The Parafilm Experiment

Yesterday afternoon I went with my sister to the lab where she's carrying out the research for her PhD. On a saturday afternoon the building is totally empty, and walking about there alone is quite scary. So I gathered all my sisterly-love and decided to go with her despite all I wanted was to stay home and watch TV.

I used to understand a little bit of science when I was at school. I once wanted to become a doctor... but then I decided I didn't have the patience. Scientists have a skill I don't, I guess I could have learnt it, but now it's too late for me. Yesterday I proved myself right in that belief.

Bored as I was while my sister prepared her cells to freeze them, I walked about looking for stuff that could be fun. Liquid nitrogen (-196ºC) was the first dicovery, but I needed an expert to handle it, so I let my sister freeze gloves in nitrogen while I watched mesmerised how the liquid disappeared as it hit the ground, or a table. So. Much. Fun. But dangerous. If liquid nitrogen get into your eyes, you should start saying goodbye to the amazing gift of sight. No kidding.

So I finally found something fun-but-not-dangerous that I could enterntain myself with while my sister worked: Parafilm. Quoting the company that created it: "Parafilm® M is a versatile, moisture-resistant, thermoplastic flexible plastic for a wide variety of clinical and industrial applications, Parafilm M® film has been used with confidence for years in scientific research and medical settings".

To make things easier, Parafilm is a plastic tape that you can stretch to protect things such as bottles. If used correctly, and I want to emphasize that, correctly, it can protect anything from getting wet, but I lacked the skill to use it correctly.

And then... then's when I had "the brilliant idea": Why not cover my cell phone in parafilm and put it in a sink full of water? Excellent idea. My sister helped my to cover it from left to right, but then I was left alone to finish the job and cover it from top to bottom. That was the begining of the end. Believing I had done it right, I dipped my telephone into the water, and left it there while laughing a little bit histerically (I did not trust myself, but my sister insisted...). A minute later I take the phone out of the water and checked the results of my experiment... THERE WAS WATER INSIDE THE SUPPOSEDLY WATER RESISTANT PLASTIC!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I panicked and tried to get the phone out of its cover, but one of the properties of parafilm is that it is very difficult to break it once it's stretched. So I start screaming, finally manage to break the plastic and contemplate my very wet cell phone. There was water inside the battery, and between the buttons.

I have never felt more intelligent in my life. I dried the sad little device as quickly as I could. It is still working. Had I broken my cell I would have never been able to forgive myself, it would have felt like I had murdered it by drowning it into the water.

My legal mind first thought of suing the company, but they are intelligent (unlike me) and they limit the liability of its product to its "correct use", dipping cell phone into water is not considered one of those correct uses.

Still, I have another experiment in mind to carry out next time I go with my sister to the lab: Cover the cell phone in parafilm with so many layers that if you bang it against the floor it won't break. Bets are accepted, will my cell die this time?

Have a nice week,and wish me luck, the results of my exams are coming out on thursday. Next update will be in march, next weekend I'll be in Brussels!!!

*** Parafilm: http://www.parafilm.com/FloraTapeHome.aspx?Menu=2

Not breathing a word (Feb 14th 2009)

After five weeks of writing Notes I've ran out of ideas. I finally have nothing to say, at least this week. I don't think my notes were very inspired, but at least I could fill a couple of lines that made sense!

Who knows, maybe next week, maybe not, I may be going on hiatus for a while, until again I have some paranoia worth telling.

Till then, Happy birthday Mr. Darwin:

PHOEBE: Go ahead and scoff. You know, there're a lot of things that I don't believe in, but that doesn't mean they're not true.

JOEY: Such as?

PHOEBE: Like crop circles, or the Bermuda triangle, or evolution?

ROSS: Whoa, whoa, whoa. What, you don't, uh, you don't believe in evolution?

PHOEBE: I don't know, it's just, you know...monkeys, Darwin, you know, it's a, it's a nice story, I just think it's a little too easy.

ROSS: Too easy? The process of every living thing on this planet evolving over millions of years from single-celled organisms, too easy?

PHOEBE: Yeah, I just don't buy it.

ROSS: Uh, excuse me. Evolution is not for you to buy, Phoebe. Evolution is scientific fact like the air we breathe, like gravity.

PHOEBE: Ok, don't get me started on gravity.

Singing the Songs (Jan 31st 2009)

Every single morning I wake up with a song in my head. I can be lucky and wake up with a song a really like, or I can be really unlucky and wake up with a very annoying jingle from a TV ad. This week in particular I've woken up siniging the same song for three days in a row, and by now I'm sick of it. I guess it doesn't help I only know the chorus, and it doesn't help either that I keep playing it on and on in my iPod.

"And you're singing the songs thinking this is the life..."***

Had a final yesterday, not good, as usual. I am starting to think I really have lost my ability to concentrate. It's been a very boring week, I've only seen the sunlight to go to English class on monday and wednesday evening, and then yesterday I went to ICADE to take the exam and then back home. I feel somewhat trapped, but I shouldn't complain, it could be a lot worse.

While I was being held hostage, Madrid was attacked by fog. So snow, rain, wind and now fog... It was thursday morning, and I woke up at 8 to sit in front of my notes and study. As I looked out (trying to find something more interesting than my financial analysis notes) I saw the city covered by a thick grey fog, that kept getting thicker and thicker until I couldn't see the buildings right in front of my block. I'd rather call it mist, cause to me it has a more mysterious aura around it. I opened the door to the balcony and contemplated (not that I could see anything though) the view in front of me: just white emptiness. Not only the city had disappeared in front of my eyes, but suddenly it was all silent too. Very odd, incredibly odd for a city of 3 million people. I stood there for a couple of minutes until my bare feet started complaining. I have to agree with them, it was a terrible idea to walk outside barefoot. I shivered, walked in again and just a little while later the mist was gone, just as suddenly as it fell over the city.

Again last thursday half of Spain was paralized for a couple of hours, this time the reason was the fog.

This is by far the weirdest winter I remember, and not only weather-wise. Ever since classes started after winter break I've felt like I'm in a constant state of packing. Gathering the things I've done for the last five years, putting them all together in a bag and carrying them with me somewhere, the only thing I ignore is where I'm going, but truth is I am leaving. Leaving my life as a student and starting yet again a different life. Strange feeling, I am suspended in a place between the real world and the easy life of a college student. For five years I've been "singing the songs, thinking this is the life" and now I can see a tiny door at the end of the road, a door that gets bigger by the minute as I step closer. I will have to open it, eventually. Till then, I keep packing, "singing the songs, thinking this is the life".

Picture by EFE

I'd better go back to my next final, I really want to watch Nadal in the Australian Open Final tomorrow, and if the match takes as long as yesterday's I'll be in front of my aunt's TV for at least five hours... that kid doesn't stop to amaze me. Vamos Rafa!!! Yet another duel of Titans, Sunday is going to be an interesting day...

"And you're singing the songs, thinking this is the life... Where you gonna go? where you gonna go?" If only I could answer that!

*** This is the life, by Amy Mcdonald (Thanks for the discovery Dul!)***

Snow White Chaos (Jan 10th 2009)

Snow is not something we get very often in Madrid, not at all. Last snowfall I remember was sometime in the winter of 1999 and it was just an afternoon of snow. Sure we were let out of school to play outside but in a few hours the snow was gone, and we were all back home, soacking wet with a very sore throat (lots of screaming plus very light coats have that outcome)...

January 9th 8 am and I get off the bus to go to class (Oh joy!) as I step out I feel something cold lightly touching my face... After two days of temperatures below zero it has started snowing in Madrid, and it keeps snowing for more than ten hours. By 10:30 am, the time of our coffee break (I am going to say coffee break because it sounds more adult-like, but we have breaks every morning, just like school kids), the street is covered in snow, I am wearing my very thin red shoes and Ale is wearing high heels, us madrileños really know how to cope with bad weather... just crossing the street is quite an adventure and the preassure is increased by the fact that one doesn't want to trip and fall in a street full of the people she's been seeing everyday for the last six years.

Barajas Airport
(Photo: Javier Beneytez taken from elmundo.es)

We make it to our cafe, the one we go to every day, sometimes twice, or three times, breakfast, beer before lunch, lunch, coffee after lunch, coffe after class... En fin... Back to ICADE just to find out spanish bureaucracy is just as slow as I remembered, plus everyone is worried with the snow outside, parents calling warning their kids to be careful with the car, streets covered by a thick white sheet (thick for spanish standards at least!), there is no salt left to avoid the snow from turning into ice, people slipping while they walk, fifteen times more emergency calls than a normal day, Barajas airport closed, one thousand flights cancelled 400 km of traffic jams... Ahh Spain is different!! But this time we have an excuse, it hasn't snowed like this since 1977, and we are not ready for it.

Cibeles (taken from ABC.es)

The bus back home shows me a side of Madrid I had never seen, I feel like I'm in a post card. El Paseo de Recoletos is covered in snow, the goddess Cibeles gives me an odd look as I pass by her, her lions are covered in snow, she is covered in snow and the fountain is completely frozen. I pity her, outside in the cold while I watch everything from a bus with heating. Not romantic at all, but very cosy at the moment. My memories drift back to a morning in late november, when I woke up to a very white Philadelphia and a beautiful Locust Walk covered in snow, I should have taken pictures then, I should have taken pictures of Madrid yesterday... but I lost my camera in a Bolt bus, and my telephone had no battery (just my luck) so all I have are memories, memories that get blurrier by the minute.

Paseo de Recoletos (Photo: EFE)

Off the bus and I walk home trying not to fall, yet again. I successfully make it with my pride unharmed but my shoes are soacking wet, my feet are freezing cold and black. Yes, black, it seems the shoes tainted them, and there is no human way of taking that black away... I could be a Siksika at the moment... But I am not. I am a Cat, and we cats are not used to snow, even if some of us go skiing from time to time.

I take a two hour nap and when I wake up it's dark and still snowing. My sister and I meet Maria and Daniel for dinner. We go bar hopping to the most traditional/popular/old/us

ually crowded tapas bars in Madrid, but they are empty. Even though it's stopped snowing people have decided to stay home. We are not used to this weather in Madrid, and all the madrileños have agreed to stay home for a night, even if it is a friday.

Una ración de gambas a la plancha, croquetas, tortilla brava, calamares, bacalao and some cañas later we head home. It is amazingly easy to get a taxi for Madrid standards as the city has decided to rest for once on a friday night.

Saturday morning and Madrid is surprisingly white still, the low temperatures have kept the snow on the trees and the roof tops. From my 13th floor window I see cars covered in snow, people still walking carefully to avoid the ice and lots of small columns of white smoke, every house has the heating on, shops have sold more heating devices in the last two days than in the whole winter.

-5º Celsius, Madrid is not used to the cold, and nor am I.


*** Siksika: Black feet Indians. http://www.accessgenealogy.com/native/tribes/blackfeet/blackfeetindiantribe.htm

Cat (Gato): People from Madrid. From what I've read online, the name dates back from the XI century, when the troops of King Alfonso VI reconquered the city climbing its walls, just like cats.