Hanna told me today about her telling Hendrik that I gave her a 10 page summary on how to feed a cat when we got Smokie. Hendrik was very astonished that I would take that interest and Hanna explained that Smokie really is my cat and that she just has to follow my instructions. Well, that is not exactly true, but I think it is good that he sometimes gets fresh food and I am always a little angry when she feeds cat fodder. So, now nearly each Saturday we bring some turkey hearts and maws from the market and one of Hannas Saturday tasks then is to prepare the portions to feed Smokie. And he loves it and immediately demands his share!

Do you remember my writing about a long day at the office working on two proposals? One was a proposal for a project on container security and one was about investigating the reasons and motives of large companies for the allocation of research and development money and facilities to certain regions and locations. Both proposals I worked on in May. I have not heard anything about the security one(not being a good sign), but today I received a mail from the European Commission that they want to enter into negotiations about the latter, which is called LOCOMOTIVE.

And there are several good thing about this project. One aspect is, that it will probably give me work and a contract well into 2007. The project was needed for this, otherwise I would have been out of work next January. The second good news is that one of the regions we will investigate is Ontario in Canada. This will give me at least one business trip to Toronto during the project! Going to Canada in 2 weeks this means that I will go there again by the end of next year. And Hanna will want to come as well.

There is a small caveat however, the contract has to be negotiated and so far I do not know the offer of the Commission. Usually they have requests on what to change over the proposal, in many cases this will mean budget cuts. But nevertheless, the news really is good!

Originally we wanted to have a nice Italian dinner for Börje’s birthday. Usually the choice is not too bad in the Boxhagener quarter, there are three fairly good Italian restaurants in the area: the Apotheke in Wühlischstrasse, Miseria e Nobilta in Kopernikusstrasse and the Trattoria in Libauer Strasse. So, after a glass of champagne (or two?) on the terrace in a good mood, as you can see, we started to go out. First Apotheke: closed, then Miseria: closed, Trattoria closed. Looks like all Italian cooks in Friedrichshain together have a club evening or something on Mondays.

This brought us a nice walk through the area, which was crowded as usual even on a Monday evening. The weather was quite nice, giving us a very pleasant stroll. We ended up in the Thai restaurant Papaya (scroll down on the link for a review) in Krossener Strasse, which is supposed to be quite original and not run by Vietnamese like many other Thai restaurants in Berlin. And indeed, the food was very good, and we had a very nice dinner. Though, when back on the terrace, Hanna remarked that, nice as it was to go out, the best dinner still is a BBQ dinner on the roof…

In March/April Hanna ordered several plants at Flora Toskana. Since then she has been guessing, which plant is which as they obviously were delivered unlabeled. Now she is of the absolutely firm opinion that the plant you see on the right is Clerodendrum ugandense. Well, if you compare it with the picture bottom left, showing Clerodendrum ugandense from the Flora Toskana catalogue, I am not really sure that she is right…

Solution: it is related to the Clerodendrum ugandense, but it is a different kind: the Clerodendrum bungei.