The morning involved me playing translator for Robert who still needed a suit... which in the end worked out to be quite nice,... so nice in fact that Jack got inspired to get himself a matching shirt. While the suit was being pressed we headed back to the hotel to get dressed and ready for our mini-bus at 16:30. On the dot we (Robert, Kate, Zach - who arrived 2 hours prior, Augustin, Anna, Lilian, Mariya, Maxim - husband of Olga - Vika's bridesmaid and their daughter Masha, Jack and I) pulled out of Sovetskaya Street and headed for the Alexandriiskaya Naberejnaya where the action was to take place. Our red Mercedes mini-bus pulled up next to a pink limo, and we felt right at home. The bride and groom arrived shortly after looking spectacular. We proceeded into a beautiful old building where the couple went upstairs to prepare and we were seated in a dark leather-and-wood salon waiting to follow. 5-10 mins later a woman announced "Family and friends of Denis Matveev and Viktoriya Gladkovskaya please proceed upstairs". We went up a white marble staircase into a large hall with golden chandeliers. Robert and Olga were standing outside the big doors behind which Denya and Vika were getting the final advice.

They came out beaming and we all were led into an even larger hall where the registrar was already waiting. We were all seated and only the wedding couple were standing holding each other. The registrar said a few words about the joining of two lives together and then the vows were pronounced following by the rings. They then signed the certificates, followed by Robert and Olga. This whole time must've been traumatic for Sasha, because she held onto her Mum the whole time during the ceremony. Afterwards it was time for congratulations, hugs and photos. And of course then it was time to ... party!!!!

The mini-bus took about an hour to get us a couple of block up the Neva... but peak hour traffic in St Pete is no fun. In our time in the car we managed to consume any available food that any of us had on them, had a look at the Mednii Vsadnik (Bronze Horseman - famous statue of Peter the Great), and were about to start consuming Augustin's good red wine when the driver finally got a free streak in front and we happened to be at a place right next to the Hermitage overlooking the river. I mean - these people got style!

Dinner involved a huge number of yummy russian things, and lots to drink. Robert did a wonderful toast, during which most of us - even men managed to cry. Denya's Mum did a great speech (which made me realise that on some level all Russian mothers are the same) about having many many kids. And then it was time for dancing an singing (the DJ had a microphone that got the attraction of young and old).. and towards midnight it was time for cigars and the smoke machine.. and Sweet Dreams - requested by your humble... By this stage Denya, Vika and Sasha went off to their wedding chambers, and all of us caught cabs back to the hotel and played Krokodil (charades) and smoked cigars 'till 3am... at which stage our bodies gave up and we all went to bed.

Tuesday was our day to say goodbye to our wonderful Denechka and Vika and Sasha... and Kate and Zach, and Augustin. It was one of our best trips to Russia and it wouldn't have been half as much fun if those guys weren't around. I mean Denya getting married also helped :))))

Some other random highlights of the trip:
- Making Kate say "Nigger" for the first time
- Arguing with a dodgy taxi driver who wanted 600 roubles instead of the original 400.. and then running off to the Music of the Roofs to hide from him and his cohorts.
- Robert being told to take his hat off in the Russian Museum next to a painting by Malevitch "Это же храм искусства!" ("This is a temple of art") we were told by the Babushka.

Phewww... I hope this can now classify for a detailed account of the events ;) a limited selection of photos can be found here.