My Birthday!!

What a great night! Lots of people came out for dinner to celebrate with me at the Great Escape. It was also the night that Joe and Sai were in charge of rounds during BlindTest- Joe was playing 90s rock and Sai was playing 80s shit rock..... which means that I had a chance to win some rounds! And I nearly did... if it hadn't been for the fact that I was on a team by myself competing against Dan, Sai (who by the way wasn't legally allowed to play during Joe's round), and the rest of the American/British team. Of course I made a complete ass out of myself, but hey, it's only your birthday once a year :)

-My swiss friends:

-me with Joe, oh wait, no, that's Luca doing his impersonation of Joe ;)

-me trying to remember the artist of the song being played:

-thank you again for the flowers, they're beautiful!

So after a fun night with my friends, and getting home at 2am, I had to finish preparing for my mid-thesis presentation, which was thankfully at 4pm the day after and not in the morning. It went very well and even though the committee asked a lot of questions about my project I managed not to panic. Now, if only my thesis defense can go that well next spring!

Munich's mini Octoberfest in March.....

So over the weekend we (Joe, Sai, Stephan, Adrian, me) took a car trip to Munich for the doublebach beer festival. Normally the beer is only available in bottles, but during the festival, which occurs during lent, the special beers are sold on tap. Of course, since they are a bit higher in alcohol content, there were a lot of drunk germans in the beer halls. Oh yes, and they only serve the beer in 1L steins!! It was a really cool experience because the festival isn't inundated with tourists like at Oktoberfest and so we got to see real germans in real lederhosen dancing and singing on tables. It was a great weekend eating german food and hanging out with the boys. And yes, I managed to survive alone with 4 boys all weekend!

Barcelona is awesome!

This weekend, Joe, Sai, Adrian and I spent 4 beautiful days in Barcelona eating like kings. Besides the amazing sun, the food we ate was spectacular. Check out my seafood paella:


Barcelona is also known for famous architect/designer Gaudi and we saw a lot of his cool buildings, including the Sagrada Familia, an unfinished cathedral, and a park he designed, Park Güell. This is Joe and I in the park with the cathedral (and the Mediteranean!!) in the background:

I'll post the rest of the pictures on flickr eventually. Adrian already posted his, so if you'd like to check them out go here. I'm swamped working on my mid-thesis presentation that is on the 27th.... which means not too much partying on my birthday. Luckily my presentation is in the afternoon- just in case.

BlindTest #2

oh la la.... after a month+ of not playing BlindTest, we somehow meandered to the Great Escape last week and didn't do too badly. There's this red-headed girl that knows too many songs from the first measure of drumbeats... a bit creepy. But in the end, Joe and Sai were invited by Laurant, the french dude/bartender that runs BlindTest, to each prepare a round, but in two weeks due to our trip to Barcelona. The next morning I realized that this is my birthday, so now I'll be spending my birthday at the Great Escape next Monday.... maybe I'll win Sai or Joe's rounds. We'll see!

busy weekend!

Well, fortunately for some I am pictureless for this post about my busy weekend. I spent Friday and Saturday in Bern at the Swiss Society for Neuroscience meeting where I presented a poster on my most recent data concerning damaged brains. I won't bore you with the details, but I did make the short list of 33/~400 posters for the poster prize, but ended up not winning in the end. That truly blows because the prize comes with a hefty check that could be well spent in Barcelona this weekend. After I got back from the conferences Saturday night, Joe, Sai, Adrian, Kristen and I went over to Stephan's for a wine and cheese dinner. I think I consumed around 3000 calories of cheese while playing BOMB, the ever crazy game of movie/actor knowledge. I name a movie, you name a person in the movie, next person names another movie that actor was in, and so on.... until somebody gets stumped and takes a letter. So if you mess up four times you end up spelling the word BOMB. Kristen and Stephan were pathetic novices and were out early and then sat on the computer and played judges for the rest of the game. I had a great game for once, usually I'm the first one out, but I got Sai with Lion King and he couldn't name any of the voices in the movie.... I was very proud of myself. After Joe won, I think, I honestly can't remember who one....we all walked home to burn off some of those cheese calories.
Sunday, Joe and I took a nice hour long walk from EPFL, his school, along Lake Geneva and then back up the hill to our apartment. It was a beautiful day with an amazing view of the snow-capped mountains. Again, camera-less, so you'll just have to use your imagination for the time being until I remember to take some pictures of the mountains.

Happy Birthday Jacqui!

Yesterday was Jacqui's birthday and so we went to the Great Escape to celebrate and eat.
The night started off with a bang when we ordered about 30 beers during Happy half-hour for 8 people and then got crazy when Joe started buying shots for Jacqui- some nice, some completely nasty.
Joe opted not to eat dinner due to his mass consumption of high caloric Guinni (Guinness in plural form?). As he said last night, "Why do I need to eat an extra 1000-calorie burger?" hmmm.... maybe so that you do wake up with a hangover?

Anyway, after we finished eating we headed down to Jacqui and Dan's apartment so that Dan could give Stephan a mohawk. Not usually the best idea to have a clipper-wielding drunk, but who's going to argue with drunken logic on Jacqui's birthday?

The evening did end with a few surprises when Dan took out their guitars. Turns out that Stephan's not too bad and Jacqui's actually a trained classical guitarist. who knew!