Phew… a free Sunday afternoon. I Just made French toast and fresh pesto. It’s a full house now here at 4 Harriet Street. I live there with three guys at the moment and its busy but a lot of fun! Micheal is back from his travels with his girl Verena and he will be staying with us for another month =]. Got my big brother back! Mikey, Fabian and me keep traditions high and have Monday cooking night every week. It is always an inspiration for my cookingblog; therecipebylindagomes.blogspot.com I have a lot of catching up to do. Starting with last Christmas….
Christmas was a bit of a lonely time for me. No family. None of my old friends and everyone here was busy with family of went on a holiday. But around Christmas itself it was a bit of a party seoson for me. Drinks and dinners everywhere! With a group of friends we went out for dinner at an amazing Vietnamese place and did secret santa! Which basically is “lootjes trekken” like dutch sinterklaas. The present I got was the best of the whole evening. I got a dark blue hoodie with “AUSTRALIA” on it in huge white letters and a beer stubbie with naked Australian men on it. The only problem for me waqs that because of all the parties I had previous to that night I had lost my voice totally. No conversation for me. I tried to soothe my throat with two bottles of red wine.
The planning was to go to Stradbroke Island with Michael, Fabian, Thibaut and a few others. Unfortunately the partying bit me in the ass and I had caught such a bad cold I stayed home for a week!! It was quite bad… And the guys had such a good time there. I was so disappointed. But the good thing is that I got back on my feet again to celebrate new years in Sydney with a few friends. We flew down for four days of Sydney madness. We stayed at Sam’s and Rosie’s in the cutest little house there with a tine garden that just looks like a rain forest. It was fun! We arrived early in the morning, had breakfast and started the touristic tour through the botanical gardens towards the opera house and darling harbor. We drank champagne at the opera bar at the waterside. It was lovely, so decadent :P. We walked on to a part of the city called the Rocks and had a beer here and a beer there and another beer here.. It was starting to kick in… then we walked back to kings cross ( that’s where we were staying in the neighborhood of) and ate wonderful Asian food. To be honest I don’t remember from which country it was. But it was delicious. Went to have another drink, did a little boogie and went back home for another drink in the garden. I forgot to tell you that the weather was phenomenal! Sun, sun and more sun, which was quite funny because it had been raining for two weeks straight before we arrived! 
The da afetr that we went out to see the famous Bondi beach! It was super crowded but beautiful. We had a very chique dinner in the ehm, I tink it was the swim/surf club. Beautiful we spend half the afternoon there. Walked around a bit layed in the sun. It was not as warm as I was used to though. Sydney is a tad cooler then Brisbane. The next day was new years eve, we had English breakfast in the city did some shopping for a Mexican party. Margaritas, Chilli and quesedillas! The house was full with people, at least 30! At eleven we started walking to a spot where we could see the bridge and the opera house for the fireworks and it was truly spectacular! Fifteen minutes of a sky full of sparkles. After that we went back to the house and the party lasted way past sunrise. The next day was not much of a day, we went terrace hopping in the afternoon had amazing Japanese and went out around kings cross and met up with Fabian and Thibaut, they came down to Sydney for new years too! The next morning we woke up early, it was the day we went back to Brisbane again. Most of the people stayed in bed but Nick and I woke up to go for breakfast and to the markets. The markets were a bit different than expected. It was a secondhand clothes market that was way overpriced!! It was fun and posh and pretty, but not really for me.. I’m a cheap ass m*** some people just call it broke… :P
In between this I did some diving at tweed heads, one dive in the river and one dive in the ocean at Cook Island (which is just a litlle rock) It was beautiful, both the river and the ocean dive but the ocean dive was quite special for me because I got to see a lot of beautiful things. A huge leopard shark! Its so funny because you can tickle him and he becomes totally relaxed but we also swam to a turtle cleaning station where 6 turtles were sitting on the rocks to be cleaned by little fishes. They were actually observing us. Its so awesome to have a experience like that... I plan to do a whole lot more dives on my trip up to Cairns when I'm meeting Sophie, a friend from brisbane, there for a weekend trip =]. Back in Brizzie I was on a mission. The internship I was doing at the centre for marine studies turned out to be not for me. I really misjudged it and was not happy and at my place there. So I decided that I needed to change to keep myself happy. I was really sorry that I had to do that because the research I was doing is an interesting and a good one! I just wasn’t good at it and that frustrate me a lot. So in preparation I sent out a few emails to other research departments to find another intership. One of them was to Bostjan Kobe of the department of structural biology with the question if I could visit and if he could tell me more about the research they are doing at his department. I was invited to come by at the 5th of January. I read a few articles his group published to be a bit prepared. I met him in the morning and had a really nice talk. I told him that I was looking for an internship and the story why I left my other internship. He was so friendly and showed me around to meet al the postdocs of his group and asked if any of them wanted a student. Eugene Valkov wanted me to help him with his crystallography research. So I got an internship the same day!! My research is to create a 3D image of a interleukin, a protein that has a role in the human immune system! Very interesting background but even more interesting is the way I am trying to create that image! It’s a but theoretical and difficult so I won’t explain right now but what I try to reach is to produce a lot of my protein and crystallize it. The crystals are being scanned with x-ray beams and the diffracting pattern it produces (is a sort of shadow and reflections the x-rays create) will be calculated and turned into a 3D image by a computer. Awesome isn’t it?!?! Hahaha, probably not for most of you but I truly love it! The labwork is fun and the people are fun!
What else do I need! A few days later I was well into my internship and I completely forgot it was my birthday until I got textmessages and facebook messages from so many people! Thanks guys.. =] I loved it! Two of my girlfriends were determined to throw me a little birthday party and bake me a cake. When I came home, my roommates Clive and Nick both invited so many people over for drinks that suddenly I had a huge party on the back deck! I made dinner for all of them and after that we went out to the regatta… It was Wednesday night and that is student night at the regatta! So we had a little boogie and a few drinks. It was a great night I was really the birthday girl.
The week after that it was time for my first huge festival. Big day out at the Gold coast. It was soooo hot that day! We went with eight of us and slept on a huge yacht!!! It was huge and so beautiful! The festival was awesome! I saw, temper trap, passion pit, girls talk, the mars volta, lilly allen, powderfinger, and much more, but the best thing I saw really was MUSE. That was sooooo cool! A really good concert and one of the best live performances I have ever seen! We were right at the front in the mosh! Jumping up and down with sweat gushing down my back,
but it was so worth it! At the end of the night we were all exhausted and hungry, so we ate some cupnoodles and went to sleep. In the morning we went for a dip in the ocean and headed back to Brizzie again. The next weekend I went on a weekend trip with a big group of my international friends to stradbroke Island. We were staying there with 15 people in the manta lodge! A backpackers just on the beach, it was sooo much fun. I drove down with Fabian, Thibaut and Jeroen to meet Timbi and Tallula at the ferry. Micheal and Verina were already there with some of our other friends. We played drinking games that night, flipcup and horseraces! It was hilarious. Everyone got so drunk. Then Micheal took his guitar out and we started singing! The one song that will always stay with me and is really connected to my trip here is the Jack Black Tenacious D song; "Fuck her gently". Hahahaha... we kept singing this over and over again for the last few months! =] The evening ended with some deep philosophy and stargazing at the beach and then back in bad in preparation for the next fully planned day. The next morning I woke up at 5:30 to go surfing with Michael and Verena. The waves were just beautiful! Caught two really nice ones and managed to get up my board for a second or two before crashing back into the wave. :P even though I put so much zinc on my face I still got burnt. Ow, and I saw a shark while surfing!!! SCARY! We went back to the hostel at eight to have breakfast. We drove in the two cars we brought to the beach. When we arrived at the beach we found that no one was in the water! The reason was a cool one. There were three sharks playing in the waves!! You could see them just before the wave broke. Soo cool! Might have been the same one as I saw that morning! Another crazy party night that night we went to the pub. Had a little boogie and walked back to the hostel on the beach. I was talking to Thibaut. This was is last weekend on straddie because he was leaving the week after, so he was a bit sad. while we were talking we started walking along the water and suddenly saw that it was filled with sea spark! Really
shiny blue and green ones. It was unbelievable there were so many of them! I am always
mesmerized by it. the funny thing is if you touch them with your fingertip they get stuck there and you have light all over your hands!! =] after another singing session we went to sleep. The next day we went to go snorkeling in the gorge! It was a beautiful walk down there! Luckily I had brought my diving gear. I saw the biggest seaslugs ever! They were huge, a little wobbygong shark (carpetshark) and lots and lots of beautifully colored fishes. After our trip there we went to relax on the beach. Everyone was exhausted! But we had to return to Brisbane that day too. So we packed up early went to get an ice cream and headed to the lodge to make our way home... In the mean time there were parties and drinks every weekend, but one night was quite special for me because I went to see one of my favorite bands live playing their new CD and some of my favorite older songs. PORCUPINE TREE… they were the best… Again raging, symphonic, magical!! Wish you were there dad! You would have loved it! (again)
In between all of this I’ve been busy growing my own veggie patch... Its so much fun, I have everything growing here! All the herbs I want! Parsley, basil, thyme, rosemary, mint, oregano and now I am growing spring onions, red onions, lettuce, rocket, bock choi, carrots, capsicum, eggplant and tomato’s! Ohhh! I’m so proud, but that’s not all, I’ve taken upon me the task of beautifying this garden. So I’m making cuttings from all types of plants. =]
Oh… so last weekend we helped Nick out painting his back deck. Its white and light blue now. It feels like you are at the beach suddenly! It’s so pretty, I put up some hanging baskets with plants and we made a table from old wood and loaded it with potted plants. Next weekend its time for festival number two of this year. Good Vibrations. A slightly smaller ones but as the headliner the Killers!! So it will be fun. Now I’m sitting on the coach with Michael and Fabian after a green lasagna we just made. Monday night is our cooking night and we are watching James bond! Busy day today and a productive one. I did a lot of reading on how crystals form. Its quite difficult physics, did some writing on my report went fruit and veggie shopping at this awesome store called Billy’s fruit market. Spent 15 euro’s on two huge bags full of fruit and veg! So cheap. Did some exercise with Michael when we got home. We have got a lot of weights and a bench press etc here. Fab came over and suddenly they both ran out the door… This enormous lightning storm was hanging over the city. It was like Thor was having a fit. At least ten lightnings a second! It looks like a rave party in the sky! Very weird.
Now I’m tired sweaty and full, time for more bond and less movement…
Kisses to you all and you’ll from me soon!
X Linda
