cephaloblog

the end

2006-08-22T11:48:00.000+02:00

unbelievably, my time here in bremerhaven is rapidly coming to an end. i am leaving here in two days, arriving back in san francisco in three. it's weird to even type that.

this summer has been a lot like summer camp. it was weird at first and strange to get used to and i missed home a lot, and then suddenly it was three months later and the time had come to go and i wasn't quite ready yet.

i am going to miss the country, i am going to miss my friends, i am going to miss my work. this has been such a crazy random amazingly cool opportunity, it will be hard to see it go.

but like all good things, this too must come to an end.

this is going to be my last entry from here. i have some more videos and pictures, find me if you would like to see them. but now i must sign off. clean out my desk and start up the packing.

thank you all for reading, and for sharing in my misadventures from afar.

i will see you all so very soon.

love,
me

next time, i hope it's johnny depp

2006-08-01T14:49:00.000+02:00

i went up this last weekend to london to meet my mother, who is visiting me. we ran around and did a bunch of tourist-y stuff. we saw the two tates and the sommerset and rode the london eye (this giant ferris wheel type thing they installed on the thames that takes you high above the city and you can see for miles. and you feel like you're in a giant bicycle wheel, because it's built exactly like one. really neat).

and we ran into a movie star. you know, the usual.

so the last time i was in london, which was also my first time, i came across the filming of the da vinci code in this little alley i had decided to take. it was pretty random, some quiet little street i was using because it looked pretty turned out to be sectioned off to become a set. i watched the action for a few minutes, saw audrey tautou (one of my favorite actresses actually) and tom hanks and someone who i later found out was ron howard all working out the details of a chase, and laughed at my strange fortune of coming across that.

and this time, the same exact thing happened. my mom and i were wandering around, and we decided to take this random alley, and came across a blockade that sectioned off the bit of the street. this time it turned out the movie was the adaptation of the book atonement, starring keira knightley. we stayed and watched it for a few minutes, starring at the back of keira knightley's head for a while, and then wandered on, laughing at our dumb luck.

it turns out, when in london, i naturally gravitate toward movie sets with famous stars.

next time, i hope it's johnny depp.

flickr

2006-07-24T13:00:00.000+02:00

finally put my pictures up.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/judt/

enjoy!

some more video fun

2006-07-17T12:47:00.000+02:00

jim posted a video he shot on our trip!

it's of a cuttle playing with him and camoflauging itself as a rock. really neat part where he makes his skin all bumpy suddenly:

http://judit.drtoast.com/video/imarock.MOV

enjoy. and thanks again jim!

dina, this one's for you.

2006-07-13T16:13:00.000+02:00

so my friend dina 'tagged' me in this little game of blogging, i think it's really cute so i'm gonna play along. :)

RULES - Once you've been tagged, you have to write a blog with 8 facts/things/habits about yourself, saying who tagged you. In the end you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. No tag backs.

1) i have driven across america four times.

2) i won a gold medal in a national pistol competition in college.

3) i collect pictures of the snail graffiti around sf, and note their locations on a map (in hopes of one day finding the artist through density tracking).

4) i speak hungarian.

5) i really like to find the people in the corners at parties who aren't talking to anyone and go talk to them.

6) i played the sexy librarian in a film about a zombie mariachi band.

7) i am the only person in the world who doesn't like nutella.

8) i believe the duck is the most perfect animal because it can both swim *and* fly.

people i tag: cary, adrian, lauren, lynn, irene, and danah. oh and stephanie because i didn't realize she had a blog that i hella want to read now and i meanly forgot her. go!

a vacation from a vacation

2006-07-11T12:00:00.000+02:00

apologies for the lack of postings, i have been away from my computer for the past few weeks.

my little holiday from my holiday began in barcelona. i arrived there in the evening and met my friend jim who had flown out to travel europe with me. while at dinner, we noticed an oddly large amount of fireworks going off around us. we thought at first it was just kids playing or celebrating something the world cup, but the poppings increased until we finally asked our waiter. he explained to us that we had arrived on the night of the celebration for the patron saint of fire, and that this was 'typico.' (it is also known, aptly, as the night in barcelona when no one sleeps.) we wandered through the city streets enjoying many many strange displays of affection for fire (including a huge hedonistic fire dance performed in a church courtyard at midnight. 'es typico.') and wound up on the beach listening to the city crackle and hiss well into the night.

barcelona continued to be amazing. we spent our time sauntering around gaudi's city totally stunned by his beautiful and crazy architecture, stuffing our faces with fruit and horchatas from the local markets, and winding up on the beach most every night. we spent a day in singes, a quaint little mediterranean beach town south of the city that has become a haven for gorgeous gay couples, sunning ourselves and swimming in the clear blue water (and eating a lot of cheese since i only remembered how to say 'half' kilo in spanish). it was absolutely lovely.

next, came paris. from our little room on the rue mouffetard (such a good word) we ventured to explore this truly gorgeous city. (did you know they light up the eiffel tower at night so it glitters? i was sold.) we played in the art at the pompidou center. we got severe whiplash on bumper cars in front of the louvre when the local punk kids decided to come after us. we ate an obscene number of crepes from the vendor down the street who rapidly grew to recognize us. we watched a mass of people dancing fully clothed in a fountain to the symphony of drums and carhorns to celebrate the world cup. we watched hundreds of people dancing to spontaneous live orchestral music (as well as an itunes list of traditional turkish songs) on a weeknight along the seine. our daytrip from paris was to giverny, where we got stranded after visiting monet's garden and missing our bus, and consoled ourselves with feeding ducks while consuming our umpteenth bottle of (excellent) french wine.

then, berlin. my father and his wife met us there and served as excellent (and much needed) tour guides. we made the rounds of museums and saw the remnants of the wall. we explored my father's favorite antic map store. we talked about life in communist europe. we stood amongst 1.3 million fans to watch a soccer game with little flags painted on our faces. we lounged in beer gardens. we stayed in a hostel named after a spaceship. (the heart of gold. each room comes with a free towel.) we took advantage of the executive lounge at the hilton and its excellent buffet and view. we got drenched in a thunderstorm. we saw the church where bach composed as choirmaster. we went 165 miles per hour on the autobahn. we speculated about extracting memories from mummies. we played in the teddybear's picnic of the berlin bears.

and finally, we returned for a quiet(er) weekend in bremerhaven. after a few bikes rides, fresh pastries, and world cup games, as well as a good session of sepia poop-scooping, i set jim on his plane home last night.

all in all, totally spectacular. totally whirlwind. really more than i think i can process right now.

thank god we took about 8,000 pictures. (which are forthcoming.)

i love traveling. isn't it always wonderfully nothing at all like what you expected?

i am that girl

2006-06-17T14:57:00.000+02:00

last weekend my boss frank and i went out to a little island off the coast of germany, called helgoland, to retrieve some cuttlefish that the group had left at a research station out there. we went out on thursday morning on a giant tourist boat (the island gets a lot of day-trippers as it is this weird tax-free place where liquor and cigarettes are really cheap) and arrived a little after noon. we had packed these huge transport drums and a bunch of equipment for moving the animals back, and decided to start by dropping it all off at the research station so we could stop lugging it around.

walking around the island, we found ourselves enjoying the first really gorgeous day in a long string of rainy dreariness. it was absolutely gorgeous. sun shining, water flat as a mirror, not a cloud in the sky. and the island, which was probably less than a mile in diameter, was gorgeous too. it really resembled a mediterranean city, with cobblestones and whitewashed houses and huge sloping streets leading up into the cliffs. gorgeous gorgeous gorgeous.

we arrived at the research station and found that one of frank's old college buddies was the assistant curator there. sweet. he gave us a tour of the place, taking us all around and showing us his experiments and all these cool creepy creatures. he took us through this big alarmed door and we went into the aquarium that adjoined the research station. tourists were wandering through, complete with khakis and cameras and big floppy hats, and we were standing there obviously devoid of bags and carryings, with frank sipping occasionally out of his mug of coffee.

after touring around a bit more and enjoying a beer in the employee lounge, we made one more stop before we left.

i swear it was in slow motion. i thought it might happen, and i saw it happening, and then it was happening, and it left me speechless.

when we were walking around, i noticed on a map the seal exhibit in the aquarium. i thought, aw, cute, seals, that would be neat to see on this little tour. but then we were sitting and chatting and leaving and i thought oh well, maybe next time. and like he had read my mind, when he was walking us out frank's friend just quietly took a turn, unlocked another door, and stepped through it. then i watched frank step through it. and i honestly stood there for a moment, staring back at the seal who was staring at us walking in, and could barely breathe.

we went into the seal exhibit. stood on the little fake rock platform. the seal, a little overwhelmed by two new people, didn't come out of the water, but instead just hung there, about two feet from me, bobbing and staring. and after a little while he got bored and started swimming in circles and showing off for the people behind the glass in the aquarium.

and we stayed there. watching from the platform. in the exhibit. 'cause we were the aquarium people. the ones in the seal exhibit.

and i thought to myself: holy crap, i am that girl.

we stayed the night on our little mediterranean island, and had dinner with a bunch of really nice grad students who live and work there. we woke up early the next morning and loaded the animals into our big barrels (which involved reaching into a completely inked up opaque black tank and feeling around until we caught all of the beasties by hand. so cool).

for the way back we hitched a ride on a research vessel sent out by the awi for a survey of the local sea life. that week was a special week at the awi, where the magazine geo (the national geographic of germany) sent a bunch of writers and photographers out to do a piece about the populations in the north sea. so our goal was to find as many individual species as possible in this trolling expedition to show off to them.

it was really something else. we pulled up a massive amount of sealife, the likes of which i had never seen before. hundreds of fish, thousands of crab, a pile of starfish the size of a minivan. and the whole time these photographers taking pictures. (frank and i kept joking about the amount of press i have been getting recently, and how i will likely become famous before i leave at this rate.) it was really great. and after a hard morning of work, we spent the late afternoon sunning on the front deck and chilling and chatting as we cruised back into bremerhaven.

life rules.

media frenzy

2006-06-03T15:19:00.000+02:00

every summer in bremerhaven, there is a rowing competetion put on by the marines for the general public. the marines allow people to use their giant rowboats and compete against each other in a race down the river.

now, this event is kind of like bremerhaven's bay to breakers. some people take the event very seriously (like the teams from the local rowing high schools) and some people take the opportunity to try to win the costume contest (like the funky brothers, who row in giant afro wigs and polyester).

some members of the team from our group in the awi fit into the catagory of people who take the event rather seriously. so we went out to the marine station a few times in the past few weeks and practiced during our lunch hour. during one of the practices, our boat was hailed over to the side by some people from a news van. after a brief exchange, we docked and katrin, our coxswain, was outfitted with a remote microphone. she was to annouce the weather for the following day from the boat, so they could film it and broadcast it in their little daily bit where they have locals do the forecast.

this is how i wound up rowing on german television.

http://judit.drtoast.com/video/Katrin%20the%20frog.mp4

the day of the race was yesterday, and everyone got to the office in the morning and rapidly turned right back around to go out to the riverside. a few tents had been set up to sell beer and food, and at 10am the competition was well underway.

we spent the entire day by the river, hanging out, talking, drinking, and hooting and hollering at the other teams. we managed to work our way through the ranks, and occasionally got called up to cease our drinking and row (as "das bööt", which is really fun to shout in excitement). by the end of the day, much to most of our astonishments, we managed to land third place. beat only by the naval academy and the boy's team of the rowing school, we had managed to take down some pretty formidable teams of the 32 entered. woot!

sweaty, tired, sunburned, and slightly drunk, we headed to the after party, where local bands played load metal music and dj's cranked out frighteningly bad electronic music. still carrying the laminated banner of our team, the few of us who remained standing were called to line up for a picture.

this is how i got into the german newspaper.

http://judit.drtoast.com/paper.jpg

and if that isn't enough media for you yet, i also just uploaded the first of the cuttle videos.

here is a video of a view into one of the big tanks. they're just eating. check out how the get dark and change color rapidly. (i aplogize for the kind of gross tossing of dead shrimp in the middle):

http://judit.drtoast.com/video/vat.MOV

this is the littler guys eating in their sandy tank:

http://judit.drtoast.com/video/littleguys.MOV

this is a little guy doing his full hunt and attack manuever:

http://judit.drtoast.com/video/snap.MOV

this is a female laying eggs. she pops them out individually and ties them to a surface with her tentacles:

http://judit.drtoast.com/video/laying.MOV

this is the same female later in a different tank. she came up to say hi. this is f-ing cute. the big black thing she's swimming around in a cord she has covered in eggs:

http://judit.drtoast.com/video/mama.MOV

this is a smaller guy who was put into the tank of feeder shrimp in the process of moving. (basically he's laying in the all you can eat buffet. he was quite happy.) check out the flickering of colors. this gives you a good idea of how quickly they can change patterns:

http://judit.drtoast.com/video/chillin.MOV

and this is why i am studying these guys. mama decided to show off for me, and started to do what is called the passing cloud pattern. it's meant to mesmerize pray. (it's quite mesmerizing.) check out how she also texturizes her skin slightly (they are normally totally smooth on top), check out the iridiphores shining on her underside, and check out how she has bilateral control of the pattern too, at one point showing it on one side while showing a more homogenous pattern on the other:

http://judit.drtoast.com/video/showoff.MOV

and now i'm officially going to stop writing the longest blog entry ever.

enjoy!

weekend update

2006-05-22T11:15:00.000+02:00

my first weekend of random fun.

woke up saturday to find that it was culture weekend here in bremerhaven. no apparent reason: no anniversary of the founding of the city, no first day of summer, just for fun. and it was.

we started off the celebration by going to a rock concert with a few people from the lab. we piled into a crowded community center theatre filled with punks and rockers of all ages fueled by a shanty of a bar erected in the corner. the first of four bands came on in all their leather clad glory, and started into their 80's hair metal style tunes. two screamed german songs later, we decided to bail.

we went over to the bremerhaven historical museum, which was open until midnight for the occassion, and wandered around inside. we explored the amazing old fishing machinery on display while being serenaded by an elvis impersonater they had hired (who was actually pretty good!).

when we finished with the museum, we headed over to the main shopping strip of town. all up and down the street little performance booths were set up. we spent some time watching a marching band and a middle school dance troupe (in strappy raver pants and big red sweaters that read kiss my 4rse. very very sparkle motion), and went into the church to hear their choir sing for a while. we were passed by four white clad jesters, on stilts with beautiful giant bird beak masks on, who were carrying lanterns and lighting the way for their lady who followed behind, also on stilts and in mask. so pretty! so mirrormask.

we decided to go next to the shipyard museum, which was huge. we saw a ship from 1300 that had been dug out of the mud in the harbor and reconstructed (miraculously it was about 75% intact) and played with the various interactive exhibits they had set up for kids. when we got tired we went and had fries and beers in a nearby greasy spoon.

and just when i thought the night was winding down, we decided to stop in at one more place to see another musical performance. we had no idea what we would see. and we would have never been able to guess what we found. apparently, the venue had brought in a band from st. petersburg. a group of four incredibly drunk russian men singing old russian and french oompa type songs. the accordianist was dressed in a russian military uniform which had been torn open in the back to fit his wider frame, and he wore no shoes or socks. the lead singer had his hair slicked back in a ponytail, the saxophonist wore a striped shirt and a barret, and the drummer looked like he could have played with nine inch nails. it was amazing. they were so good, they had the whole crowd dancing and "ra ta ta ta ta HEY!"-ing along.

finally, at 2am, after two hours and two encores, we disbanded and headed home.

who said bremerhaven was boring?

work-a-day

2006-05-18T09:46:00.000+02:00

yesterday morning i woke up at 6 am. showered, ate breakfast, and took my newly-loaned wonderfully old and rusty bike (i think her name's greta) to work. the city was just waking up as i dodged through delivery trucks and ladies with strollers.

i got to work, and started my day with my new duty of feeding the cuttlefish. they're so amazing to watch; they flicker and flash and stalk their prey (of frozen shrimp) around the tank. they recognize me now as the feeding lady. whenever i open the tops they swim to the surface and stare at me and flick out their extra feeding tentacles a bit, which is basically the cuttlefish equivalent of licking one's lips. i had heard them described as eerily similar to domesticated cats, and it's really true. they ham up the cuteness when they want you to feed them or play with them, but other times they couldn't care less about your existence and would much prefer to sleep.

yesterday we all spent about 12 hours here: cleaning the aquaria, setting up new filtration units, dissecting sick animals, preparing for new incoming ones. i didn't even notice that so much time had passed, since we spent the day chatting and joking and speculating on scientific theories and making fun of each other. it was amazing. and when we got out, there was really nothing to do but pull some beers out of the cold room, climb up to the roof of the building, and watch the sun set over the river at the end of a well worked day.

i think i've found heaven.

(i also filmed the feeding this morning. look forward to links.)

greetings from bremerhaven!

2006-05-16T09:10:00.000+02:00

i arrived safely in bremerhaven on friday night, after much time on planes, trains, and automobiles. sweaty, dirty, and tired of hauling my bags, i was pleasantly surprised to find that everyone i talked to was exceedingly kind and helpful. one particular man, who i flagged down on the train platform in a little burst of panic when i missed my train, even walked me to the next terminal and loaded my bags onto the car. when i asked him what he did for a living, he told me in his broken english "ah, i drive zee train." what service!

i made it to town and was found by my new labmate felix, who drove me to the guesthouse and helped me settle in. the apartment i'm in is gorgeous. it's big, airy, and full of giant windows that open both sideways and from the bottom. that german engineering. my roommate, and it turns out everyone in the guesthouse, is a fellow student at awi, the marine research institute i am working for.

highlights of the weekend included: a long walk along the harbor where they were having a festival of boats, my first taste of german food (which consisted of fresh vegetables, tasty bread, and so delicious milk and cheese), wandering around the "park" near my house (which would be more accurately described as a forest. oh and i learned it's just the "little" park), teaching a swahilian guy down the hall how to pronounce "monochromatic light intensity," and beginning to explore the city and meet new people.

bremerhaven is really a very small town. (especially compared to san francisco, obviously.) it's jarringly quiet, especially at night when most of the town's daily population goes home to their houses in nearby bremen. (night-time is also only dark between sunset at 10pm and sunrise at 4am. apparently it gets shorter still in late june. crazy!) after a day of culture shock, i began actually to look forward to a slow-paced life here this summer. it will allow me to focus more on learning about this new field i've chosen to nose-dive into, which makes me really happy.

and the cuttles. oh the cuttles. yesterday was my first day at work. and the girl who was touring me around, magda, i think very intentionally saved the best part of the campus for last. the best part being the vats (repeat: VATS) of cuttlefish i will be in charge of this summer. slight change in plan from the original of raising eggs, since they couldn't find any on their last trip to france. which just sadly means we're going to have to go out again soon. pity.

these animals are so beautiful, so amazing. all my doubts about this summer disappeared the moment i looked into that first tank. i can't believe i am getting the chance to work with these creatures, to literally follow these stupids dreams i have been having for so long and make them a reality. i'm going to be a marine biologist!

i also met about half my housemates at a bbq last night, which seems to be the thing people do to entertain themselves. i live next door to the spanish suite it turns out, which is really awesome. it's a foreign language i can actually understand! and there are a couple of people from my lab there as well, who are really nice. so it's rapidly beginning to feel like home here. (oh and i found not one but two fabric stores yesterday too, which really completely sealed the deal on my happiness.)

and though i miss home, i am still really excited for this upcoming summer. i will continue to post here if you want to hear about my (mis)adventures, and i will upload photos soon too.

and now, i have to get back to work. shweet...