Great start of the day

Last night I went over to Jovanna’s, my kiwi gal, who moved to a new place for five weeks to look after a beautiful apartment at McMahons Point. I was absolutely blown away by the view of this loft on the 15^th floor facing the Harbour Bridge and Opera House. Initially, she wanted to cook me a nice dinner but of course we ended up ordering very tasty pizza’s. We hadn’t seen each other for a while so it was nice to catch up while wining and dining. (Confident boys who are out there planning an attempt to tame this lioness, she’s the kind of girl that likes to be wined and dined, as she puts it). Drawn by the view, I accepted her kindly offer to stay over for the night, as she convinced me with her strong argument that it would be a shame for the view to go to waste. Indeed, this view deserves it to be watched. Believe me, I wasn’t just watching. I glanced at it while praying that the particular part of my brain harvesting this memory would gain resistance to future elderly dementia. Actually, it was more like I was trying to actively focus on strengthening my neural memory synapses plasticity, as Science has ruined my perspective of praying. But leaving spirituality aside, the important thing was that the scenery was amazing.

This morning I took the ferry back to Circular Quay to go to work. How crazy is that, taking a ferry to get to work. I was sitting on an open-deck while a soft, gentle morning breeze played with my hair, dampening the wines headache. The ferry wiggled up and down over the bright, blue waves while we were sailing under the Harbour Bridge to be greeted by the marvelous white Opera House. At the wharf, I suddenly realized that the ferry return ticket I purchased yesterday would be invalid today. I was feeling a bit frightened to approach the Ferry Staff on this matter, because in the Netherlands a student with an invalid travel ticket is like raw meat in a cage with lions on the brink of starvation. However, in Australia they abide by the lovely Ozzy life style mentality ‘’No worries, mate’’.

In order to get to the Garvan Institute in Darlinghurst from Circular Quay I had to walk through Central Business District (CBD). I remembered that my housemate Cassie works at a coffee joint on Pitt Street in CBD. So I wanted to surprise Cassie by grabbing a coffee there on my way, also because I was very curious to meet her Russian Boss famous from her stories. It was so funny to finally be able to picture the corresponding faces of her colleagues. I continued my journey with my Latte through Hyde Park. Suddenly, I just felt overwhelmed with happiness. I don’t know what Cassie had put in my coffee, or maybe I was just still a bit illusional from last night’s wine, but I felt great! I walked through Sydney smiling and it struck me again how amazing it really is to be living here. I caught myself saying My City. It was a feeling I recognized from when I was living in Stockholm and I had come back from a holiday in Lappland. I cheerfully passed all the grumpy morning faces of men in suits trying to spread my happiness by throwing smiles at them. At some point it even started to rain and I actually enjoyed it. The smell of wet grass and concrete added something special to my city perception. From a work perspective of view, I also have a lot of reasons to smile for. I successfully redid my 12 hours during experiment that I had failed two weeks ago, and this time it only took me 11 hours. Hence, I am making progress! I am now also at a stage where I am trying to validate the treatment in a new transplantation model by means of skin transplantation. The first results of this experiment are very promising! Well, back to work. Time to annoy my lab colleagues with my happiness.