Kevin's Photoblog

The Poles love flowers, and there are flower shops everywhere.

These are the bathroom doors for the ladies (circle) and mens (triangle) rooms.  Newer building now often use the traditional lady-in-a-dress, men-in-pants symbols.  In commercial areas, the signs for the bathrooms read WC, for water closet, a widely used symbol in Europe that comes from the UK.

This is the coffee pot in our lunch area.  European coffee pots make very good – fresh ground – coffee, but are also very complicated.  I helped clean the pot yesterday, a very big job.  I much prefer the American drip coffee makers.

This is the placard next to my office door.  I share a room with my colleague, Jakub Witkowski, but the placard actually includes my name.  The Fulbright is very highly respected here.

My Rotary Club – Szczecin International (English-speaking) has a
concert each year as a fundraiser.  Classical music, suit-and-tie
event.  That is me in a suit-and-tie.

I needed to make a quick meal stop on my way to the train station, so
popped into a mall and went to the MacDonalds.  This one was easily
the biggest and most sophisticated Macs that I have ever seen.  This
is the computer terminals where you type in your orders (took me a
while to figure out), then to the cash register and a screen where you
could watch your number work its way up the Q.

Here are two diatoms.  I am afraid that I do not offhand know the
names, but very pretty.  Most of what I see are diatoms, of which
there are many hundreds of species.  If anybody is looking for an
interesting scientific topic, I can recommend nothing more pertinent
in these days of concerns for global warming than diatoms.  They occur
in fresh and salt water and are at the base of the food chain, so
essential to everything else.

This is a specimen of Dictephanopsis crux in abapical (upside down)
view, showing the position of the pikes, which are of interest to me.

Here are two specimens if Bachmannocean apiculata, side by side.

This is an interesting early silicoflagellate from the time soon after
the dinosaur extinction (Paleocene).  Meet Corbisema angulate.