Saturday, September 23, 2006

UQ: These were the people in my neighborhood

The lair of JJ's Secret Squad

Despite what you may infer from this blog, I actually spent the a fair portion of my time in Australia in the lab at UQ. So you may be wondering, "Just who were these shady people you were hanging out with?"

Well, these were none other than JJCW's Secret Assassins Squad.

Above is a picture of the doorway to their lair, or at least it used to be. If you go there now, there won't be anybody there! This is how shifty those guys are.

Now that I am safely back in Berkeley, I can reveal true identities of JJ's secret squad without fear of retribution:

Below is Elisabeth, a French national trained in the deadly art of slide-tackling. Don't call her "crazy" if you value your legs.

Elisabeth says "Helloooooo!" to her little droplets

Below, on the left next to Elisabeth, is Meilani. Meilani is a Indonesian student at UQ who is actually studying abroad at Berkeley, but was working at UQ for the summer. That's right, I went all the way to Oz to share an office with someone who went to Oz then Berkeley then Oz (and back to Berkeley). Confused yet?

Meilani and Elisabeth plotting their next victim

Below are the tag team duo of Lien and Mike. Mike is a Canadian assassin who can throw around lethal Canadianisms like "hoser" and "eh" with nary a guilty conscience. Lien is Mike's henchwoman. Her secret power is her paralyzing "Hand of Chau," which she practices on innocent Australian males.


Below is shiny Shiny, an Indian assassin trained in the art of deconstructing the egos of Indian men.

Below is Lucy a.k.a. Lucy Lawless, St. Lucia, Lucifer, or "the Pride of Townsville." Lucy was my mentor for all things microfluidic. I first met Lucy at a conference a few years ago, where Lucy announced that she had used her secret powers to trick fluids into violating the No Slip condition.
Lucy flashes her evil smile

The rest of these pictures are from a going away dinner on my last day in lab (Aug. 10).
Below on the left is Michael, the Australian man-child that can conjure fume hoods out of thin air. In the middle is the big Boss himself, Justin J. Cooper-White. While his minions do his bidding at home, Justin travels the world expanding his evil empire. On the right is Vanessa, my fellow Brisbane EAPSI-ite. She was not working at UQ, so she has no idea of what kind of scoundrels she's surrounded by.


Below on the left is Jenny, also an Australia. Jenny's secret power is a flying Cassowary kick, which she learned while living in Cairns. On the side, she builds torture contraptions for cells.

Below are Tristan and Yang, partners in crime. Joung-Sook lurks behind, waiting to use her lethal "Two-Point Exploding Bunny Ears" technique.


As much fun as it was being a member of JJ's Secret Squad, the life of crime was not meant for me. I escaped with Vanessa in tow (below), and three weeks later, I slipped out of the Australia undetected. If you don't hear from me, you know who got to me...

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Sh*t! I knew it. The bank account (from your first month of blog posts) tipped me off. Now you are MIA-- after 2 months of developing top secret secrets for the US/Australian govs.

11:35 PM

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