Fun times with histo!

Histology is the study of tissues. The theoretical part of it is quite interesting and detailed, but the practical lab sessions tend to slowly strangle me so I can hardly breathe at the end of the day- EVERY FRIDAY! We look at slides of the tissue type that was on the previous lecture using light microscopes and draw them in our notebooks which we then get the lab assistant to sign off. He also rambles on about electron micrographs which I rarely even look at that we will also be examined on (*need to pay more attention! hrr*). It used to last until 6:30pm (yeah, on a Friday!) because my last name is so cool and at the end of the alphabet I get to be in the late group all-the-frickin-time, but this semester they thankfully switched the schedule so we get to go to the early session and finish at 3 instead every -Friday-. BLISS! Starting the weekend early/-ier is a privilege I have missed.

Well my point is that the last histo-lab was not all that boring. We looked at a slide of hepatocytes (liver cells) stained with silver so that the cell nuclei and cell membranes are outlined in a black-ish colour which just looks really cool rather than emphasising acidic and basic cell compartments which other dyes such as hematoxin and eosin do (sorry about the geek talk- oh wait, haha...  as if it's not going to get geekier if you keep reading...) It looked like thisssssss:

Hepatocytes surrounding the central vein (i.e. hole) in the middle. whoop! Kind of looks like an eyeball, doesn't it? ^_^

Yeah.... well I just got really excited about this slide as I found it to be super pretty after constantly looking at pink/purple slides which all look more or less I-DENT-I-CAL! No bloody idea how I'm going to remember how to differentiate between types of the -same- tissue in an exam... because they DO look alike while they really are oh-so-different. Need to find myself some photographic memory and patience somewhere.

All right, microscope slide hype is over. I'm going to go dream about living inside animal cells and hitchhiking on dyneins and kinesins on the cytoskeleton highways now. Night.


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Thumbs up for good deeds!

So this evening I was walking out from Poczta Glowna after paying some bills and sending off a few things in the post along with flatmate Karoline. I slightly bumped into an hunchbacked old man with a cane who looked a bit lost and as I was about to pass him by and intended to hold the door open for him to exit as well he grabbed my arm (in a rather non-freaky way, surprisingly...) and started mumbling. We walked him down the stairs  and he kept pointing with his cane in the general direction he wanted to go. Looking cluelessly at each other Karoline and I walked him across the street and we soon noticed that he must have been nearly blind as he barely noticed where he was stepping. I put on my polish conversation mask and managed to say 'jestem z norwegii' to which he answered "aaah, bardzo zimny!"- which means "very cold!" and hopefully he understood why we kept spending more time looking for things to say than actually understanding him. So he kept pointing forwards and the conversation kept going like:

me: czy pan chce isc do apteka? (fantastic grammar by the way....)
old man: nie nie nie nie, dalej dalej do delikatesowe!

And I was like- right... he's pointing ahead and we almost walked onto the pharmacy wall but he doesn't want to enter and wants me to take him to the deli down the street which I have never seen in my life! And so we kept going.

At some point he started turning towards the buildings on the street instead og walking "prosto" i.e. straight ahead and kept saying "delikatesowe... jest tutaj!" and I was like... uuuh... no this is not the deli, it's a closed down 'zapiekanka' (Polish pizza-sandwich) takeaway booth! We kept going "prosto" and I read out the names of all the shops we passed but he kept saying "nieee, delikatesoweee!" so we asked a middle aged man on the street to ask the old man where he wanted to go and the middle aged man was a complete nutter and screamed out lout and pointed to a place with bright lights saying "DELIKATESOWE JEST TUTAAAAAAJ, JEST TUTAAAAAJ! TUTAAAAAAJ!" which was a bit freaky cause he said that the deli was in the direction he was pointing but with the loudest voice that made it sound as if we were all three a group of retards who did not know where it was. After telling him thank you thank you THANK YOU and goodbye we managed to guide the old man into the shop in the end and got a genuine "dziekuje bardzo, do widzenia!" back- at least he was very thankful for us helping him out :)

Considering that I have a polish test tomorrow, this little episode was the best revision session I could have had; not to mention it probably boosted my karma from moderate to ***infinity***



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The things I do when 'free time' is involved.

For the past few days I've spent way too many hours in the flat- although my achy ankle left me with not much choice (it is much better now:) I only went out for the odd errand and dinner with a few people who are spending the break in Krakow. I have to say it's pretty quiet around here, but it has given me plenty of time to actually use my PS2 for gaming AND watching films- I have actually seen Pocahontas three times in less than a week. To be frank I don't think I've ever had the pleasure of resting on the couch as much as I have suring this break. Time well spent indeed!

Yesterday I went for a walking tour though- specifically about Jewish heritage in Krakow. We walked around in a part of Krakow called Kazimiersz (aka the Jewish area) where we went to four different synagogues and two cemeteries. It lasted a few hours and the guide told us about the emergence of Judaism, the siginficance of the synagogue and Torah, Jewish customs and the Kosher lifestyle and about important rabbis and their influence. I learned a list of new things and we were only five people in the group so the tour was really easy to follow. I'm definitely going on more of these tours as they are free for the moment because the company wants feedback about the content and quality. The only thing to do at the end is filling out a questionnaire for feedback purposes. Yay for free stuff and a nice Sunday stroll!
There is another themed tour about Oscar Schindler where they go to his factory as well at the beginning of March which I am planning on attending :D This is such a good way of exploring the city which I have not yet found the time to do properly.

So tomorrow morning I'm leaving Krak for a while to see my lovely Edinburgh-friends :) It's going to be grand seeing a bunch of you again!



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Berlin: bardzo schön!

Natalie and I got back from Berlin on Tuesday. Though we were reeeeally close to missing the train from Szczecin because of a delay earlier in the day. Anyway, we managed to get home safe and I even brought along some bugs for my upper respiratory tract.

It was quite an "eventful" vacation. We met some interesting people in our hostel and out on the Sandeman pub crawl- including a professor of social anthropology and a fun gal from Detroit (i.e. second person after  Eminem whom I now associate with that place). There was also a bit of language confusion- we both know the odd German word or phrase so agreed on trying to say simple things whenever we got the opportunity. However most of the time "danke schön" got mixed with "dziekuje bardzo" and "enschuldigung" with "przepraszam" as well as "ja" with "tak". We got several confused looks and gave ourselves a few facepalms.  The clerks and people behind the counters had a good laugh when we used rock-paper-scissors to decide on which tickets to get or what to have for dinner... Good times. So whilst in Berlin we also:

1) Chilled
2) Strolled
3) Chilled (as in- froze)
4) Met randoms, as mentioned..
5) Chilled
6) Ate
7) Chilled
8) Strolled around in museums
9) Learned about Checkpoint Charlie (well, I did)
10) Chilled some more
11) Met more random people
12) Waited [impatiently] for the Superbowl to start, watched the beginning (well, Natalie did) and went straight to bed (myself)
13)  Chilled
14) [almost] got frostbitten whilst chilling ( see what I did there...)
15) hung out with some amazing bears:

...did I mention we just chilled?

Well I have to say the Pergamon museum (i.e. close to the site of modern Bergama, north of Izmir in Turkey)  was good, although not as breathtaking after spending a summer in Turkey seeing similar sites in real life (i.e. Hattusha and Ephesos). The current exhibition however was really worth the time and money we spent. It was simply a huge panorama display in a huuuuuge cylindrical room with a 3D-feel that showed an image of what daily life in Pergamon was like with vivid colours, background music with natural sounds and lights changing the mood from morning to evening. The image was so detailed and you could look into the mountains in the horizon as if you stood on top of a hill overlooking the people, the temples, gardens and the settlement area. Really cool!

We only went through half of the German history museum this time (aaaaawesome place by the way- highly recommended! I've been before :p ) , but I guess that is one of the many reasons we have to go back to this city very soon!


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Classy artwork.

I cannot believe I spent three(!!!) hours fiddling only with those waffles in photoshop, but at least this site now looks a little more like a blog rather than a digital notebook in my opinion. 

Like it? Love it? Hate it? Despise it? Don't care, cause in any case it's here to stay (quasi-rhyme intended) ^_^


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