Obligatory sunrises

As November 2008 rolls back into history, a cold spell suddenly hit France, not sparing even the warmest and coziest parts of the Mediterranean coast. For the first time since we arrived here, people are wearing scarves not purely as a fashion statement. I gave in and bought one, too - a black and white thing that keeps you surprisingly warm and immediately adds fifteen European-ness points to whatever else you wear with it. Speaking of buying, however, after having just taken out the money that I'll need to pay as rent for the rest of my time in the apartment, I will need to be as frugal as I can if I'm to stay in the green. There's an incredible supermarket called Carrefour (Crossroads) that's a little far from our house but so cheap that it's still worth going. Just as an example, you can buy a 2L coke bottle for 29 eurocents... A dozen of eggs for one euro... Et cetera.

For my birthday last weekend, there were actually three separate parties. On Friday, we went out with the French girl Chloé, whose birthday was a day ahead of mine, and a whole bunch of (mostly French) friends. On Saturday, some more French people came over to the apartment and brought an Irish movie to watch. Even though the actors all spoke in English, their accents were so bad that after ten minutes or so I suddenly realized that it was much easier to just read the French subtitles than to try and understand what they were saying. That was a little ironic. And then on Sunday we held a low-key Pink Floyd soirée with Brad and Dora, quite a remarkable finish for the already amazing weekend.

All throughout last month, we went to lots of nearby towns and villages, but as these experiences were mostly visual, just look at the freshly uploaded pictures!

Another piece of good news is that the abstract that I submitted to the Biophysical Society was finally accepted, and I was given a time a place to present a poster at the 53rd Annual Meeting in Boston in the beginning of March. Which of course means that now I have to make the poster, but you know, that'll probably get finished the day before, as usual...

Now that it's colder outside, I'm spending a lot more time with the guitar, and some inspiration actually began coming in. I have a nearly finished song, I just have to figure out what it will be about and write the lyrics. All the instrumentals are pretty much down, though, and although the demo recording sounds unbelievably awful with my webcam microphone, I can hear it in my head and I think/hope that it has potential.

I just realized I still haven't written anything about our weekend in Marseille! We spent most of the time walking about the beautiful city (once again, look at the pictures, they're all in a separate album titled Marseille), but by far the most exciting part of the trip was the visit to the castle of If. If the name doesn't ring a bell, you must not have read the 'Count of Monte-Cristo'... Anyways, the castle stands on a small island in the harbor and was originally built to protect the city from a maritime invasion. Or so the king claimed, because the liberty-loving citizens of Marseille were sure that the main purpose of the castle was to keep an eye on them and not let the city get out control. It is rumored that during the more volatile times the cannons of the fortress would every once in a while get rolled over to the other side and faced the harbor rather than the sea - just in case...
The castle is, however, more renowned for its role as a state prison second only to the Bastille. It was not built with this function in mind, but after several military strategists proved to the king that its design was flawed and completely inadequate for warfare, the king decided that the castle would be more useful to the state as a high-security detention facility. It's ironic that the place's most famous prisoner (by far), the Count of Monte-Cristo, is a completely fictitious character. However, Dumas visited the castle prior to writing the novel and described it in such a detailed way that the Count's cell could be easily identified and labeled as such.
As a final note from Marseille, I learned where the word 'quarantine' came from. It originates from the French word for the number forty, and refers to the forty days that all people and goods from incoming ships had to stay in a specific place and were not permitted to enter the city, out of fear that they might be carrying some unkown disease. It was a great idea, but one beautiful day a ship coming in from the East arrived late and was allowed by city authorities to bypass the quarantine, as it was carrying goods that were, at the time, in very high demand. In full accordance with Murphy's law, it so happened that aboard this exact ship lurked several rats carrying fleas infected with the Bubonic Plague, and within a few years nearly 15,000 of Marseille's then-25,000 population had succumbed to the disease.

And, finally, coming back to the blog's title. I watch the sun rise over the Mediterranean every Tuesday morning thanks to my 8am class. I'm still not a fan of waking up that early, but seriously, out of all the possible 8am class experiences, this is definitely not the worst =) One of these Tuesdays I will remember to take my camera with me - of course, it won't look the same on the picture, but you'd at least get a sense of the kind of beauty I see every week...

That's it for now... Leave comments! =)