Some crap pun on chemistry, or lack thereof, like dating, but with a chemist, like.

A couple of weeks ago I experienced one of those "you're a pathetic fantasist, endofphil, you wish, in your dreams" moments. I had managed to stay awake during a physics colloqium, which is an achievement in itself. The typical audience member of a physics colloqium is male, bearded, over 50 and quite probably asleep. He will wake up a few minutes before the end of the talk to ask whether the topic being discussed has any relevance to his area of expertise.

Being a special colloqium there were a couple of crates of beer at the end of the talk, and thus the audience got to drink a beer and discuss beard trimming techniques and whether their areas of expertise had some overlap somewhere. The thing that didn't fit in here at all, in any way whatsoever, was a young female Russian Chemist stood with a bottle of beer looking bored and homesick (honestly I'm not making this up, I may be a pathetic fantasist, but this is straight up). She was most certainly bored, as the whole evening had been held in German and she hadn't understood a thing.

I'd drunk enough to work up some courage, so I explained that I could in principle speak English and offered to take her out of the physics institute and show her the sights of Erlangen (I took here to the Schlossplatz, I don't know why but I had to start it somewhere). In one of those wonders of German organisation she is living in an office in the physics institute, so she was in no position to turn me down. This evening we went for a few beers, but I think she just wants me for my social life (WTF !?), although that could be one of those numerous excuses I make to avoid ever making anything of anything.
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Youtube link of the day: This is probably a waste of time, as all Germans know it and any non-Germans won't understand it. Anyway, this is the first "go away and spend 5 years learning German, it will be worth it" clip that I've come across. Ein Klavier, Ein Klavier

Product Warning

Before we get to the product warning, first a blog warning. Having covered vomit and urine in recent days, today we are dealing with poo, cack, crap or whatever you like to call it.

So now the product warning, you know the idea: "This product may contain nuts", "wearing this superman costume will not necessary enable the user to be able to fly" and so on.



May I suggest that those little toilet freshener things which hang over the rim of the loo ought to be issued with the warning

Freshening effect only occurs on rim of toilet. If the freshener is somehow flushed down the toilet it will no longer give 'a feeling of springtime' to your bathroom. In fact, if you accidentally flush it whilst taking a shit, it will probably block the toilet and thereby hinder the effective removal of faecal matter, leading to your toilet being filled with and smelling of shite.

Nobody in the flat knows how exactly this blockage happened, and the rest of the story involves a few bottles of beer, a rubber glove, a plastic bag and a building site. Suffice to say that we can now poo in peace again and my flatmates owe me a beer or two. Hurray!

Amplifier Operational (until I broke it)

I finally plucked up courage to wire up my birthday present today. It is an home-made amplifier with lots of inputs and outputs and no labels or manual for idiots like me.

Bollocks. I think I just broke it. It was happily playing a song and then stopped all of a sudden. Maybe it has a "Shitty Britpop" recognition unit built in? "Pulp? I'm not amplifying that crap". I think I'm going to start to cry :-(

Zombie Nation.

Nights out in Britain have always been a bit scary, but things seem to be getting worse, according to the Sun.

"It is thought trouble started when the dead man became involved in a fight with another man."

Tumblers and other old stuff.

I decided to make use of my excess leisure time and look round the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in Nuremberg.

I only saw less than half of the stuff as it is a big museum and I have a limited attention span for historical relicts. After a while I got a bit depressed by the exhibits: it seemed that the extent of human achievement over the millennia has been finding new ways to kill each other (axe, dagger, sword etc.) and finding new ways to depict the death and torture of Jesus. My favourite was one which had the crucifixion in the foreground and a lovely harbour scene in the background. Most picturesque, although it is a shame that Jesus was looking the other way, probably at something much less soothing.

For me, the "I wonder if I could steal this" exhibit was a 7th century franconian drinking pot. The great thing is that it had a rounded bottom so that it wouldn't stand up and you had to down the contents. I just looked around the internet to see if you can buy such a thing, but I can't find any. I did however learn the following quite interesting fact: a tumbler is, according to the Merriam-Websters dictionary, "a drinking glass without foot or stem, and originally with pointed or convex base". At some point people must have gone all puritanical, and designed the flat-bottomed tumbler which no longer tumbled. For years I've drunk out of these things, and never asked why we called the most stable of all glasses a tumbler. For some reason the name has stuck, though, so here's to franconian drunkards. Cheers.



For comparison, a raucous 7th century tumbler (top) and a sober 20th century tumbler (bottom). The tumbler in the picture is not the one in the museum, I just borrowed the image from wikipedia

Walking on Broken Glass, Mud and Sangria.

If the success of a party can be determined by the mess created, then last night's was a definitely a good party. After cleaning the flat from broken bottles, fag ends and a bucket filled with urine right next to the toilet we found that the floor has a few cigarette burns and a lingering stickiness you get in bad discos, so that each footstep is accompanied by a faint "squelch".

During the party I made plans to learn to speak italian, to visit some village festival (Kerwa) near Ansbach and to go cycling to remove the hangover. These are the things I can remember agreeing to, and I did actually manage to go cycling today whilst wearing my new "skeleton" jersey and red polka dot "King of the mountains" socks.

It's strange how alcohol can solve major personality deficits. I spend most of my time when sober thinking of how things can go wrong, and why it would be bad or pointless to do something. When drunk, all plans seem like great ideas which can't fail, even plans like "Let's go piss in a bucket".

So if you were here, or weren't here but helped buy a present (one of which deserves its own blog entry and is way too good for just a passing mention), thankyou very much.

Why half of Erlangen will have a headache tomorrow.

Today is the day of the big party in our house. We are making the nastiest Sangria I have ever seen.

Recipe:

Ingredients: 10 litres of tetra-pak red wine, 1 bottle of Aldi Vodka, 1 bottle of rum, 5 litres of fanta-like orange stuff, some half-fermented fruit, sugar.

Take a 25 litre pot filled with mud, cement and rain water, make a half-hearted attempt at washing it. Remember that mud, cement and rain water are the most nutricious part of this drink.

Chop the fruit, throw everything in the pot, get all your guests drunk on something else slightly more expensive and serve in plastic cups. Cheers!

Profile Updated

I have a new occupation, some new hobbies and a new age. I've also gone beta, so I can put coloured text in, and do other amazing stuff probably.

Youtube link of the day:

Thanks to TV shows like "Adolf and Eva's home improvements", "Nazi wives" and "I'm an SS officer, get me out of here" the British are most well informed as to events in Germany from 1933-1945. Just don't mention the Wirtschaftswunder, they/we won't know what you're on about.

Therefore: Starting a new job

Receptacle of choice?

You may be wondering what I'm up to: I certainly am. I thought I would record one day of aimless unemployment.

Today I overslept, ate breakfast, sent a couple of emails, tidied my room a bit, bought a copy of the Guardian, read half of it, did a third of the crossword, ate lunch, surfed the internet for an hour or so (I read the most interesting vomiting FAQ and completed the attached questionnaire), picked up my bicycle from the bike shop, went to the University and changed the brakes and mended the rear light, ate tea and wrote this entry.

This was one of my busier days, my bike is now in good condition and I know all there is to know about vomiting.

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Youtube link of the day: Swedish made simple, or the explanation of the following code (you may wish to try to decipher it yourself before watching the video).

L.O.
L.O.
R.U.B.C.
S.V.R.B.C.
L.O.
L.O.
L.O.
L.O.
F.U.N.E.X.
S.V.F.X.
F.U.N.E.M.
9.
I.F.C.D.M.
V.F.N.10.E.M.
A.V.F.M.
R.
O.
C.D.M.
O.S. V.F.M.
O.K. M.N.X.
M.N.X.
F.U.N.E.T.
1.T.
1.T.
O.K. M.X.N.T.
M.X.N.T.4.1
V.F.N.10.E.X.
U.Z.U.F.X.
Y.F.N.U.N.E.X
I.F.E.10.M.
S.I.L.L.Y.C.O.W.