Seagull

There's no better place to be creative than Paris. So after almost a bottle of Beaujolais:The process of creation resulted in this:



(Idea borrowed from Wayne Pate)

Bexley - quality shoes shop for men

I don't think I have ever seen such an elegant shop with shoes for men. It's on my way to the lab and I stop and stare each time I pass it, even though leather men shoes are not very much of my interest... A big 'like it' for Bexley shoes.

Special thanks

Forgot to mention: you can watch all the photos from Roscoff thanks to this young man, who lent me his camera. Dzięki Beju! :D

Journées d'intégration - Roscoff 3-4-5 novembre

Last 2 days I have spent in Roscoff, a little town (less than 4000 citizens) in Bretagne, north-west part of France. L'ecole doctorale invited all UPMC 1st year PhD students that are starting their thesis in biology, biotechnolgy, medicine, veterinary, etc. for a semi-formal congress, where in between of seminars given by a bunch of UPMC professors, each student was supposed to present a poster with his doctoral project and discuss it with others. The discussions were long and intense and we ended up getting to interesting conclusions after a couple of bottles of cold cider on the seashore watching the ebb tide around 2am :)
This is where Bretagne is localised, around 4,5h by train from Paris:
Train goes straight to Brest and we got off in Morlaix, where we took a bus to Roscoff
Station Biologique Roscoff (a photo from internet, the author must have played a bit with photoshop, actually.. put it all in greyish colours and you'll get it right)My lovely room with a tv (first time from coming to France! turns out I start catching the plot of cartoons for 3-yers old in french!)

We were really lucky with the wheather, as Bretagne is famous for it's grey sky and horizontal rain from the see. Morining during the low tide.

The port
Boat trip to a charming island nearby Ile de Batz
The future of french life scinces (still sober)
some lovely spots on the island


Sarah, doing her research in reverse genetics system for rotavirus (grrr...)
François-Xavier, who prefers to be called FX (sounds a bit like a model of a robot to me, don't you think? XF-2001, R2D2,...). Investigates a role of Quaking, a mRNA binding protein, in the early muscle development of zebrafish. He actually stayed on the island for 2 more days to do some nature contemplation :)


Pomponik?

not quite a tropical island...



Back in the land we stopped by one patisserie to try some Kouign-Amann, a tipical cake from Bretagne, basically just butter and sugar and more butter..
I looked almost serious in front of my shiny poster, wish I had realised before that I had a giant banana on my tshirt.. (put on a sweater after the discussion with professors..)
Going back home, 7am, eyes half-open after the long cider-brainstorm by the sea
And finally: TGV est rapide e comfortable :D

Happy Halloween!

What are you guys doing for halloween this year?

poster for Bretagne

There you go: a user-friendly approach to what is gonna be my main struggle for next three years. Rather for biologists only, I'm afraid.
Still - mum, dad - I think you should have a look and at least try to read it until the end, so that by the end of the year when I come for Christmas you will be able to ask at least one relevant question on my progress ;)

Can't find my phone

A great thing I just found in web, if you can't find your phone and there's nobody around who could give you a ring, this website will actually call your mobile! Please! Give me more of such ideas! An ideal solution though, would be 'burn the dishonest finder's hand and bring it back to me' botton...

I run to the Nikon France Espace Formation to check if there's anything I can do about my broken camera. Fingers crossed.