Presenting : Julich

My second entry got posted on the daad website today: www.daad.de/blog It's about the trip I took over the weekend to Paris. I must seem retarded on there since the pictures I put on there are way to small...you'll see what I mean. Please comment. Please pity my lameless of asking for comments! Thanks.

Next, I got a new digital camera on my trip to Paris over the weekend so here are finally some pictures of my host city: Julich, Germany!

My working space at the Forschungszentrum - under the banana tree!

The best sandwich I've ever had. The meat patty is mixed with onions, spices and some kind of delicious fat. Erdbeer is strawberry in German.
The most scenetic spot in all of Julich

The three of them are always grazing together

A huge nail on the bike path to work. This one is sinistral (coiled to the left) while most coil to the right. BIOL111, what up.

It's 3:15AM.

ANNNNNNNND it's time for: what's your crazy plan for the future????

After graduating, I'm going to do what I always wanted to do. I'm going to be a VJ in Asia!!!! This is serious business for the time being, time being being between now and sometime before 7am today. LOL. Ok, I might have gotten the idea from watching the Shan + Rozz show on youtube. Both of them are down to earth but interesting at the same time, which makes their clips kinda special. It helps that Shan is extremely cute!

The point is, this semester living abroad has given me such a rush for life and for grabbing on to whatever's exciting out there. I shouldn't condemn myself to doing stuff that I'm not passionate about...like contributing to a stupid scientific database that noone ever returns to on their free will. People just want their stuff to be published. It's become such an honours to have your stuff where anyone can access them, even if it's just a pile of nonsense. (As you can tell, I've been maybe reading too many publications lately) The sad part is that I'm not really up to level to whatever I am very interested in, I'm thinking visual arts, music, generally dealing with people and head-hunting. It's going to be hard to get super good at any of them because I have too many interests, but I'll try my best to specialize.

I never know what title to give so why try.

Give people your full attention. I'm sure you're all familiar with that saying. But it has nothing to do with giving people your attention. It's about you and how much happier you feel when you are fully taking in someone else's words just for the sake of listening. Not like a vacuum, but like...(think Fanyi think)... a photograph.

Tonight, I was planning on working on that lab report I still need to finish for my class before heading back to Paris next week to give a presentation on it but instead, my neighbour David Wippler (I just had to write this name out, sounds too funny) and his friend came over to visit out of the blue. Nice to know someones cares that I'm still alive. haha David is the first person that I met in my building - he came over voluntarily to introduce himself after knowing that I moved into his friend's apartment last week. He's really fun to have around, always chuckling and making big gestures. It's weird, I feel like my social life here, in a city of 30 000, is better than that in Paris. People are so relaxed over here. It's very nice. I just don't want to get too happy too quickly cause I know I will get shot down. I'm always like this. Always keeping myself from being too happy. And that, ladies and gents, could be one of the deepest stuff I've ever divulged on here!

Seriously, I don't like meeting people for the first time. I like meeting people, just not for the first time. You know from experience that they are most probably never what they appear to be, and it would just so nice to cut the laborious dissection of first impressions. High five?

About a boss and possible friend?

I survived my first week in boonies-town, Germany and came to realize that I like THIS particular boonies. I'm getting along very well with my PhD student. Every morning I come to work and he's smiling and waving hello across his messy table full of chocolate bars and green tea boxes. I get a good second-round of laughter replaying the funny moments that happened during the day.

Nicolai: You should go to the laboratory this morning and join the others, they'll show you what to do. You remember where is it?

Me: Yep, no problem.

Nicolai: Are you sure, cause I can come with you.

Me: It's not in this buiding, right?

Nicolai (jumping up from his chair): Tell me you're kidding.

Later, he cramped up laughing when I told him to get his grant from the DAAD in the form of gummy bears. And then he said:
You know what I like about you, you're a very...spontaneous person. And kind of weird.
I think that description fits me pretty well, and woah, a bulls-eye from someone that I barely know. Now I can go to sleep happy knowing that my efforts weren't wasted. I've been trying to build up weirdo-ness for years! Juuuust kidding.

Contact with the human race!

My first weekend Germany was greeted with a holiday, which means four days of rest instead of two. I decided to stay in Juelich. Bad choice. There's absolutely nein to do over here. I'm really not trying to be cynical or anything. You know it's bad when sleeping becomes a way to waste time.

But, in the evening, I received a call from Andrew, another RISE intern from UVic that I have never met but emailed a few days ago, after I read a notice on the bulletin board downstairs that he was looking for someone to share the internet with. Turns out he lives right downstairs from me! I haven't met another Canadian for so long so it was great to chat with him. There is actually is an "North American" attitude that is very easy to distinguish. It felt so homey! Also, needless to say that I was glad to meet face-to-face another specimen of the homosapien sapien species, after four days of self-inflicted isolation.

Sleep early today because work starts at 8am in Germany.

And one more thing, I just submitted my first post to the DAAD blog. It should appear tomorrow at the address: www.daad.de/blog. Please give me some feedback! With this whole Paris blog thing, I've come to realize that I sorta like writing so I would really help me improve if I could hear the good, the bad, and the ugly. Thanks!

Arriving in Deutschland

Germany, be prepared to be Fanyiiied!!! I don't know what that means (lol who says this?)

I arrived in Aachen, Germany around noon yesterday. I left Paris so deliberately and voluntarily that I feel like I'm lacking something ever since I got here. It's like eating something very delicious all in one swallow and the regretting it since you'll won't be getting another one. The images of Paris are haunting my eyes, as if they still expect to see all that magic happening right outside my window. It's only my second day here, so reminiscing about Paris is completely normal. GEEZ, that city was amazing. GOSH I can't believe I was complaining about it. But I knew this was going to happen - that I was going to leave at the end of my exchange and miss every bit and piece of it. I really like the French. People say that Parisians are difficult (and why shoudn't they. Just this weekend, we saw a guy my age energetically giving the middle finger and shouting insults to boat-full of tourists on the Seine), but I feel like you could always spin the situation around once you realize that a "yes" most always comes out as "NO", at first.

For those who are wondering what I am doing in Germany: I'm participating in a program called RISE, that gives undergrads in Science the chance to work at research facilities all over Germany. I'll be working until the end of August at the Forschungszentrum (sucks for those who aren't good at spelling), in Juelich, about 30min east of Aachen (Aix-en-Chapelle for Frenchies). Yes, I promised myself to never get involved in lab jobs ever again, but this one is about pesticide contamination of soil, so it is something that I could be interested in. Turns out many laboratories at the center (it employs more than 4500 people!) also work on environmental research, like renewable energy and the dynamics of the atmosphere, which makes my work on soil look lame...but whatever!

At my arrival, I met up with my research supervisor on the train platform, who brought me to his flat in Aachen to wait for our ride to Juelich. I'm very happy to have him as my supervisor. He is an environmentalist who loves to travel and who has all these cool artefacts that he collected all over the world at his house. A few years ago, he went to Shaolin Temple to become a monk, only to realize that the monks only wants his money in the end. lol. Germany in general is a great place to be. People are extremely friendly, just like the English. I haven't met one single person I did not have a good impression of since I arrived. I hope this is the beginning of a memorable 3 months!

Trip to Disneyland Paris

I spent the day at Disneyland Paris with Zuzanna, who is leaving for Poland on Sunday. Many of the ERASMUS people that I had the pleasure of meeting this semester are leaving around this period, one goodbye party at a time.

Today was a fun day with awesome weather - couldn't ask for any better! I am now painfully exhausted. In so...much...pain........

Below are some photo highlights of the day. Hope you enjoy the "happiest place on Earth". No wonder a place like that doesn't exist, you'd die from exhaustion way too quickly.

Losing face at the Panthéon and soirée at pont des Arts

Here is, just for fun, two pictures of the Panthéon that I took before I broke my camera. That contemporain artpiece you see in the first picture isn't there anymore... someone probably realized that it will not stand the test of a line of people sitting and slowly picking it apart all day long. I have been walking by this monument twice almost daily, going to and fro between campus and residence, but only today did I finally go in. However, I embarassed myself pretty severely at the ticket counter.

See, a new regulation in France abolished the cost of museums and monuments for anyone with an EU citizenship under the age of 25. Although I have no real EU citizenship, I have been successfully sneaking in plenty of places with only my student card and then pretending that I forgot my citizenship card if anyone ever asked. But today, the woman at the ticket counter actually asked for me to give her my card, and asked me if I was a French citizen. Since she already had the card in her hands, I was afraid she would turn it over and see the words "international exchange student" written clearly on the back. I said "no" (I really surprised myself with that one too). She asked from which country I was from, and after stuttering for a couple of seconds and still not being able to think of ONE SINGLE country in the EU, I said "Italy". Awkward! I can't speak a single word in Italian so I would have looked real smart right there if she wanted to test it out. I got lucky this time, but it was obvious that she knew I was lying. Next time, I better stick with countries from which I know the language, like Belgium!

At night, my friend Zuzanna and I joined Vincent's group of friends at the Pont des Arts for a late-night picnic before he goes back to the Réunion (a French island in the Indian Ocean, near Madagascar) for the summer. Alors Vincent, si tu arrives sur cette page, juste pour te dire que je sais où se trouve la Réunion! =P

Le pont des Arts bridges over the Seine and is where young people gather, very strategically I have to add, to chill with friends and meet new people! It's such a great concept, and beautiful too! I also got to see Jeanne and Chen (my friends/neighbours from residence) and her lovely girlfriends, Maro, Maya, Céline and Xiaole. Although a couple of us had to leave before midnight, it was a good evening with a very awesome group of people! Okay, enough ass-sucking for today =P

Bonne nuit les amis!

In between Paris and Germany

It's so hot and humid in Paris these past couple of days that it is become impossible to study. I'm still very lucky because the window in my room faces the East and I only feel like roast pork in the afternoon. My friends in the residence whose rooms face the West says that they are forced to wake up by 7:30am because the sun and heat makes it impossible to sleep!

I am training to become more organized. For example, my first two exams are Wednesday and Thursday and I feel OK because I've been studying little by little over the past two weeks. When I'll be back at McGill in September, I've decided to take out 1-hour to review class notes everynight to keep the stress level low during exam time and human level high. This is something I should have done long ago and of course, I had to make the decision at the end of my years as an undergrad. Time's been going way too fast. I recently found out that two friends from my grade are the president and co-president of CUSS (Chemistry Undergraduate Society) next year and I had to pinch myself to realize that it isn't too early and that this IS our last year! We are the top dogs now. Joking.

On another note, I will be blogging for the DAAD's RISE program during my three months stay in Aachen, Germany! I received an email from them saying that they were looking for someone from Canada who'd like to blog about their experiences so I thought it would be a good idea to apply! I don't know what they're looking for though. I would still like to be really honest with how I feel and stuff but from what I have seen so far with the current bloggers, the posts seem pretty mechanical. Maybe DAAD forced them to be neutral? If you have time to spare: http://www.daad.de/blog

I was asked to send them a picture of myself and this is the one I chose (from a trip to Belgium in March):

It's the only decent front shot of myself that I have, the others are just too weird and/or random. But I'm wondering if the guy peeing on top (it's the Manneken Pis in Napoleon's costume!) could be considered censorable by a reputable institution? He is peeing on my head. Ya I'm worrying too much. Good night.

Louvre night

I went back to the Louvre today. I can't keep count of the number of times I've gone back there. Now, everything is familiar enough so that I can take it all in, relax, and enjoy the overbearing details. I must have walked back and forth in the French Romanticism areas for over an hour, consistently coming back to basically two paintings: La Balsa de la Medusa and Liberty Leading the People. They're "les crèmes de la crème" - MASTERPIECES and it's almost impossible to compliment/critique them, because words are just not enough. You can just stare at them in awe. Especially La Balsa de la Medusa. It helps that the painting is huge.

I remember the first time I went to the Louvre, I felt so self-conscious and angsty and generally uncomfortable, being one among the hundreds of tourists. But now, I'm finally cured of that disease. I don't care about going to the Louvre alone, I actually enjoy it a lot. This is one of those things that an exchange does to you. Mine de rien, you turn fully confident in front of strangers. And you know that it's OK even if you don't feel like that. I hope I won't regress.

Afterwards, I went to rue St-Anne next to the Louvre with Zuza and her boyfriend Robert who came to visit from Poland to get Japanese food (lol this sentence sounds funny!). For those who are not from Paris, rue St-Anne is Japan heaven. There must be about 20 Japanese restaurants placed door-to-door from each other. Just great. And they stay open very late, since the French have the habit of eating later in the evening. Sorry, no pictures because I broke my camera! But I'll go get myself one tomorrow. Don't get me wrong, I'm not rich - I just think that memories are important to preserve!

I became suddenly depressed this afternoon (while working at the lab, what a coincidence) at the thought of my life being too routine-like. I wake up at 8:00am. Eat breakfast, do whatever I need to do before heading out. Rush through the morning crowd in the Quartier Latin, I don't see anyone, I don't look, don't care. I've walked these streets too often. I get to the lab at 9:00, return home at 7:00pm. From then onwards, there's barely any time left to do anything. Seeing a friend quickly costs more than one hour. It is never enough. How many people live like this? Where is the human side of it all? This kind of life is absurd! I need people tweaking and messing around with my life and changing my destiny. I want my life to be a mess, period.

I went to the bakery after work and the baker-lady was having a hilarious but extremely rude conversation with a customer...
Lady : Allez vous en, je veux plus vous voir.
Customer : Oh madame, comme vous êtes gentille avec moi! À demain!
Lady: Mais non, vous pouvez seulement venir une fois par semaine. Voyez, vous avez déjà trois baguettes. Ça fait lundi, mardi, mercredi. Vous pouvez seulement revenir jeudi.

........

Sad story: I was checking myself out with my new earrings last night and decided to take pictures of myself. I grabbed my camera and due to the severity of my butterfingers, the camera slipped out of my hands and dropped to its death. This is the second time I break a digital camera within 6 months, and it was in a similar situation last time too! Coincidentally, a few months ago, I broke a friend's camera who was staying over in my flat, proposed to pay but refused in the end because I figured it wasn't my fault. So this is either a sign that narcissism is a sin or it is karma payback time.

It's back to the lab tomorrow morning. It feels terrible to get back to work after a uber relaxing 4-day weekend. Classes are officially finishing this week and I can't believe how soon I will be leaving. Although I know that it's time to get the hell out of here and turn a new page! I think one thing I will definitely take away from this exchange semester in Paris to how to defend myself and get what I want. Turns out you can have anything you wish in this world if you're firm enough. It hasn't worked in my favor yet but I think I know the basic principles...

Here's a picture of me under a Université du Québec sign! French people here consider me québécoise heehee

Just came back from the cinema after watching "Coco avant Chanel" with a friend from residence. Watch French movie in France, check. The viewing was at 10 pm and since I did not stick my nose out the door all day, it really felt like this is when my day started. The movie featured Audrey Tatou as Coco Chanel. She did a good job playing the role of the ambitious career woman type, but the storyline was pretty boring. It put too much emphasis on her love life instead of her career, which was not much of a love life at all (but who am I to talk lol).

I haven't had classes for two days already and it feels just great!!! I'm so glad I still have two more days to laze around in boredom. Since I don't have much time in Paris, I try to find ways to make time pass slowly. The best way to do that is to be bored! Only joking of course. There are still so many places that I need to visit in the mere 3 weeks that's left. I might go to Orsay Museum tomorrow.

Oh yes, and I should mention that I went to a Canadian Bar yesterday night to taste the only poutine menu I've seen in town. But they don't get it! Grated emmental and parsley can't make poutine happen!

Finally, a new post!

Back to normal. I think I conquered my two weeks all-time low! Time really does heal everything. Still at some points during the day, I would terribly want to talk with mom but by the time I wait until she comes home from work, I wouldn't be too bothered to call. Instead, I'd feel the urge to watch an episode of How I Met Your Mother! Who else loves that show? Tomorrow, I'll be visiting Versailles gardens with Carolyn, who recently got here from Montreal and then going to a Canadian pub at night with a couple of friends from rez! I've checked out the menu and I'll be getting myself a 8.50 euro poutine, thank you very much. Missing you, Canada!

It's been a week I've started my internship in the Condensed Materials lab, at Collège de France, a few blocks away from Luxembourg. Since I was only able to take 4 courses this semester, I need to work in a lab to make up for the credits. I'm getting better at working in sync with karma, I can feel it. But GOD if I ever ever get a lab job again after Germany, someone please come and poke me in the eye. The work itself is not that boring but it's not what I aspire to do and I refuse to live the dream of a ghost.

There's one month left to my exchange. It really does feel like the end ever since I went to gare Montparnasse and bought my train ticket for Aachen. I'll try to make the most of it but I don't know Paris at all.

These few days were the worst I've felt in Paris so far. The spring break was amazing but the brutal transition back to school is more than I can take. Makes me think that coming to France for exchange was a horrible idea. I miss home and familiar souls and the feeling that the world is good. All I've seen after my return is people either being very unhelpful or trying to take my money away!

Too young to perceive beauty.
Thoughts clog the mind.
They're not enough.

What's the magic word?

*
Mom and John landed this morning in Paris, so for the time being, we're all jammed up in my tiny room! I can't say that I'm real comfortable right now, so it's a VERY excited thought that I will be meeting up with Melanie in Milan on Sunday morning! The current itineary is: Milan - Venice - Florence - Livorno - Pisa - Roma (then Liverpool with extended family, and back to Paris) but there might be some changes along the way. Travelling with parents is weird. I think I still need to add 10 more years before I can fully appreciate the romance of it. I love my mom obviously but some situations and Mom just don't mix! Traveling is one of them.

Trying to get things done in Paris is mental and physical violence. I try to learn from my mistakes and avoid the whirlpool KOs that the administrators throw at us, but I'm running out of ideas about how to do that. The problem is that I want to leave one month early from my residence, and according to the contract, I need the approval of my host university. I went first to the residence office, who sent me to the international office on campus (30 minutes away by foot may I add), who sent me back to my residence office, who sent me back to the international office 1 minutes before it closed, which made the lady very spasmic and the scene was U.G.L.Y.

I swear that EVERYTIME you need to find out an information in Paris, they will send you in circles. No one sympathises with you and everyone feels like they're being incredibly lenient for taking their precious time to listen to your troubles!! And once you run out of patience and try to talk over them like they consistently do to you, they feel like you're harassing them!!! (She actually said "arreter de me harceler et me mettre de la pression"...ME?) So I can't be a push-over nor can I use reason... can someone just tell me the magic word? like "open sesame please?"
*(Notre-Dame at night, during our walk)

Lab RANT

Time to celebrate the end of all labs for the semester! This week's had a rough beginning, as I've had two physiology labs (or TP for "travaux pratiques", they call it here) covering two afternoons already. The lab session that I have on Tuesdays is probably the worst I've ever endured. It's just terrible because the report is due at the end of the session and I always end up with gravely retarded lab partners. We have to hand in the lab report as a pair so not only do I have to worry about the parts I write, I also have to drag the other person along with me. Last time, I'm sure my lab partner was on some powerful painkillers and after escaping from him this time, I was paired with a girl who writes the most senseless things. The level that people aim for over here just seems so much lower than what I'm used to at McGill. No suprise though, here's what I recently learned.

Post-secondary schools in France are categorized as "les grandes écoles'' and "les universités". Students who do better go to the first kind of schools, which are usually private and very selective. On the other hand, the universities accept anyone who apply. I knew beforehand that Pierre et Marie Curie was the best university in France, which is part of the reason I applied here, but turns out it's only the best of the worst and there's a whole untapped realm out there! It sucks for students over here because alrealdy in their early twenties, they have to deal with the weight of a division between classes ie. the intellectuals vs commoners.

Back to the subject of my physiology lab on Tuesday. We were supposed to study the action potential on a frog's nerve. I didn't expect the sample to be simply given to us but I was also not prepared for what followed. Without even a warning, the TA's brought in live breathing frogs in glass jars (we're talking huge ass toads too), took them out one by one and repeatedly planted a sharp rod into their brains to "desensitize their central nervous system." It was disgusting and inhumane. I know they kill rats in laboratory all the time by decapitation but I just couldn't bear this one. And what's worse, they don't provide gloves for the dissection and we had to gut the poor frog with our bare fingers and nails! I also recently fond out from a friend in Chemistry that they don't use glove to handle organic reagents. I really can't understand the principle behind that.

Cloud surfing on Sunday morning

Sunday brunch at CROUS never disappoints. I think I've mentioned before that there's a student cafeteria on the second floor of my residence. Usually food is stale and disgusting on weekdays but then comes the magical Sunday brunch!!! So this is how it works: for 2.85 euros, you get 6 points, meaning that you can pick 6 items of your choice at the buffet, plus free juice and coffee à volonté. I can't ever comprehend how people can waste 4 points on 3 croissant and one dish of cold chopped tomatoes when there are so many choices. TADA:

Last night was an experiment to remember. It was a bar called the ''Latin Corner'' where women's wish come true lol. So first of all, upon entering, I was shocked to see out of control half-naked [male] waiters. They were like silhouettes of danger waiting to happen. They would randomly hit girls on the butt and pull people's shirts down. [lmao Amy's right, it sounds like a sexual harassment bar] And people pay them to get sexy-time involving whip cream and hairy legs. Fun? Not so much for me than generally awkward and just plain jaw-dropping. Plus, I went with girls who left me releasing pigeons (new Chinese expression learned from my brunch buddy Pan - means ditching) all weekend so I felt a bit sour already for that. Here's a lesson for all : when a Chinese friend asks you to go to a dinner at a Chinese restaurant, it's because she's serious about it and will be looking forward to the event! For the Chinese, going to dinner IS THE PARTY and it doesn't matter what happens afterwards! Comments?

Dieu merci c'est vendredi = TGIF

I felt incredibly French today after buying a baguette at one of the many boulangeries around the 5th. And so I asked a tourist to take a picture of me in front of the Pantheon lol. The baguette was fresh out of the oven so that made me pretty happy!

Actually, I think within two months, my habits have taken a very serious French turn. I love the idea of drinking wine with a meal (and it's not only the idea either - it feels GOOD) and my favorite snack these days is baguette topped with camembert cheese. So that's two things. I've got to take it easy with the Camembert though cause judging from the roundness of my face nowadays, I'm getting fatter! Well I actually don't care about my weigh that much but it just so happens that all fat gained is deposited in my face and I'm not too happy with that, considering that my face is quite round enough as it is!

A few exciting plans are in place for the next few weeks. Next weekend, Melanie is passing by Paris at the start of her spring break and I imagine that we're going to explore Paris once more. The weekend after, mother is landing in Paris with John. I'm going to meet Mel in Milan a couple of days later and we're doing a tour of Italy. Then, I'm flying Rome-Liverpool to spend a few days with my extended family before going back to school. I love a two week break in the middle of April muhahah. Gotta enjoy the good times while they last. Cause they won't. But others will come. Such is life.