Einträge von florian

Although I wasn't really sure if I still wanted to have another stop over after leaving Australia, Thailand turned out to be not to bad or at least very convenient for me. Arriving in Bangkok I felt at the start again: I didn't know shit, did not even have a rough guide or alike. Of course my flight was delayed and so the bus service to the city was long stopped, when I left the terminal building. I takled myself into the taxi queue and shared a ride with an Irish guy who wanted to go to Khaosan Road, where I got myself one of the famous beds in a box. That night was rough.
I spent only one day in Bangkok before I jumped on a bus to Chumpon connecting with a ferry to Kho Tao. That is one of the islands in the south, the smallest on the east coast, to be precise. It is also Thailand's Mecca for divers, and as I did my open water padi on the reef I felt that could be the place to go to have another enjoyable week. And so it came!
I was given some background information before by Kay, one of the Australian dive instructors who were on the dive boat with us. He had told me about Kho Tao and one particular diving school, where he had worked before. As prices are the same anywhere, I decided to follow his recommendation and give it a shot. He had also given me some names of friends to say hello to, I felt that could be a good start.
I had spent the complete night on a coach and added another two hours on the ocean when I finally arrived. Immediately (like seemingly everywhere in Thailand) there were Thais surrounding me shouting about their dive resorts and taxi services. Oh, dude ... but I got used to that quickly and so it became fun just having a little chat with every single one. Though they found out I wouldn't give them my money quite fast they still kept on talking, especially asking. I think the Thais are very friendly people!
I got myself a pickup cab to Big Blue Diving, where I then booked an advanced diving course. That was cool for I had thought about doing it in Australia anyway. Diving is so much fun. First they weren't very confident because of their tight schedules. I was told that I was travelling during Golden Week , where Japan is closed down and half of the people go to Kho Tao. But finally it worked out and I got and instructor just to myself, Mr James Rickert, who was one of Kay's friends. I think I am not supposed to mention that, but I was his very first student as he, after years of being a dive master, had finished his instructor course recently. Very cool.
Actually the days on Kho Tao went by fast and for Sunday I had booked my journey back. I wanted to spend another day in Bangkok, now that I felt more Thailand ready, besides I thought that having a bit of backup to catch my flight on Monday night wouldn't be too bad either. I arrived in the middle of the night again, around 2am, and checked in to the guest house I had used before. Again feeling way better that time. With a Stefan Loose guide I had bought on my first day in Bangkok I started strolling through town, saw heaps of temples, of course the palace and uncounted numbers of buddha statues. I even took part in one ceremony of a bunch of Buddhists, that was there because of an UN festival. Interesting!
Time went fast and finally it was time to take my backpack and catch the airport bus. I was told to arrive early as the ride was one hour. What I really don't fancy about flyinng is the check in procedure. Two hours for an international flight is not even true any more. If you want to have a decent seat or at least to make sure that they don't try to get you off by offering money, that you have to be there three hours earlier, to get a good position in the queue. Of course there were heaps of x-ray screenings again and the baggage weight gamble doesn't amuse me anymore anyway. As I was at the airport around half eight and the flight started late at 1.20am I had five long hours to do nothing. So boring... I have no clue what I did, but I managed to stay alive/awake.
We had caught up during the flight and arrived in Heathrow, where I had a connecting flight to Franfurt, in time. But the disaster happened: we didn't get a taxi pulling us to the terminal and so I spent a fun time on the runway seeing the my chances fading. I ran to the other terminal, as the special bus for the passengers having connections refused to let me board, only for Italian destinations. What the? After getting pulled out during yet another baggage check I knew I couldn't make it and was really pissed off for a minute or so. At least the lounge seats in London weren't to bad.
I finally arrived in Frankfurt around 1.30pm, my sister was kind enough to pick me up and give me a lift to Karlsruhe. How weird being in Bangkok one day and back in Germany the next. Still, so far I enjoy it.

It's my last hours in Sydney, in Australia, in fact even on this hemisphere. And it's good. I am not happy to go, nor am I sad to leave. Or is it both? The last days I spent in Sydney went by fast. I had expected to be bored as my living had changed from my time in Baltic Street, as some of my friends are gone already. But I met others, strolled through the city and said goodbye. It was fun staying at the Abbey again, very interesting to see those who are just about to start their journeys. I didn't feel like a wise men sitting there listening to their plans and expectations, but I could certainly say that I had an idea what would wait for them out there.
Right now I am sitting at a desk at NICTA again, will catch a cab to the airport after lunch. Sounds unspectecular, but for me it was stressing enough as I had to pack up all my belongings to bring them to an airport ready final state (oh how do I hate packing). Past midnight (local time) I'll be in Bangkok, hopefully set up to spend some quality time there, spacing out before good old Germany will get me back. What shall I say? Catch you later, I guess!

So many things happened. But the truly very shitty internet outposts I saw during the last weeks were everything but inviting me to catch up with you here. So what happend after Noosa ... oh boy, here we go!
As I mentioned we wanted to see Fraser Island, we only had one day so we booked an organised tour and therefore got picked up at 6.00am right in front of our hostel in Noosa (the car stayed there for the day). We had to take a ferry and disembarked with out 4wd bus directly at the beach. The day itself was very packed although we felt that we missed out on a lot of things because of the high tide. It was raining a couple of times, too. But at the most important spot, Lake McKenzie we had pure sunshine and the 7th best swim in the world - so we were told.
That night we headed to Brisbane, where me met Greg in the city and followed him to his house. It was so nice staying in such a friendly environment, where there was just no need to keep all valuables with us because of random people sleeping in the same dorms! We spontaneously were invited (or not?) to a party of a fried of Greg (or one of his friends) and had a big night with at least some true Aussies. On Saturday morning I dropped Farhad off at the airport and than started giving Greg some exercise, for more than four hours we walked through Bisbane and even disovered the true size of it's Botanic Gardens. Later we went out for dinner with the Trustpastlovers and followed them to their favourite habitat, a bar in the valley. We stayed to long in regard to our flight the next morning!
Dropping off the car at the airport and flying to Cairns just went fine. And so, only a few hours later, still Sunday morning, we were sitting in one of Cairns many tourists' offices (the only official one) and wanted to check out accomodation. We ended up booking a five dive dive course. We were so tired that it just happened.
It turned out to be a very good decision, the offer was nice. We had two days of training in the pool and then three days on a diveboat out at the Great Barrier Reef. Luckily we decided to do the German course wish helped us into a group of four people with one instructor. It was nothing but fun!
When it came to the boat trip the next cyclone, Larry, was just in front of the coast and so it wasn't sure that we would go out. But as it was predicted he would hit the mainland 500km up north we boarded and had a very rough ride out, leading to half the passengers standing on the deck puking!
Learning under these conditions gave us a lot of self esteems and so it was strange but very very nice to go down as a buddy pair with nobody else but my sister! Our ten open water dives (including a very cool night dive) just went by and sooner than expected we were back in Cairns. The rocking in our head stayed for another two days.
We had four complete days left in Cairns and wanted nothing but to chill out. The wet season wasn't really over anyway, so we had to cope with quite a few heavy showers that demotivated us to do any more daytrips. The weather got way better on the last to days so that we could move our relaxed bodies into the sun, to the water. We spent a fair bit of time with our very cool mates from the boat, starting off with a long party on Saturday. Hope I'll see some of them again!
Then it came to another early checkout and within the blink of an eye we were back an our way to Sydney, partly even back on the way to Germany! Yesterday I hugged my sister goodbye and sent her off, she's back in Frankfurt already!
So I am back in Sydney now, for a couple of days. Actually I am sleeping not only in the very same hostel but also in the very same bed as during the first weeks here. Isn't that crazy?

... as we left the Gold Coast yesterday. The trip is really going great for us. After Byron we headed to Nimbin, the biggest, most clichee hippie town ever, and later to Surfer's and had a really great day leading to a really long night for Farhad and me. We did the Big Night Out, a pub crawl organised by four hostels. What could I say?
After keeping the car parked for one complete day, this morning we drove up to Noosa, leaving Brisbane aside. Here we checked another great beach and coastal town. Okay, they are somewhat similar, but still nice. Tomorrow we gonna see Fraser Island before driving into Brisbane, where I gonna catch up with Greg. He will show Kristina and me around on Saturday. A private guide - great, isn't it? Farhad is gonna fly back to Sydney on Saturday morning and we'll fly up to Cairns on Sunday.
One more thing: The left driving thing is working out and I noticed how much I missed steering! Could be linked to all these awesome roads we have to take!

So we're on the road! It wasn't too easy getting started, and very spontaniously we picked up a third ally for the whole thing as well! It's my (former German flat-) mate Farhad. We picked him up from Cherrybrook and then drove up to Port Macquarie, Coffs Harbour and Byron Bay (at the Gold Coast) where we are at the moment. It's sooo sunny and the biggest problem I have at the moment is finding new shorts in one of the many beachfront shops. Still we won't stay much longer, it's very crowded and kinda stereotype. It's only one week, so I can stand that, I guess. And I wanna see Surfer's paradise anyway. But first we gonna go to Nimbin, then Surfer's, then Brisbane, Fraser, Noosa ... sorry, the beach is shouting for us! Catch u later!

The end of an era? Certainly not, but to me as important! This is the last blog entry from Sydney, at least for now. It's been a great time the last weeks. First I worked hard to get things done and am quite happy with what happened. And then, about a week ago, I picked up my lil sister. It was a weird feeling having somebody from that (part of the) world here with me, but it's good though. We've been up for so many things with so many cool people I met here during the last months. Had a nice disco-bbq-party organised by French blokes (!!!), went bowling, had Chinese food in Chinatown - which may sound obvious, but it's not -, saw the body worlds exhibition, Katoomba and the sisters, did heaps of sightseeing (made it to the aquarium, finally) with a lot of trips I had done before. Somehow it was a good-bye tour in that sense, finishing off with the usual riot with my oz-housemates. KA will have to come up with some hot parties to make me feel comfortable again in a few weeks.

I worked on a plan for the next time as well, but it's not that definite yet, rather general. It involves us renting a car this weekend and starting to drive up the coast to Fraser or at least Brisbane with all the mandatory stops. Beaches, the sea, hopefully some parties and relaxation, that's what we'll be looking for. I will also try to catch up with some blokes I met in Sydney earlier, would be great if that really would work out.

"...
And so I face the final curtain.
...
The record shows,
I took the blows -
And did it my way!"

How cool is that? I keep getting a lot of strange mails to my gmail account. First it's some kind of spam or probably autoresponder replys to spam mails that were sent under my name. I don't really give a thing. But that was really strange, I thought, as the gmail accound wasn't really mine! So you can reach me under florian.h[at] (yeah, I know, just publishing that on the internet), these mails were directed to florianh[at]. For those who are not aware: the dot is missing. So I looked through the online help, seriously not finding any answers. Then I filed a report (only possible to contact real people if you claim it was abuse), I was asked for the header that I included. So I have a copy of the header I sent them, just if you don't believe what I tell you now.
When I looked into that inbox again, there was no answer from any google authority, but another spam mail! What a shitty service I thought. But then again they probably cannot answer to every complaint. So I checked the header and ... was stunned. Gmail was talking to me! Look at the pic and see why I felt like Neo in the beginning of the first Matrix movie. That was definitely new! Just in case you wanna check, what people get told since Friday, here is the webpage I got referred to. Intersting for anybody who has such an account, isn't it? Now I wonder how many people it took to have them implement that indicator.

So here's some insight into my weekend. First: It started late, I left work at 8.30pm. Yeah, somehow I am proud, although it's not really about the overtime but more about my worries that I feel lazy sometimes starting my day reading German newspapers for half an hours. So after all it might be more accurat to relate to it as being relived. Well, it had a very lazy Friday afterwards, not really worth mentioning. Stayed in our Newtown mansion, all by myself as my housemates took the day off and went camping to Cattai again (I wish I had written about that adventure, so that I could link it here). I made some progess in my new book, Kundera's Ignorance. Tough stuff.

Had a very long day yesterday. Started a bit confused, although I slept in a was really tired. So I decided to take my time, have breakfast, do some weights and accept the fact that I would be in office late. But around 9.48am it hit me that I had signed up for a seminar on intellectual property that would start at - nah, who can guess that - 10am. I stuffed all my things (including tennis gear and lunch) into the backpack, flew threw the the rest of my morning routine and headed off. Well, I was pretty confident that I would make it in time for I live quite close to the ATP, but then again I didn't wanna sweat too much for I would have to sit there for two hours immediately! Everything went fine and I even wasn't the last one to pop in.
The seminar itself was more or less interesting, although I can only shake my head about all these patent atourneys, unwilling to give in to their point of view. That's not about research anymore. But on the other hand it might be useful to keep in mind what their important aspects of innovation are, just so I know what I do publishing things or leaving a copyright message somewhere.
Anyway, there wasn't a lot of time left till lunch and so work didn't really get under way. But I was keen on solving some problems I had experienced before and therefore really didn't spend too much time in the cafeteria. Back on my desk and on the terminals I started checking out some more of the memory leak detectors I had downloaded the day before. Acutally there seem to be some very useful tools, hopefully I get to write about that experience later.
The next bottleneck was the time between 4pm and 6pm. I had said that I would play tennis with Damian and Kathryn, but I felt it would be pretty uncomfortable leaving my desk again without having figured out why my datastructure eats memory in gigabyte portions. And in addition to that I had told Thomas that I would join him for the computational geometry lecture he would give at exactly that time slot at Sydney Uni. I'm not against cloning.
At about 3.29pm I found the nasty little line messing up the fun. Damn, that felt good for I had been hunting it for quite a while (with a lot of distraction in between). Having my head focused on doing a good job since I won't be working for too much longer I went with Thomas (leaving Damian to be tormented by his wife on the court). The lecture was interesting and fun, for me it was nice going to the campus and seeing some students. I gotta say that I miss that athmosphere quite a bit and that I am looking forward to having a student's life again. Since the semester here now started again there will be some more of that the next weeks.
As the course took a bit longer than expected/planned we arrived back at NICTA around 6.30pm. I checked on the experiments I had started before we left and was quite satisfied with what I could see already. We talked about some more or less work related things and so spend enough time to see the computer finishing its taks. But after seeing that I would have some nice results to look at the next day, I decided to go home at last. That was at about 7.30pm.
Coming home there was loud music and a little guy running around in our house. That's Jack, Susi's (Adrian's girlfriend) 2-year-old son. He's great fun and wouldn't stop following me wherever I went. The others were having a BBQ in the backyard by that time, invited me to join. But my conscience kicked in and forced me to put on my running equipment and leave the house. I gotta say that it's getting dark very early again, in fact noticeably earlier each day. So I didn't see a lot, but the air was somewhat fresher/cooler than normally and I had a very nice and fast run down to Sydney Park and back. Damn, that made me tired. So there wasn't much time or energy for more than a long shower, a quick check on my email some improvised dinner and a more or less early night. Can't have been more than five minutes before I fell asleep, I am talking about going to bed before midnight here.
By the way: The original plan was to spend the time I had in front of my laptop yesterday blogging this, but unfortunately the database server of my provider had broken down - and I was disconnected.

Wow, that rocks. I just fried some pasta (as so often) and decided to give some of the chilis growing in our backyard a try. And now my mouth burned for half an hour. Actually I like that. Don't you know that feeling ordering a pizza with extra chilis on it and then every single bite just hurts but you can't stop cause you're addicted to this mixture between pain and taste? Great, just great. Hopefully some of the green ones hurry up ripening so I can get the next shot.