7.01.2005
Physics Picnic and Ensuing Madness
Two days ago I went to the annual Jarun Fest that the Institute here has every year. Jarun is a park and beach complex with two large artificial lakes and an incredibly active night life. Every weekend there are military police on the roads to manage the chaos when about 1/4 to a half of the population of Zagreb goes there to party. I had a rather large amount of laughs and general fun playing soccer, badmitton (wow, I actually played that outside of gym class, I never would have guessed!), ping-pong, watching and helping with cooking, and being for some reason unable to eat the fish that they made. I think it was due to the fact that they didn't remove the heads, and my fish still had its eyes when I picked it up from the grill. On some unconscious level I probably got weirded out, and the subsequent mad flight of hunger from my body only confirmed that suspicion.
I did manage to save face by throwing it under the picnic table, causing a distraction (point finger at mechanic in overalls victoriously displaying the remains of his fish (which I took a picture of afterwards)), taking some fish bones from the central trash plate, putting them on my plate, and eating the grilled vegetables. About three minutes later someone noticed that I had finished it and asked me how I did it. "Secret Norwegian fish eating technique," I said, and he actually believed me! Afterwards, I played the above mentioned sports, in addition to singing with a bunch of drunk physicists, which, as I'm sure you can guess, was beyond ridiculously fun. They even mostly sang songs that I knew! Some people were playing chess, too, and they were really into it.
A storm started blowing in, and a bunch of people started leaving, so I decided to head out too. Yeah, it rained really really hard, and my puny umbrella had not derived any apparent courage from surviving the last encounter. This time I put my wallet in my backpack.
On the way back I stopped at a restaurant some of the people from Aikido had recommended to me. It was expensive but worth it. I will now write the blog post I wrote while there waiting for the storm to finish up.
I write this stranded in Lovachkom Rogu, an excellent restaurant I chose to splurge on for a traditional Croatian good meal in Zagreb. As of approximately 10 minutes ago, it began raining lions and antelope, as cats and dogs doesn't begin to describe this downpour. Outside tents are blowing over, a waiter fumbles to take them down. I take another bite of food, and I feel a thunderclap hurtle through the air and scare the bejezees out of me - gulp. Not having finished chewing, I proceed to choke on 90 kuna venison steak. I run outside to said waiter, who starts yelling at this apparently crazed tourist about to attempt to get out of paying for his meal. I do the international chocking sign i.e. grasping my throat in pouring rain, get heimliched by a wet waiter, and run back inside - and do what any rational person would. Take pictures. The stuffed pheasant doesn't look to happy about the weather either. Or maybe it's just dead.
On another note, it seems that my camera has been invaded. I believe it happened when I set it down on top of a sandal in Jarun at the Physics party, when I got invited to play soccer. I actually played pretty well, omg. Both teams were just playing for fun so it was great with lots of good sportsmanship. So now there is this black bug that moves somehow stuck in my lens, as evidenced by the provided pictures. What the hell is it - it is really small to not be obscuring more of the picture. Secondly, this is an issue I've had with this camera since day one - it doesn't protect the lens enough. There's a little slide cover that you pull on and off to also turn on the camera that looks like it stops dust from getting on the surface of the lens - but it doesn't at all since there is no seal. But how a bug got INSIDE the lens, that is just ridiculous. It isn't always there, either. It frickin' goes off to its little lair somewhere. I swear, the pun value is high, now that my camera has a bug and is thus buggy, but seriously folks - what if it was female and with larva. That could be a serious problem.
What if I try to take a picture and they all crawl out of their evil lair and try to nest in my eyeball! Ahhhh!
To the lab - to the microscope.
*Notices liquid nitrogen sitting non-nonchalantly in its corner.*
I did manage to save face by throwing it under the picnic table, causing a distraction (point finger at mechanic in overalls victoriously displaying the remains of his fish (which I took a picture of afterwards)), taking some fish bones from the central trash plate, putting them on my plate, and eating the grilled vegetables. About three minutes later someone noticed that I had finished it and asked me how I did it. "Secret Norwegian fish eating technique," I said, and he actually believed me! Afterwards, I played the above mentioned sports, in addition to singing with a bunch of drunk physicists, which, as I'm sure you can guess, was beyond ridiculously fun. They even mostly sang songs that I knew! Some people were playing chess, too, and they were really into it.
A storm started blowing in, and a bunch of people started leaving, so I decided to head out too. Yeah, it rained really really hard, and my puny umbrella had not derived any apparent courage from surviving the last encounter. This time I put my wallet in my backpack.
On the way back I stopped at a restaurant some of the people from Aikido had recommended to me. It was expensive but worth it. I will now write the blog post I wrote while there waiting for the storm to finish up.
I write this stranded in Lovachkom Rogu, an excellent restaurant I chose to splurge on for a traditional Croatian good meal in Zagreb. As of approximately 10 minutes ago, it began raining lions and antelope, as cats and dogs doesn't begin to describe this downpour. Outside tents are blowing over, a waiter fumbles to take them down. I take another bite of food, and I feel a thunderclap hurtle through the air and scare the bejezees out of me - gulp. Not having finished chewing, I proceed to choke on 90 kuna venison steak. I run outside to said waiter, who starts yelling at this apparently crazed tourist about to attempt to get out of paying for his meal. I do the international chocking sign i.e. grasping my throat in pouring rain, get heimliched by a wet waiter, and run back inside - and do what any rational person would. Take pictures. The stuffed pheasant doesn't look to happy about the weather either. Or maybe it's just dead.
On another note, it seems that my camera has been invaded. I believe it happened when I set it down on top of a sandal in Jarun at the Physics party, when I got invited to play soccer. I actually played pretty well, omg. Both teams were just playing for fun so it was great with lots of good sportsmanship. So now there is this black bug that moves somehow stuck in my lens, as evidenced by the provided pictures. What the hell is it - it is really small to not be obscuring more of the picture. Secondly, this is an issue I've had with this camera since day one - it doesn't protect the lens enough. There's a little slide cover that you pull on and off to also turn on the camera that looks like it stops dust from getting on the surface of the lens - but it doesn't at all since there is no seal. But how a bug got INSIDE the lens, that is just ridiculous. It isn't always there, either. It frickin' goes off to its little lair somewhere. I swear, the pun value is high, now that my camera has a bug and is thus buggy, but seriously folks - what if it was female and with larva. That could be a serious problem.
What if I try to take a picture and they all crawl out of their evil lair and try to nest in my eyeball! Ahhhh!
To the lab - to the microscope.
*Notices liquid nitrogen sitting non-nonchalantly in its corner.*
# posted by Greg @ 10:51 AM 
