Of liquid walls

I have no excuse! I am not outrageously busy lately or travelling all over Europe… it's just the GOOD WEATHER! (And I think I might be going crazy and calling it good weather because I don't know any better anymore, but I feel like London is such a warm place all of a sudden). There is sun and happiness and British people getting way to excited about 18 degrees Celcius, wearing clothes that barely cover their underwear and flip flops while getting sunburnt. Ahh.. who wants to stay inside and write a blog! I am only human!

Moving on, I was going out for dinner with my friends the other night (and what a warm summer night it was, let me tell you. I only wore a thin sweater and my summer jacket), when I walked into this building:



This gif above shows the worst quality footage of the building that has ever been recorded, but considering the light conditions and the fact that it was my phone I hope you will give me some slack. Be as it may the building was covered in tiny flaps that would move every time the wind blew. Which means that some parts of the building were still and some were moving if there was air moving.

This is what the building looked like, to give you a slightly better impression. It might be hard to tell but this sight in the middle of the night was really impressive! It felt like the walls were made out of water (as you might be able to infer from the gif) and it was really hypnotising! 

I'll try to blog more regularly. For now I will go back to my sunbathing Brits in Holland park.

Psssshhhh

Last week the science museum hosted one of its monthly late nights and as a good scientist I went there with my friends (to be honest, the main reason was that it was my friend's birthday and that the museum's building is physically touching Imperial College grounds…)

Be as it may they had a ton of interesting items and shows and everything that a scientists heart can wish for. We saw exactly NOTHING of all of this though, because we were too busy being cool at the disco in the middle of the big hall. You might wonder how they could set up an annoyingly loud disco in the middle of one of the main halls and you will be relieved to hear that they did not as this was a completely silent disco (yeah, just when you thought I had joined the cool kids club).

I can see why the two concepts of disco and silent might not be the easiest to combine but apparently it's not that unusual. When you enter the restricted disco area (we don't want to have too much fun) you get a pair of headphones that have to channels with different music (unfortunately one of them turned out to be a hardcore drum and base and house channel so that was usually not the best option). All jokes about that being the nerdiest spare time ever aside it was actually quite interesting ( I'm feeling that this was not the best choice of an adjective). We tried to guess what song was playing just from the dance moves of the other people but it is actually harder than you would think, as, without the musical context. most people just looked confused and jiggly.

Not us though!

Flower Power

Today was the most grey and miserable day in the history of London (and this is an achievement, everyone!) and it is late and I am beyond tired so this post is basically going to be about flowers, sunshine and happiness. I give you:

My Ode To The Lost Spring (there's a metal band name, right there)

These are all from different days, my loyal fans should of course be able to attribute them to the different original posts by the lighting and general atmosphere.

Some of these pictures were actually taken by my sister, of whom I am not sure that she is aware of this blog...

Thanks, Pupskind! (it IS a turning point in every photographer's life to be accepted into this renowned blog, after all).

If only the sky looked like that every day.

More flowers and less witty comments to go with them.

I want to try one last thing, in this post. I noticed that some of my posts have hashtags all of a sudden and after some detective work I am attributing these to some automatic tagging system by Google (I have given up my hopes of ever becoming a cool kid in y life and I am therefore banned from ever using hashtags (#maybeForTheBetter?)). I want test my hypothesis, so please don't think I am crazy when I type: raspberries, cupcake factory, Iker Casillas, very happy baby elephants, poetry enthusiasts. 

Good night!

compuational neuroscience, matlab, brain, behaviour, cognitive, computer, program, matlab, decision, memory, simulation, probability 

Being the tube

In the London underground you are constantly told to mind the gap. Let's not mind it for a minute and visit the underground worlds of:

The Thames Tunnel is the first tunnel in the world to be build under water. That's right, with it's 400m length it crosses the Thames from Rotherhithe to Wapping (Jesus Christ, where do British people come up with their Names?!). 

As you see I am not making this up. 

The tunnel is used buy the overground today so it is mainly a tunnel with railways but on special occasions they open this to the public and show it. Why is this so interesting?

Not only because it looks like in the picture above (that could be a scene from some kind of post-apocalyptic movie, btw) but also because, being the first around this tunnel has quite a bit of history. Apparently it was the invention of the tunnelling shield (a protective structure that prevents all the soggy sub-thamesian (?) soil from falling on your head while you are digging) that enabled the previously failed attempts at tunnelling under water.

As you can imagine this was a rather expensive endeavour (of course it flooded sometime and the working conditions were beyond terrible) so in the end there was no money to do an entrance for vehicles and they had to leave it as a pedestrian entrance. Every human being that thinks about this for about 20 seconds will realise that this rendered the whole idea rather useless as you can imagine that there was not much use for a creepy equivalent of an ordinary bridge.

Apparently they tried everything: they opened a market (which after a year of success turned into some sort of creepy illegal underground meeting place (What??! Who would have seen that one coming?! Really??! Nooo!!)), they even relaunched it as a fair with circus people and artists after relocating the previous clientele to prison but still the income was sparse. The owners were therefore probably relieved when the british railway bought it off to build the railways through it, although it remained quite a monetary loss.

Be as it may, the trip was quite interesting and it was nice to see what the tunnel looked like. As you can tell from the last picture it was not like the regular ugly underground tunnels due to it's historic past (it was really unbelievable to imagine people walking along that same path but doing shopping or to think of the decorated walls with the dancers (there is actually a sketch in wikipedia that looks nice, I think: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/62/Thamestunnel.jpg). What a difference!

Cold memories

So after my last summery post I think it is about time that I tell you about my holiday this year, when I went to France with my flatmates. Those of you who know me might be wondering what I am doing in France, after making fun of those poor people day and night, but there was more to this visit than just cheese and absurd pronunciations. I went skiing for the first time in my life!

The place was amazing. We were in this tiny village in between the mountains for a couple of days in a hut that we rented with some friends. It was actually surprising how cheap it is to get such a huge hut for a couple of people. And it was a really cozy one:

We were incredibly lucky with the weather, too!

It was a lot of fun and I learned a lot of skiing in only a couple of days. It's a real pity that the UK is as flat as a pancake.

Here is one las creepy picture to round it all up:

Summerloving happens so fast!

I am hereby officially jinxing it, but: Summertime is here!!

It is really amazing how we went from having pretty cold weather (I am a bad reference, but everyone on the streets was wearing a coat) to t-shirt weather in a day! This week end was a feast of sun and happiness, which is why we went to enjoy this exceptional occasion down to the river at Hammersmith:

All of a sudden London looks more like Sicily during the august holidays than anything else!

I went crazy and even got an ice cream from the van. These soft ice cones are very typical for the UK especially with the little chocolate flake (like a rectangular stick that they stab into the ice cream) which is possibly the most overcharged object in Europe (they are probably produced by the Queen herself with chocolate that she grows in her gardens).

It was such a nice atmosphere! And it was great while it lasted (exactly until tomorrow). 

Sun, don't leave me!

Sur les Pointes

I love going to fancy theatres (almost regardless of the show) because of the stunning architecture and the amazing interior decorations (the dressed up people are also very entertaining to watch!). Yesterday I went to the Royal Opera House to see a mixed program of ballet shows and it was great!

I was not allowed to take pictures of the show itself but I will try to give you the a good idea of what the opera house looked like. Here we go.

This is the glass wall of the bar at the Royal Opera House it is so beautiful! And the weather was amazing too!

This is the very plain interior, nothing out of the ordinary, as you can see. In case you were wondering what the ceiling looks like:

Not too bad. Remember the bar? This is what the other side looks like:

They also have a terrace from which you can look down on Covent Garden Market:

Honestly, this place is so incredibly beautiful! I really, really liked it and can't wait to go again (there are very cheap standing tickets for most of the shows, which is a great chance to be part of this even it you are not the richest).