February 2009

here's the next instalment of my monthly photo collage (click on the image to see actual photos):


My exams are officially over, and although I don't know any of my marks yet I'm pretty sure I should've passed them. If not... hmmmmmfffff... well I don't want to think about that right now :) I'm happy, and last night Jack and I had two bottles of red wine with some nice cheese and ham - followed by four episodes of Sopranos. It's our next addiction after we watched all seasons of House MD. We decided that we know nothing of local wines (after repeatedly being 'burned' by silly Italian and French and Spanish wine makers) and probably need to do some sort of wine-tasting course to find out about the different types of grapes they have here... on this continent of Europe. What's wrong with plain old merlot and cab sav I ask?!

Tomorrow very late I'm off to Siberia to visit my folks and do work experience!!!

One wintery day in Berlin

I was playing around with the time-lapse setting on the camera and this is what came out of it:

The quality is obviously not great, and the cameramanship is below amateur... but I'm still looking forward to doing this in summer when there are lots of pretty moving clouds...

The sleep of Unix

One and a half hours of Unix's life condensed into one and a half minutes...

notes from the study dungeon

it is exam time again and I'm momentarily taking a(nother) break from studying... Exams are tough I decided. Even though I have all the information I need to make my study notes, etc. I just seem to lack any motivation, or concentration for that matter. It all seems to be a waste of time - this whole memorising business. Everyone knows that people forget this crammed knowledge as soon as they come out of the exam room - so what's the point? There are obvious positives in doing this course - such as hopefully being able to get a piece of paper and get into a post-grad course to do more study, and perhaps one day (far far far away) be able to work. I know this course was my choice and I am happy I embarked on this journey, but I always get my blues when it's exam time. On the upside, according to my course plan, after this exam period I'll only have two more exams to sit in the next 3 semesters. Assessment for other subjects will be through class work, active participation and homework (ie. essay and report writing)... which is my preferred method. Now I am two exams down (Developmental Psych, and Organisational Psych) and two to go (Theory of Psych. Assessment and Methods of Psych. Assessment)... joy joy joy!

In other news here in Berlin, we've been trying to get back into climbing - now that Jack's finger is better, we're not renovating the flat, we're in Berlin, and we've gotten off our arses to do it (twice now!). Last time we were in the climbing gym a somewhat funny incident occurred. I was about to do a climb and a guy approached Jack telling him that he's using the figure 8 incorrectly. Apparently putting the figure 8 on the carabiner means that it is constantly pulling on its weakest point - over time becoming unsafe and possibly forcing the carabiner to snap (he based this on "new and improved" climbing information that came to light). This didn't go down well with Jack, and the guy got told that we've done it before and that he's better off going away now. Getting home we couldn't find any information to confirm what he's told us, and although figure 8 is not that common, it is not supposed to be unsafe. Regardless, we decided to invest into our safety and purchased a GRIGRI (who comes up with these names?!). It is supposed to be fairly fool proof and is built in such a way that it's automatically supposed to stop a fall... looking forward to trying out this thing tonight.

And last, but most certainly not least - the days have been getting longer and today morning I think must've been one of the most sunny days this year so far. Roofs are covered with a couple of inches of snow and the sun was very intense (almost like in the mountains skiing) - very pretty. I haven't been out of the flat for five days now, so my observations are made purely from looking out the windows.

wintery Berlin

well while the south of Australia is on fire and saw temperatures in the high 40s and the north of Australia was flooded, and Siberia is experiencing -40 temperatures with numerous water pipes bursting, Berlin is stable at a cool around-zero temperatures. Here's a pic of this weeks snow on the roofs...

Unix the lounger

may be it's the winter, or may be Unix is just getting lazier by the day, but he has certainly been spending a lot of time on the couch in my study. Here are some snaps of the lazy feline...

more on language

heard a girl at uni talking on the phone yesterday and she said "es wird schon gewesen sein". This roughly translates to English as "it will already have happened". The thing that I find most amusing is that this sentence in German uses three forms of the same verb 'sein' (to be). Granted 'gewesen' is an auxiliary form, but still. It's like saying "it has already had have"... or "it was already is is"... you can't even do it in English!

Gender Traffic

Recently I found out that in German the scientific term (one that for example gynaecologists use) for sex is Geschlechtsverkehr, which apart from not sounding great, if translated into English literally, means "gender traffic". No wonder there aren't enough babies being born here - parents are stuck in traffic! Can you imagine Italians calling sex gender traffic?! Even if they did it would be genere di traffico or traffico di genere (depending if you trust Babelfish or Google Translate more), which at least sounds a hell of a lot better!!!

January 2009

this is the first set in my 2009 monthly-photo project. Click on the image, if you want to see the actual photos...