Pre-Christmas greetings

Dear friends, again, a year has nearly passed b and we are approaching Christmas.
I did not post much as I as only travelling to places that I have been to several times, Chicago and Woods Hole in the USA, and Paris in France. I was also in Kolkata again, and appreciated all these trips. But as they were mainly related to work, I did not have many new stories to tell.

Still enjoying Bangalore, Sunaina and me did decide this year to set up some Christmas decoration at home, and I would like to use this occasion to send you the best wishes for a peaceful Christmas time with a few impressions of our artificial Christmas tree...and with pictures from Lal Bagh, a big garden/park in Bangalore.

 

Republic day 2015 - Colours of India

Just a short notice...with respect to the upcoming Republic day (Jan 26), I joined a group of colleagues (PhD candidates, post docs and staff from the administration) to perform a piece called 'colours of India'.

It was a merge of dance performances from the various regions in India, connected through a small story line that was based on a foreigner exploring Inida during his stay at NCBS (well, guess who played that role...).

it was good fun and the audience was very supporting and enthusiastic. in the following just some pics of the play...

Kolkata visit and Diwali 2014

During this Diwali, in october 2014, I got the chance to visit the last large Indian city on my wish list, Kolkata in West Bengal. I stayed in a lovely small hotel in New Allipore in the south of the city, a fairly quiet area, where I could join a good bunch of people for the morning walk. I could already get an idea of the city’s traffic, when I arrived at the airport in the evening, it took a good hour to get to the hotel. The purpose of my visit was twofold, to visit my former colleague from Paris, Bidisha, who has her group at IISER Kolkata (Indian Institute for Science Education and Research), and spend Diwali together with my partner Sunaina and her family.

here the link to the photo album. 

The IISER visit including a presentation of my research was at the beginning of my stay. The driver picked me up in the early morning (6.20am), and I soon understood why we had to start so early: despite its name IISER Kolkata, it lies 60km outside the city (I learned later that it is better called IISER Mohalli/Kolkatta)! The institute is situated in a beautiful landscape on the area of an agricultural university. Even though I met many enthusiastic and interesting scientists there, I was a bit disappointed that these brilliant minds still have to work in worn down or makeshift labs. A new building is under construction, but will still take some while. Let’s see how it will be in one, two years. We headed back at 5.30pm, but when I reached my hotel, it was already after eight! Now I knew what people told me about the traffic here.

The following day was the day of Diwali, and I joined Sunaina and her family around noon. It was nice to witness the preparations for the festival. The house was decorated, everything was cleaned, and most important, putting many candles in windows and outside doors. In between, we went to a market to get some more candles, vegetable and fruits. Most touching was to see some fish seller, who decorated his cutting table for the festival by placing small candles on it. Back at home, all gathered to fill the candle holders and to light them. The festival of light made its name all honors, and the streets and houses in the whole city were decorated with all sorts of light. In addition to that, it was also the day of Kali-puja, who is the goddess of death. She is depicted as a black, angry looking woman holding a cut head and knives in her hand, and is worshipped with fiercely drumming. So the festival of light was mingled with a lot of sound.

Around midnight, the time of immersion started, during which the goddess statues are brought to the Ganges (or one of its side rivers) and immersed in the waters. Many pick-ups and trucks with groups of (mostly drunk) men were on the go and let their surroundings know about it with a lot of yelling and cheering.

The next morning, I was running, which was not a good idea. In addition to the generally high pollution came the remains of many crackers that were fired in the previous night, which made the air super polluted. Later on was the time to visit the city. We went to the Victoria memorial, a building erected from 1906-1921 to honor the visit of Queen Victoria. The building with its vast gardens is in stark contrast to the rest of the city and hosts an exhibition of Kolkata’s rich history. Towards the end of the day, couples gathered around trees and benches in the garden, and I was told that it is a classical meeting point for lovers.

Another day, we went to St. Pauls cathedral. On the way there, we got a glimpse from the rich art culture in Kolkata with the Nandan film centre, the academy of fine arts and the park displaying wonderful modern art sculptures.  The cathedral was also very nice, all in white with elegant ornaments and an impressive hall. The only thing which was a bit strange to me, was the fact that the cathedral was inside a walled area and that one had to enter a gate to get in. After that, we visited Park Street, which is a classical shopping road with old prestigious houses and hosts since 1927 the wonderful tea house Flurys. It was a pleasure to try the Darjeeling tea there accompanied by a nice pastry.

To the end of the Kolkata visit, the Surana family took me for dinner to a UP restaurant called Awadh which was remarkably nice decorated. The whole building was decorated inside and outside with wooden carvings in the style of a noble house from the  high time of the Mughal empire, and the food was delicious. It was a joyful end of a very joyful trip. 

A few relaxing days in Ooty...

Dear all, I know it has been a really long time without any news from my side, because I was simply not able to travel anymore. But the reasons are rather good: because my work is going quite well, I am writing on a research article, and prepare slowly my future looking for positions in Europe.

To escape the sudden pre-summer heat in Bangalore (march/ april) which hotter and dryer than usual, I went with my friend to the hill station Ooty in Tamil Nadu. It was a lovely trip, we stayed in an old British house outside the town on a hill with a great view over the landscape. the weather was very pleasant and the nature wonderful to watch.

To our surprise, there was even a Charring Cross, which had a grotesque water fountain installed and was much less busy than the one in London.

some pictures can be seen here...

it was a great way to relax two days from work and the busy city.

a few other updates:

Life in Bangalore is great. Now, the election craziness is over,  and we have a new minister president and a strong BJP in power. Many in my surroundings are quite unhappy with that and fear the BJP regime. let's hope that the influence of the right wing RSS will be little.

bars and clubs are finally allowed to open till 1 am, and the weather became cooler again with rain in the evenings. Bangalorean night clubbers and workers (and me) are very happy about that.

I participated in a 10km run which was great fun and which was attended by a total of 30000 people, which is a nice sign of how many people are happy to run in Bangalore.

our beloved German general consul, Mr. Loeffler, will leave in June. the farewell dinner at Taj West End was a nice get together and I will miss his initiatives to foster art and science happenings in Bangalore. But the actual Consul, Mr. Rohde, is also very interested in science and visits us times on time. Recently, the Asia director of the German Research Foundation (DFG) visited Bangalore, and I was invited to  dinner with him and some representatives of other research institutions in Bangalore.

more news in future...

2013_Varanasi-the holy town for Hindus and Budhists

Varanasi-holy city of Hindu- and Buddhism

here the link to the pics
In December, I got the chance to assist the TIFR and NCBS conducting the general entrance exam at the
Benares Hindu University (BHU) in Varanasi. This gave me the nice opportunity to explore a city in Uttar Pradesh, a part in the central north of India which was totally new to me.
Varanasi is a very important city for Hindus and Budhists. It is located at the Ganges and one of THE sites to cremate dead bodies and hand over the ashes to this holy river. Temples of all kind of important gods are found in the busy city. For the Buddhists, it is important because here, Buddha held his first sermon in Sarnath to five vedic monks (about 520 BC).

In addition to that, Varanasi (or Benares) was always also an important place for teaching, because if which it is of little surprise to find in BHU the first and oldest central University (financed by the Central government). The University campus lies within the city and is huge and spacious. The buildings are mainly constructed in the style of an old castle. The walls are colored in earthy red and ochre, the colonnades and windows are rich decorated and the ceilings are very high (about 5m). The buildings, sport fields and hostels are arranged in semi circles around the central building of the University dean.
Each year, TIFR Mumbai and NCBS are conducting a general exams in Physics, Mathematics, Chemistry, Biology, Computer Sciences and Wild Life Sciences for students who wish to join the PhD programs of one of these institutes. The exam is held in different centres all over the country and about 26000 aspirants take part in it (of which about 100 finally get a PhD position). For the test at BHU, about 800 candidates participated in the test. Two professors from TIFR Mumbai and me were the coordinators to conduct it on a Sunday together with the help of professors from the BHU Physics, Geology and Mathematics department. All went well, which gives me time to talk now about the activities before and after the exam.

I arrived on Saturday noon in Varanasi after a flight of over 5 hours with a stop over in Delhi. I had two heavy boxes with the question and answer sheets to transport to BHU, so I was happy about the car that was waiting for me to drive me to BHU. Friends told me to expect bad roads, but what I experienced during this first encounter with Uttar Pradesh roads was still a harsh contrast to Bangalore roads (which are not that well neither!). The distance of about 20 km took us about 90 minutes and I felt exhausted after this trip. Fortunately, the guest house was a rather positive surprise and I enjoyed the rotis and mixed vegetables for lunch. Shortly after, I met the other two professors from Mumbai who turned out to be two very likable old fellows. We had a good understanding right from the beginning which made the rest of the stay very pleasant.
After a meeting with the local professors to prepare the exam we took a car and drove to the Ganges river. There, we mounted a little boat which took us down the river to see a Ganges pooja (Hindu ritual). It was a great boat ride in the dark night. We saw several beautiful buildings facing the river which were constructed by different royal families who wanted to spent their end of the life directly at the holy river. We alo passed by a big pyre which might have been used for cremation. At the destination, our senses were filled with lights and sound overwhelming us from the river bank. There was a large place (maidan) which was filled with people, many in yellow, who observed the pooja.

Directly at the river, at two sides was a row of five monks (one group in orange, one in white) who conducted the pooja. all of them moved in a synchronized manner and waived in (ascending fire order) smoke sticks, a smoking pot, a single candle, a stand of many small flames, a bowl with a big flame. This choreography was accompanied by ringing bells which they shook with their left hand together with a row of bells above them which was agitated via threads connected to their right hand. It was impressive to see and many people in other boats around us lightened up candles in little cups and put them into the Ganges to flow down the river. After a good while at this ceremony, we rode back to our guest house to have dinner, and I had a nice walk on this cold night in the campus.

The next day, we had finished our duties at about 6 pm and thus had enough time to explore another part of this holy city. My colleagues decided to dedicate the evening to temples, so the driver took us to four of them. We started with a Hanuman temple (the monkey god). It was a dark place with walls smeared with a thick orange paste and people reading verses of Hanuman's great actions. After this, we went to a Durga temple (the goddess so much loved by the Bengal people). When we entered the complex in dark red, our ears were filled with bell rings. Everywhere were small, medium and large bells which were rang by visitors. And to support this, little machines were installed which played drums in a particular rhythm. A crowd was in front of the main shrine to give tribute to Durga, and suddenly, the bells stopped ringing and people started to chant. A very intense experience.

The next temple was luckily more quiet and less crowded. It was dedicated to Rama, and relatively new. The building was large and fully made of white and light grey marble. the walls were decorated with parts of the Ramamayan, the epic story of Rama, in text and pictures. In harsh contrast to the
previous places, this temple was quiet, clean and peaceful.
On the way back, we had our last stop at a temple which was located inside the BHU campus. This was a Vishnu temple and probably the largest of all the places we have visited. It had a very tall dome which was visible from far away. Vishnu's colors are also on the bright side with white and heaven blue. The place was quiet, but this was most probably due to the late time just half an hour before closing time. Inside, we got blessed by a crazy looking priest who gave us a white dot with his thump on our forehead and decorated us with flower necklaces. We saw also nice sculptures of the different forms of Vishnu (the five headed, the dancer) as well as a Hanuman sculpture. Then it was enough and we went back for dinner.

Monday was the last day of my visit and we decided to visit the place of Budha's first sermon before dropping me at the airport. We left in the morning with our dirver to have some Jelebi (a deep fried sugar sweet) in town for breakfast and continued then to Sarnath, which lies 10 km outside Varanasi.

The drive was again very long due to the narrow, bad streets and the high amount of folks using them (walking, by bicycle, bicycle riksha, horse cart or car). But the drive was worth the effort, because to see the holy place for Buddhists was a nice addition to the experiences of Hindu temples of the
previous night. We first visited a temple constructed in the 1930's by a Sri Lankan Buddhist community with a statue showing Buddha preaching to the Vedic monks.The inside walls of the temple were painted by a Japanese couple with scenes of Buddha's life.
The Japanese government also constructed a temple close by with two statues if Buddha, one showing the actual one, and one showing the future Buddha who is believed to come back to earth at some point. We got closer to the interesting part, which was a huge structure made of carved stones and brick stones. This monument is called Stupa and is a fully closed dome which was erected by Ashok around 300 AC to cover the site where Buddha sat and preached to the monks.

Close to that, he also constructed a large temple and a pillar crowned with four lion heads (now the sign of the Indian government), but all this was unfortunately only to see in ruins, because it was destroyed after the Moguls conquered these parts of India. Only the Stupa was reconstructed later mostly using the original stones which were found in the surroundings. The top of the destroyed Ashok pillar, the four lion heads, is now in a museum close by.

Before leaving, we also bought a few souvenirs and had a chai. Then we drove to the airport where I said good by to my two fellows from TIFR Mumbai and boarded the long flight back to Bangalore.
It was a great trip with lots of many new experiences and I am looking forward to more time in northern India in the coming year...
     

 

Munnar, trip to a hill station in the Westghats

The last weekend of August 2013, a couple of friends and me went to Munnar, a hill station in Kerala. I had to start the trip alone form Bangalore via bus, because the others already left a day earlier. It was a 13 hours bus ride, of which the last 2 hours were spent climbing the hill via narrow serpentines. Fortunately we had a tea/breakfast stop just before this, so that I could enjoy fully awake great views of beautiful valleys and hillsides full of tea.
here the link to the photo album

The bus reached Munnar at about 11am, and my friends awaited me at the bus stop. After leaving my stuff in our hotel room, we went for the first thing to do in Kerala: having a nice meal of beef fry! Strengthened we took an auto-riksha to get to the top station. The ride took about 40 min and lifted us another few hundred meters to about 1900 meters above sea level. Since it was still monsoon season, we could not benefit of a great view, but rather had the nice experience to stand in a cloud. On the way down, it should become better. The sun broke through the clouds and we could enjoy the beauty of nature. The place is known for its tea fields and I never saw before such fields. With these paddies of green. the hills looked fluffy like sofas. Times on time, we saw little group of women working in the fields, cutting away certain parts of the tea plant. They used a great tool for it: hedge clippers with a box connected to one of the blades in which the tea leaves fall after cutting. 

Sometimes, we saw a cow walking along on the street, and I was amazed to see how well fed they looked and how much they reminded me of black-white cows from northern Germany (Bunte Kühe). And sometimes, we had the luck to get across an ice cream vendor, who drove down the same road and brought cold, sweet relief to the field workers and to one of us as :-) 

Towards the evening, the clouds became denser and darker, and it started to rain. We got out our rain gear and continued our track, but when we found a little hut, we were happy about the dry shelter. The rain intensified and did not show any sign to get over soon. the hut was a little tea stall where a few villagers sat and waited also for the end of the rain. We decided then to have a chai - without milk- and which was delicious. After the first round of tea, we also tried omelette, which was prepared on a stove heated by wood fire, and which tasted very good. This break was a really nice experience with the special ambiance of the dark hut, the smell of burning wood and fresh tea. 

When the rain lost intensity, after about 40 min, we decided to continue our trip. The plan was to reach a place where buses leave towards Munnar, and which should be 5 km away. Well, the information about the distance to the bus stop was very optimistic. We walked and walked, soon again in heavy rain, and the bus stop came never into sight. And on top of it night started and we had to continue in the dark. Finally, we saw a little check post belonging to the forest rangers, and it was a big relief to find some rangers on duty there. They were very kind to us and explained to our surprise that there are no buses anymore. They told us that it is not so safe to walk around after 5.30pm (when it becomes dark), because of the danger of wild elephants and other animals - oups. To our luck, there were a few shops close to the check point, and the rangers arranged for us that we could get a ride in the jeep of a shop keeper who was about to leave towards Munnar. Like that we had also a great ride in a Mahindra jeep through heavy rain and reached at 8 pm Munnar. Reached there, we changed our clothes and went out for dinner. We found a street restaurant consisting of a set of 20 tables and three different cooking stations. The beef fry, parathas and curry tasted specially well after all the efforts. And as a cherry on the cake, we tasted a coffee prepared with ginger. A very refreshing taste experience. 

The next morning, I first discovered the city Munnar and walked around through the streets, tasted some nice tea and enjoyed the morning sun. I met the others for lunch and we headed out for another little track - our bus would be in the afternoon. We went downhill and found after some while a nice path into the tea-hills. It was a nice walk, and it was surprising to see landscapes similar to hilly regions e.g. in Germany. There were rich green fields, happy cows and little nice houses. 

But soon after we started to walk up the tea hills, the sky became darker and it seemed that it would rain soon. With regards to our bus trip back to Bangalore in the late afternoon we turned around and went back to the main road. From there, we took an auto-riksha back, and shortly after the rain started to pour down again. We have spent the remaining hours in Munnar in a cafe and with shopping local specialties: tea, chocolate and spices. 

Well rested, we entered the bus back home and had a furious ride down the hill. sitting in the back row, we felt every bump of the streets with amplified intensity, which made us jump up the seats several times. In addition there were the dark clouds, sometimes lightnings broke through and it became dark. This was great fun. After two hours of this crazy ride, we reached the highway and had a night break, where we could calm our souls with a hot chai. The rest of the ride was quite smooth and we reached Bangalore at 6 am. Just right to start a new week of exciting science....

looooong summer in incredible Woods Hole, MA, USA

It's been long time since my last post, which is related to the fact that I normally write posts about my trips to different places, and well, I did not leave Bangalore for 6 months, because I was too busy with my research. And now, it is also my research which is the reason that I can write again about a trip to another place. To make it short, my boss Jitu was again invited to give a course in the physiology course of the Marine Biology Laboratory (MBL) in Woods Hole, MA, USA, and I accompanied him as his teaching assistant together with my colleague Joey.
It is the second year for us to be part of the physiology course (last year, I went there from San Francisco), and we were already excited about another two weeks of workshop, but in addition we were also invited to participate at a newly created summer institute at the MBL, where we could pursue our own research projects for a couple of weeks. Like that, my stay in Woods Hole went for a total of six weeks!

The preparations for the trip to Woods Hole started already months before the course and it was helpful that we had the experience form last year's physiology course, but we still got a nice surprise: shipping of frozen reagents from India to US became a real pain. There are specialized agencies which deal with the custom services to get a pre-clearance before we send our frozen reagents on dry ice, but this time, there were some changes in both Indian and USA customs regulations just a week before we wanted to ship our stuff. Thus, the whole procedure got delayed, and we had to start the course without a part of our 'special' material which arrived about a week later. Because my whole project relied on such reagents, I had to improvise a bit and was happy that there were some leftovers from last year's course in the -80C freezer, which were still functional.

Anyhow, the course started, and I was lucky to have a lovely group of four 'students' (two post docs and two grad students in their final year). The group dynamics was very different from my last year's experience.
This time, they did a real group work, prepared together the samples and helped each other extensively, instead of a split up in subgroups after the general introduction. it is true that we could explore less different phenomena like this, but to have such a group work intensified the learning experience, because all four discussed about the experiments to do and were not hesitating to ask me questions.
After the first week, which went on relatively calm, work started to get interesting once, my proteins from India arrived. Woods Hole magic came in with many exciting nights at the microscope until 3-4 a.m accompanied with music, beer and good vibes. It was fantastic to see the whole system working for the first time after more than a year of preparations and to to observe its interesting behavior. This feeling should stay on for the following 5 weeks.  

here the link to the album

At the end of the two weeks, we had the obligatory presentations of the modules, followed by some game time: we had a softball practice and to my happy surprise there was a group of people from different courses playing football. in the evening, we had our first party, which went on very nicely, but came to a sudden halt when the security guard showed up at 1.30am and ordered to leave the place. This was the sad start of a series of confrontation with the house rules. It seems that the new presidency of the MBL courses insisted in a stricter following of the rules regarding the consumption of beer and music, which was totally different from the previous decades, and which totally changed the Woods Hole experience. Instead of late night
hang outs in the lab (as mentioned above), consumption of alcoholic beverages was forbidden for a few days, and later only allowed in the break room from 7-11pm. Parties were not allowed for some while neither.
I hope that the future courses will have again more luck with the MBL director, because one of the essentials of Woods Hole were theses special nights, where you continue your science in a more playful way to really explore things and let your mind go wild while discussing with your colleagues.

here the link to the album

Anyhow, personally, I was not too much affected by all this, because Jitu, Joey and me shifted after the first two weeks to the summer institute, located in another building on the MBL campus. Here we shifted gears, after two weeks of teaching we were supposed to do research our-self on the highest level possible. The settings were ideal, the summer institute consisted of six professors (Ron Vale, Michael Rosen, Daniel Fletcher, Jim Wilhelm, Jack Taunton and Satyajit Mayor) and about twice as many post docs and grad students (the working force). We all worked in vitro on membrane related questions, and the aim of
this institute was to foster collaborations. And it worked fantastic, it was great to see, how the different people started to combine their assays to create more complex systems. And as a bonus to this, some of the professors also engaged and started to do experiments. It was a great feeling when Jitu prepared under my guidance his own in vitro and to see that it worked!
The four weeks of Summer Institute were a real boost for my research and I was very happy that I could be part of such a great endeavor.

the working hands at the Summer Institute

But this should be more than enough writing about science, it will become too boring and there was also some time to do other things. After the two exhausting weeks of the physiology course, I had the pleasure to be free for a few days. Just before Independence day, I drove via Bus to New York, where I met up with some good friends, and where I wandered through the city on July 4th.

one world trade center, New York

meeting with friends from Paris

From there, I continued my trip to Frankfurt, Germany, to attend a wedding of a very good friend from my time in Paris. The celebration happened in lovely Rhein-Hessen region, a great place for wine with beautiful landscape and hearty people. In addition, the weather was just perfect so that I could fully enjoy the weekend with some of my closest friends.

The church in Worms founded in 1010

Back in Woods Hole, the summer institute allowed us to organize the day more flexible, so that there was always some time to either go for a run or for a swim in the sea. on the weekends, we made sometimes use of our bicycles to get to Falmouth, a larger village, about 7 miles away, with some nice shops and coffee places. I think twice or thrice, we managed to cook at our cottage, which was big fun and was a nice change from the daily canteen food.
A great happening was the arrival of the dance company Black Label Movement (BLM) from Minnesota. This time, I had more time to interact with them and to participate on some of their training/body-storming sessions. Their performance was stunning and a great example of the possibilities of modern dance.

On one of the last weekends, Ulrike and Philipp, who live in Boston now, visited me in Woods Hole. We had a nice relaxing day on the beach, playing some soccer and saw how coffee is roasted in the bakery 'Pie in the Sky'. The following day, we all drove back to Boston, where I met a few other friends (from Paris and San Francisco). This trip gave me the necessary energy boost to power through the last week of Woods Hole, which finished with a great party with the physiology course.

Now it goes back to Bangalore, but with a one week stop-over in Berlin...my beloved home town!