Goodby windy Wellington!

Hi there! I need to add one final entry about NZ.

I want to share my experiences of the ANZ Micro & Nanofluidics conference with you guys...ok I know that you have nooo f..cking idea what it is about, so I want to tell you in short.

ANZ means Australia and New Zealand...ok that was too easy.

Micro and nanofluidics refers to a tool that is used to fabricate vey very tiny laboratories, also called Lab-on-a-chip's (LOC). If u r female, u may have used one once or twice in you life after u forgot to take the pill or the condom was not so functional...yes I am talking about a pregnancy test...thats a LOC.

Example for a Lab-on-a-Chip (LOC).

U do not need a professional to take one of ur body liquids and explain u the results. U simply urinate on the stripe and the little read-out window tells you pregnant or not pregnant. There is no result that tells u "u r half pregnant!. Easy ha?
So...the conference was ectually about such devices and their fabrication/analyzation/development/problems/chemistry...etc...

One talk at the ANZ fascinated me most...from S. Khan, Prof. at the National University of Singapore; he is developing a so called microreactor. That is a LOC for chemical synthesis...
In other words, the classic chemical lab with all the beakers and flasks and green fluorescent colours can be shrinked to a size of a few centimeters.
Imagine, one day you can produce your medicine in your living room...without knowing anything about chemistry...
O.K. enough about my nerdy thoughts! What is most important at such a conference is to meet people...and i did of course!
The result: I got invited to a sushi party, where Mike was delighted to join me. The food was prepared in such a different way as we are used to in Austria. It was more like a buffet where u choose ur incredinces and can role them to a cone...yammy! THX Anika for the invitation!

Sushi!!!

At the conference I met Peter -the first cool Austrian we met so far during our travels- who does his PhD at the Victoria University of Wellington.
He invited us on Saturday to have gin tonics with his collegues ("vorglühen") and then we went out with those nice Kiwi scientists.

Mike and me and a bunch of Kiwi scientists. I know I glow! I am not radioactive and no I am not an angel.

We ended up in The Establishment at Courtenay place (the party area in Wellington).
It was really great fun and the girls know how to dress up, have a look on that nice shot:

Sexy outfits to go out!

On Sunday we decided to do something more relaxing and went to a jazz club with Patrick and Hanna.

Hanna and Patrick.

I cannot go there any more because Mike made me laugh and I had to spit my white wine all over him (the second time on this weekend)...well that was kinda embarrassing. Patrick and Hanna couldn't stop laughing about that situation, too.

For the last days we first wanted to relax but then we had this glorious idea! We decided to make an Austrian dinner jodl event with Gulasch, Krautfleckerl, Kaiserschmarren...Austrian music like Mozart, DJ Ötzi, EAV and "Die Hinnichen". Mike played the DJ...
Patrick was sooo sad that we have to leave so soon that he immediately started crying in the kitchen;) (Or maybe just because of the onions he had to cut)

Don't cry for us...

In total we were 12 people and the dinner was just great and all people enjoyed it...unfortunately noooo left overs...

Prost Mahlzeit!!!!

Good bye, c ya soon in Melbourne.

Tonight we gonna have a bunch of cocktails on our last evening in Kiwi kingdom and tomorrow at 6am we'll be leaving towards down under...

Cheers

a+M