playing with dry ice...

I had some spare dry ice today, so we decided to have some fun and put some water in it, to make it look like
in the devil's kitchen ;o)

chinese tales

…after a long period of planning we finally managed to go for authentic dim sum with Mike (K's lab-mate). It turned out that on an ordinary Sunday it can be difficult to find a place where you can enjoy your dim sum without standing in a queue for hours just to get a table. In the fourth restaurant we finally got a table pretty quickly and Mike didn't hesitate a second to order, in unpronounceable words (maybe because it was Cantonese), a variety of extremely delicious foods. 

Actually I don't know everything by name that was served to our table, but I'll give a brief excerpt: some chinese pork in puff pastry, mashed broiled shrimp on vegetables, fried squid, shrimp dumplings and most mentionable - chicken feet! 

Mike told us that you only eat the skin, actually there's not much more than the skin itself =)…so, I guess the chicken feet are being cooked in the brown sauce, because the skin was sort of wobbly...I'm not sure why it's a specialty, must be some kind of peer pressure ;o). However, I'm glad we tried it!

Thanks again for inviting us Mike!

And here some pikschas!

that's us eating chicken feet!

wine, cheese, meatballs and wii

yesterday we were invited over to d.'s place for a small home party. (thanks to g. for picking us up, like every time). it was a small group of about 10 people who preferably gathered together in the kitchen, where all the food was....mmmhh...pita bread and dips, baguette and bruschetta spread, selected cheeses, mum-made meatballs (delicious! we really want the recipe d.!), various sweets including jini's home-made "nobby apple cake" - yumyumyum; she was standing in the kitchen in the afternoon while I was taking a short nap ;o)

hey, I really needed it...otherwise I couldn't have stayed up until 2 am in the morning.

of course we had some wine too, we also brought along a bottle - speaking frankly, it wasn't the best one (abr da schleachtaschte wars oh ned)

we really enjoyed the evening, it was such a comfy atmosphere (you're great hosts D&G *hehe*)...

there were two furry guys too, the dogs Jack and Oscar - two quite vivid companions :o).

so we spent the evening chatting and playing wii (for the first time in our lives!), the concept of the game is really good. you have to move your butt in order to be a good gamer, not like with playstation or xbox who rely on the decade-old I-have-a-gamepad-and-won't-move-my-butt-from-the-couch concept...

it was a lot of fun! (giving tribute to the g., the master of the wii ;o)

and not to forget the act of friendship of r., giving us a ride back home!

30ROCKS

....we were introduced to this TV show by a good friend of ours, and I have to admit I really love it. It's about a TV show producer/writer, personified by Tina Fey, and her everyday life experiences with her boss and the whole bunch of the nerdy stars participating in the show. So altogether I think she's just playing herself and probably gives away some of her own real-life experiences. Her character earns a lot of sympathy points and as I just read an article on "theglobeandmail" she seems to be quite nice in the real material world too.

So, what I actually wanted to tell you was: go and rent 30ROCKS at the video store of your choice, if you already can get it in Europe!

Otherwise you'll have to wait until we're back to Austria.... ;o)

To give you a taste...

brief message

...today Yvonne, the PhD student from the neighbouring lab, did her presentation on her ongoing studies and as the tradition demands the PIs (principal investigator; plural) have to pay for the drinks of the student giving the talk and also (lucky us!) the accompanying pack.

I actually can't imagine going out for drinks with my professors in Austria, but definitely here you can...

...they people here are really nice and straightforward, a characteristic I really appreciate.

wunderbar!

I really think I have to go there some time!!

They even have STIEGL, and it's not really that much more expensive than the local beers...

impressions from the 6th of april

that's part of the place we're working at...the university of alberta hospital...

this picture was taken in the area where all (2 major ones and some smaller coffee booths and other shops) the cafeterias are, looking up giving an impression of the architecture there...

...a snowed up new beetle...actually there are pretty many german cars driving around here...vw, mercedes, bmw and even smart fortwo, although this car really looks ridiculous next to the big trucks that are more common here...

...some kind of mini-trailer-submarine hybrid! I doubt that two persons would fit in there, but nonetheless it's a very creative decoration for your front lawn! =)

...

...some street art!

...

...I'm sure some of you (3 guys reading this blog) know this buddy! No doubt the best character of the A-team...

@ Julio's Barrio

...another event we missed to report until now!

on april 4th we were at this nice mexican bar/restaurant with nicole. she was in high school together with jini too. so this one day we decided spontaneously to go for dinner and nicole proposed julio's barrio which is located directly on whyte ave. there were quite some people waiting for their tables which led us to believe that they do must have good food, and indeed they have!

chatting was a bit difficult because of the rather loud music, but besides that it was a very nice place to hang out and we enjoyed nicole's company.

For Your Information

Edmonton...

windy, nice and cozy...

old strathcona farmer's market

compared to this weekend last weekend was more like real winter, a lot of snow (according to my boss one third of all the winter's precipitation came down on edmonton earth last saturday...and it was really quite a lot!), temperatures around zero (which is actually pretty warm for most edmontonians and also more and more for us) and fewer cars on the streets, therefore very peaceful...

so we decided to have a look at the often recommended saturday market - the old strathcona farmer's market. it is actually only about 15 walking minutes from our apartment, even if you have to step through one-foot-high freshly fallen snow. it turned out that we were really lucky to choose this day to go there, because it seemed that many people were afraid of the "masses of snow" (they should be used to it...just my humble opinion).

so, instead of a lot of edmontonians, we met - guess whom, you wouldn't believe it - the austrian public tv station "ORF" !!!

they were doing interviews with different people for a documentary on the first north american city supporting human rights, well, yes...edmonton. we just talked a bit to them until it turned out that the "director" had the behavioral characteristics of a typical man in show business who thinks he is better than the rest...so we moved on =)

...and enjoyed the big variety of products the market had to offer.

this was the view from our balcony before we headed towards the market...

whyte ave as quiet as we'll probably will never see it again...

the building housing the old strathcona farmers' market formerly was a fire department...

here's the proof! the austrian guys making their documentary....

they told us that the documentary would be on tv on the 5th of december (on 3sat) and sometime in november on ORF...maybe you can hear me saying something like "geh heast djaniiin, do is da OAEFF!"

...and inside there's a big hall stuffed with loads of different stands of various vendors, selling either homemade food, fresh produce, crafts and arty things...

...they're raising bison here! we'll soon try it!

mmmhh...imagine: bison burger!

...and elk!... 

when i told the guy behind the counter that we don't have elk in austria, he was really eager to show me a picture of an elk...i was kind enough not to tell him that i do know what an elk looks like, but that we just don't have this animal in our country...

...it doesn't only taste the same...

...a picture for antonio;

title: "gemma, gemma!"

happy holi to everybody!

so now we're getting multicultural!  

fortunately we got to join the holi (the festival of spring and harvest) activities of celia's hindi school. imagine this: about 300-400 indian people, and among them only about 4 caucasian people: jini, kevin, cel, and one of the waiters. only about 5 sentences were said in pidgin english, the rest was... right: hindi! but it was great fun! the food was amazing, then came the somewhat interesting cultural part (including plays, dances and bollywood music singing), and after dinner the funky bolly-disco!!! (they even played punjabi mc!)

words can't explain this experience we made that evening, to give you a slight impression of what it was like, here are some pictures and even video(s)...

"the crowd"

...the three of us...(oh yes, I was tired like hell...look at those eyebags! geee!)

*yummy*...butter chicken, goat curry, fried vegetables, chick pea curry, na'an and more!

three ladies of our company, really very nice people...

dessert! some doughy thingy with a spicy-sweet-milky-yoghurt sauce and the orange stuff was unbelievably sweet!

during the cultural part, as we mentioned before, there were some plays with interluding music to which the children were dancing...

hanging out with friends

...yeah, yeah...we know we are somewhat behind with updating our blog. so we're trying to catch up a bit over the coming weekend. 

starting with our visit jeannine's friend's house...

we were invited for dinner at hanna's and crystal's place around the 21st of march. the food was of course great and we spent our evening eating, chatting, petting their two most adorable cats - snowball and porcelaine, their bunny bijoux and looking at pictures from their europe trip last year and watching some videos of the girls' activities.

I, kevin, had a very inspiring conversation with their dad in the meantime...

no question, we took some pictures ourselves and here they are...

oh, yes, we almost forgot to mention that we were taken out for a little tour to the edmonton legislature building first...

that's the four crazy girls (from L2R): jini (hrhr), janice, crystal and hanna

the legislature bldg. at the obviously most beautiful time of the year...

way more interesting: the lego model of the legislature building, and you can almost see...

...the funniest part about it (tuning in the darth vader entering theme...*dadaadadaadadaaadaaadadaadaaa*)

a "must-have" for real patriots!

"the trick"

starring: hanna n. & porcelaine

...he loves to sit on her back, he even kept purring all the time...

the two miniature tigers waiting for their release

...we really enjoyed that evening a lot. thanx again to you, hanna & crystal, if you read this!

to all of my (kevin) friends I, unfortunately, didn't manage to reply to, I wanna apologize this way, and I hope that I'll soon be able to write a couple of sentences!

so long! 

babaaaatschi! ;)