off

I’m off for Christmas vacation. May you, my dear readers, have a good celebration. I’ll be back on December 29th or 30th.

Surfers Paradise

Some places in Australia have names straight out of a merchandising handbook. Surfers Paradise for example is a place located on the Gold Coast, south of Brisbane. I’ve been told that it’s extremely artificial and not very beautiful. That’s why we (my workmate AS and me) went to Noosa on the Sunshine Coast instead.

Since we didn’t have a car there was no other way but to use public transport. Bad idea. Public transport sucks in Australia. There are four (!) train lines from Brisbane stretching north, south and west. Going to Noosa means spending two hours on a train that stops at every molehill only to spend another hour on a bus that stops at even more molehills. But once you reach the beach the view of the Pacific Ocean is just…

astonishing.

The perfect sand beach was quite crowded but not overrun. It has been ages since the last time I swam in sea water. Falling against the warm waves was just hilarious – especially when thinking of you guys freezing your asses off in good ole Germany!

We also went for a walk through the nearby national park. Walking through the jungle along the coastline we came across a couple of parrots, a frill-necked lizard and even a goanna. The last one caught us by surprise. We were both a bit shocked when suddenly this large reptile appeared on the path. Obviously it wasn’t interested in humans and continued its way through the bush.

In the end it was a great day. I sustained a mild sunburn (less than I had expected) and probably lost sweat by the litres. Having talked so negatively about Australian public transport I have to add that it was rather cheap. The whole trip was just AU$ 27.

edit: There are more train lines. Can’t remember exactly, seven or eight. Still sucks.

Warholhalla @ GOMA

A few days ago a huge exhibition of Andy Warhol’s works was opened at Brisbane’s Gallery of Modern Art. Since I call myself a person interested in and moderately educated about art I didn’t want to miss it. I expected the place to be crawling with people and a giant line for admission but neither of my expectations held true. Either Aussies aren’t interested in pop art or they didn’t bother going there on a sunny Saturday afternoon. Anyway, the exhibition was great and worth the hefty entry fee. It took me over three hours to see the more than 300 pictures and videos. It was quite interesting, although my respect for Andy Warhol dropped a bit rather than rise. He was talented and creative, but in the end he was just a kid who grew up in a working class family and wanted to be part of the glamorous world of celebrities that started to emerge in the early sixties. He was extremely succesful in pursuing this goal (meeting such people as Salvador Dalí, Marcel Duchamp and Niki de Saint Phalle) and never lost a sense of irony for what he did. My favourite Warhol picture is his portrait of Mao Zedong which became famous for pointing out the striking similarity between the western mass-mediated icon creation and the communist leader cult. I especially admire the way in which he mocked Mao’s authority although Warhol himself probably admired China’s leader’s success in having his image plastered all over the country.

HERU RA HA

I went to The Arena yesterday to see Behemoth. These fellas started out as a black metal band but changed their style to death metal over the course of their career and have recently gained a reputation for progressive composing and a unique sound. As I had expected it was a killer show! They didn’t play the song after which I named this post, unfortunately, but “Conquer All” and “Slaves Shall Serve” kicked ass. There were two support acts, both worth mentioning.

Dawn of Azazel from New Zealand, progressive death metal. Real death metal, not this wimpy metalcore crap that the kids perceive as death metal these days. I was quite impressed and tried to buy one of their CDs after the gig but they were all sold out.

The Dead from Brisbane, also progressive death metal. I had bought their album before and had listened to it a lot but wasn’t aware of them playing at this occasion. It was a pleasant surprise to recognise the songs. Thumbs up for The Dead!

Just when I thought I had to go home without a new CD a guy approached me to hand me one for free. He said it was his own band’s record and he wanted to promote them. Later I had a look at it: People Die, another local band. The CD is spinning in the player in this very moment and the sound is just right. Another fine piece of death metal from Brisbane. I need to find a way to lure them all into Europe when I go back. I’m going to miss this scene…

heavy housewarming

Last Saturday we had our housewarming party. One of the good things about Australia is that there’s no party without a  decent barbecue. Combine this with a housemate who used to be married to a Malay wife and has a passion for asian food and you’ve got an idea of what it was like. No boring lamb chops, not for us. We had tandoori chops that we had prepared the day before. No boring sausages, not for us. We had homemade saté sticks. I prepared a pasta salad and the guests brought along some more.

Although I had complained about the hundreds of Germans into which I run every day I had invited some of them. The nice ones, of course. Among them was MS (the guy from my home town I had met at Club Phoenix). He brought a potato salad which was much appreciated.  He was also the one to later join in on headbanging the night away to some of the finest Metal available on my hard disk.

Judging from the amount of alcoholic beverages we finished that night it must have been a serious party. So serious indeed that I can’t remember the end of it. I just woke up on Sunday at 2 PM and noticed that my housemate had been kind enought to close my window and switch on the aircon. Although I was definitely more drunk than him my hangover was much weaker as there was nothing left in my belly capable of causing hangover. I had puked it all out in the night (into the toilet, not my bed, I must add).

Despite the hangover of everyone involved we went fishing with some of my housemate’s friends in the afternoon. We had done so before on Bribie Island (can you say “sand beach“?), this time we went to a jetty near Caloundra. We didn’t catch anything, which was kind of embarrasing because the damn kids next to us caught two fishes in the same time. Anyway, it was a good way to spend a Sunday.

ancient tech

Some of my readers have asked me to write about my occupation. Well, I don’t want to be too specific since this is the internet, the most public place I can imagine. What I am willing to publish is the story that happened on Wednesday. Our laboratory had been using a medium-sized Eppendorf centrifuge for about two years without problems. Last week the centrifuge started to run into balance problems. Even with well-balanced containers it would vibrate heavily and eventually stop spinning. We asked our lab manager to call for service and at the same time tried to find ways to overcome the problem on our own. Eventually we got the idea of increasing the acceleration in order to leave too little time for the centrifuge to pick up resonance frequencies. This is probably not the most sensitive method but it did the trick (and helped us speed up our work as we didn’t have to wait for minutes for the centrifuge to accelerate and decelerate). On Wednesday the service guy came and guess what – he broke the machine! He was unable to get it running again and since my workmate AF and the lab manager kept telling him that it had worked fine just the other day he couldn’t help but take the centrifuge with him.

On thursday I ran an experiment which required ten samples to be centrifuged (there is hardly any experiment I am going to conduct over here that doesn’t involve the centrifuge). Fortunately AF has a friend who is the manager of a biochemistry laboratory and we were allowed to use one of their centrifuges. With thirteen postdocs working in his lab, this guy was farily busy and used only the most necessary of words. They had all kinds of centrifuges over there and the one we eventually settled for was a Sorvall DuPont that looked as if it had been in use since the bronze age. There was no flatscreen, no computer inside, it had completely mechanical controls (you could hear the mechanism clicking when adjusting the speed), but was very well maintained and worked flawlessly.

Behold the ancient centrifuge of Brisbane for it gives our lives a positive spin!

Brisbane Part III

Last week was hard work. There was a meeting of a students’ association in Germany to which I had to contribute some work (as I’m the head of this association). I also prepared for a seminar and a workshop at uni (I came here not only to learn but also to teach) that turned out not to be sceduled on Thursday, as I had originally thought, but next Wednesday. And somehow it just happened that I spent a lot of time in the lab. Net effect: I was working and working and working and suddenly it was Friday. That explains the recent lack of posts.

Yesterday I went to a party to which a lot of “newbies” were invited, i.e. poeple who are new to this city. I met Belgian, Canadian, Irish, New Zealandish and Chinese people there, as well as Australians who had moved to Brisbane from other towns. One of them told me that he was from Townsville. I remembered that it’s in Queensland (same state as Brisbane) and replied: “Well, that’s not too far away.” His answer: “Yeah, only 1500 kilometres…” This country is just too large. 20 times the size of Germany, yet only a fourth of the population. I had been warned about the Australian accent, which turned out to be not too hard to understand, but no one warned me about the Irish accent. There were two Irish girls at the place whom I could hardly understand at all.

Me: “I know you don’t like the English but would you mind pronouncing your words in a more British way?”

She: *laughter* “I know, Irish is the wuhst ahcksend av Eenglish!”

The guy from New Zealand was quite nice and interesting. I never cared much about this country, regarding it as the group of Islands next to Australia. But contrary to Australia, New Zealand is rather progressive. They have a female prime minister, a strong Green Party in parliament and according to the claims of this guy a much better social system.

What my dear readers are possibly much more interested in is the solution of last week’s mystery. Creative guesses were made, none of which was correct, though. All right, here it goes:

After the concert the DJ kept spinning music, and good music indeed. Slayer, Nile, you name it. I kept banging my head for all it’s worth and had a great time, spending propably 70 bucks in this place. This, as you might have guessed, was quite exhausting and I decided to have a break. I sat down on a bench and leaned backwards, my feet still resting on the ground but my body in the horizontal. It did not take a minute until one of the bouncers approached me, trying to tell me something. I got up and asked him to repeat. His words were something like this: “If you want to sleep, do it at home.” To make sure I would understand he laid his hands on his cheek to symbolize sleep and then pointed to the door. He led me outside and that was it. Period.

I wasn’t sleeping, just resting. My eyes were open, I was just staring at the ceiling instead of in other people’s faces and planning to get up and go on dancing soon. Apart from that, what’s the crime in sleeping? Sleeping is probably the most peaceful thing to do. I did fall asleep in a club in Berlin some months ago – they just woke me up when the club closed and I left. But not in Brisbane, no, in this city you get thrown out for (allegedly) sleeping.

Generally, going out in Brisbane feels a bit strange. You want to strip off the restraints of civilization for at least a few hours but they won’t let you. There’s a bouncer for every 50 people at least, most often there are even more. They are hired externally, wear a uniform and have two-way radio. Plus, they don’t wait patiently in the corner for something to happen but wander around instead. There was a concert and they were audacious enough to walk through the crowd that was trying to get a view of the bands (that were separeted from the audience by a metal fence anyway). There is a strict zero tolerance policy enforced. No warning, no discussion, no opportunity to explain yourself. The bar staff are supposed not to give any alcohol to people they perceive as too drunk. A lot of clubs even have a dress code enforced. Some weeks ago I was denied entry to a club for wearing shorts!

Aussies are pretty easy going and extroverted people. But at the same time Australian society seems quite conservative and patronizing. Whoever made up these rules obviously didn’t think people would be able to know for themselves what to wear, how much to drink, how close to get to the bands – and in what position to rest.

To be honest, I was not completely on my own at that club. At the concert I noticed a guy who looked very much like someone I know from Darmstadt. And guess what – it was him! He is currently working on his Diplom thesis at Queensland University of Technology. It took him a few seconds to recognize my face, then he burst into laughter for several minutes. I was reminded of a post on a friends blog. He is currently in Lausanne and reports that it’s crowded with Germans. Same here, I keep running into Germans every day. University staff, students, backpackers… Stay the fuck away from me, I came here to meet Australians!