Punting and final presentation

Aaah, only two more days! And yes, I cheated by asking Friday off. Although I can't really complain, because the last few days have been quite mellow. Sunday I went punting with some girls of my lab, and we had an absolute blast! It's a lot harder than it looks, and my (arm) muscles are still sore today from lifting the pole in and out of the water. Ironically, the Singaporean girl with her 1,50 meters was better than all of us combined! She had to steer us out whenever we got stuck in a tree/bush or sandbank. After punting on the river for a few miles (or meters? it took forever!) we stopped for lunch with sandwiches, Doritos and Capri-Sun. Pure nostalgia! Oh, and we already ate half the food in the boat even before we got there...

Today I had my final presentation, basically presenting the results from my experiments for the last 6 months. And you guessed: most of it doesn't make any sense. Don't you just love science? Anyway, I was a bit nervous at first, but I think it turned out quite alright. My supervisor has this annoying habit of interrupting you during your talk, which always makes me really nervous and doubtful about my story. However, at the end she said she was pleased with what I'd done, so I guess it was fine. And now that that bit is done it really takes the pressure off! I don't have any experiments left to do, so I'm helping out other people in the lab with little jobs the need to get done. And leave early of course ;)

With love,

Willemijn

Portobello and the Phantom

It's early in the morning (or at least for me), but I just have to write about yesterday. Because it was absolutely amazing! The best day ever in all the six moths I've been in Oxford. We left yesterday around noon to pick up a parcel of mine from the post office (another ebay find: Next yellow jacket) and drove to London. With little delay we arrived at Westfield shopping center to park the car and went to the tube station. We got out on Notting Hill Gate Station, got a little lost, but when we started following the crowd we found it in no time: Portobello Market. Heaven! Back home I would visit antique and flea markets regularly, but this is nothing like home! There are goodies everywhere! And we were so lucky with the weather too, just blue skies and hot sunshine.

Instead of lunch we had a huge crepe with Nutella, which was absolutely delicious. Perfect! Needles to say I went a little crazy with the shopping and bought a hat, converse shoes, a bag and a lace cardigan. After Portobello we realized it was getting quite late and we still had to catch dinner before going to the theatre. So we traveled to Haymarket street to get some dinner at the Italian restaurant Spaghetti House. The food was perfect, as the location, since it was only a few meters from the main attraction of the day: The Phantom of the Opera at Her Majesty's Theatre! 

I've never been to the theathre in London, so for me this was an a-ma-zing experience! The inside is so beautifully decorated. We had seats on the second balcony, which gave as a good few of the stage and everything going on the in air (because there's quite a lot going on off stage as well!).

Here are some pictures of the performance (thanks to Google, because they were very strict on not taking photo's).

I loved it! The performance was brilliant, the music dramatic and the constantly moving stage and decor amazing! If you have the chance you have to go and see it! It's an experience of a life time. Want to learn more about the show? Go here!

Picnic

As I will be leaving the lab in less than two weeks, my lab organised a picnic as a sort of farewell-lab-day-out. So yesterday we packed up some food and went for a picnic in the English country side (a midst the sheep shit might I add). A journey I will never forget: we started by driving to a desolate rural area, parked the car and walked through the woods for a short 20 minutes. We arrived at a sloping open field, covered with sheep shit. We were able to find a not so brown covered spot where we lay down our white (baby?!) blanket. The food was actually really good, a variety of French cheeses (since our lab technician is French), baguettes, salad and fruits. We sat there for over an hour enjoying the sun and local wild life. But then my supervisor had the brilliant idea to go for "a walk". I walk from hell. Did I mention the area was hilly? And that we were all carrying backpacks? Seriously, the sweat was pouring down my back. To make matters worse, the British girl in my lab was dying from hay fever (made worse by the physical exercise in a knee-high grass field) and the German girl got stung by a horse fly. After what felt like an eternity we made it back to the car, and drove back home to Oxford (with the top down in the Mini Cooper, which was nice). Only downside was that when we got back to the lab was that we were expected to go back to work again... So all in all a great start, but not so nice ending to the day. But! Exciting news! This weekend the girls planned some nice events as a this is my last weekend in Oxford. So on Saturday we're going to see The Phantom of the Opera in London and on Sunday we're going punting in Oxford! Looking forward to the weekend! :)

2 weeks left!

Oh my god, can you believe it? Only two more weeks and then my internship in Oxford will be over! I never thought I would say this, but I think I'm going to miss some of the girls. Over the past weeks I've been hanging out a lot with a girl from Spain and a girl from Singapore, and I dare say we've become quite good friends. We've gone to the movies a lot, watching The Monuments Men, X-men Days of Future Past, Wolf of Wall Street, the Amazing Spider-man 2 and Maleficent. Which usually included dinner and a lot of bitching about the lab. As it turns out, they're very unhappy with the current situation as well. Not only do they have to work very long hours, but recently it has also become clear that my supervisor has some very peculiar ideas about the publications order of contributing parties (either alphabetical order or "flip a coin"). As you can imagine this set some bad blood. And as science has proven: bitching together about your boss creates close friendships! So yesterday we went to see Maleficent and went to Aziz for Indian food on Cowley road. The Singaporean girl likes spicy food, so she ordered the hottest dish on the menu. She let me taste a bit (a drop on the tip of my fork) and my god my tongue was burning! She confessed that if it was really hot she was likely to "visit Japan". As it turns out, this is a toiletry reference to the flag of Japan with its white background and red dot in the middle (*hint hint* get it?). So this morning when she came in the girl from Spain asked if she had "visited Japan" last night, and the Singaporean girl replied "twice!". As you can imagine we were rolling on the floor with laughter. You see why I like these girls?!

With love, Willemijn

p.s. Did I mention my room mate went to London and left me with another stranger from a website?! Thank god she seems like a normal, if not French person...

Girl friends time!

My girl friends from Holland came over this weekend! Sadly, I just dropped them off at the bus station, and they're probably back home by now, but we had the most wonderful time together! I've known them since high school and we've been through so much stuff together... It really felt good to have them over, even for such a short period of time. And we were so lucky with the weather, it was sunny and hot all weekend! Perfect weather for some serious shopping and food indulgence. We were so lazy that we went to the Mitre for lunch, tea and dinner, twice! God, I miss them so much already. But now its only three more weeks left, I'm almost there!

I hope you enjoyed the weekend as much as I have ;)

p.s. And not a single ant was spotted in the past days since my room mate left!