my day

Der gute Ede Stoiber hat es aber manchmal auch reichlich schwer. Wenn die Bayern nicht so eine lange Leitung (oder Zugverbindung) hätten, dann bräuchte der Gute sich schließlich auch nicht so verrenken, um die einfachsten Sachverhalte an den Mann zu bringen. Wenigstens gibt er sich geduldig und am Ende wächst der Bahnhof an das Land, weil es ja klar ist. Worum es geht? Darum... ein wenig hat es mich an Dingsda erinnert, falls das noch jemand kennt.

The interested reader may already know that I didn't get up early. But - and that was really the best thing that day for me - I had no hangover, in fact I would claim that I was very close to being sober when I came home, after a walk from Redfern station. I didn't do a lot of things last Sunday, I sat in front of the computer listening to random music for more than two hours. Luckily Sander decided to have a BBQ at his place and as I was very hungry and had not left the house before I rode my bike up to Glebe (53 Darghan street, you stalkers). This place is very funny. It's like a small IKEA store, for real. The story to this is, that one of his flatmates works at IKEA Sydney and as the company wanted to get rid of some stuff, they got the whole furniture ... for free. Very convenient, huh?
The BBQ itself was also very nice. Although you could insult someone here by saying "you couldn't even organize a BBQ" I feel free to mention that we're really getting better with that wich (to some extend) is part of becoming an Aussie in my opinion. A lot of people canceled and so we had heaps of food (yeah, one big mistake... you don't have to bring stuff for everybody). Actually Marc and Sander were the only guys eating meat at first cause Greg is (at least sometimes) vegeterian. Please, guys, now that it's official don't bother him with that anymore, okay?
Finally, after being awake for the amazing amount of seven hours, I decided to leave, wanted to be fit for running on Monday morning. And hey, why pushing yourself on a Sunday?

Actually it was more Damian and Kathryn's Cocktail Night, but hey ... that's the rules. They invited us over to their house in Parramatta, which is a 20min train ride from the city. Marc wanted to take the ferry up the river, but the rest of the bunch was just too lazy. On the other hand we put quite some effort into getting good cocktails for that night, what involved taking up contact with my cocktail bar owning family members. And they again did a good job writing up a list with ingredients and quite a few cocktail recipes we could do with that. Well, we had real problems finding all that, the juices were harder to get than the spirits, but after cutting back some of our expectations and wished we finally made it (with the help of Kathryn and her rediscovered car) to reach the (btw. huge) appartement of our hosts.
There was quite a bunch of people there, Lanbo and her spouse David, Joachim and Mani, Marc, Sander, Nathan, a friend from uni, and of course Damian and Kathryn.
And so we did our best to get everybody satisfied with drinks in their hands all the time. I got hard on the blender, for the shaker turned out to be leaking and we needed bigger amounts anyway. It was very relaxed, we started playing card and boardgames and the time appeared to just rush by. Suddenly we had to decide on staying or leaving for the last train - guess what happened.



We talked and played on ... yeah, right, also had some more drinks and started to play a card game that has some strange side effects. We avoided the hardest parts, but still ended up serving Damian a beef drink. Beef drink? Ah, gonna introduce that, when I am back. And I have some more ideas for weired punishments thanks to Nathan. If winning the party means staying (awake) longer than everybody else I guess it was me who did it. Not that I was competitive. But in the end the European team left for the (I reckon) fifth train and it was past seven when I finally reached Newtown. Didn't manage to get up before 1600 that Sunday after calling some people before going to bed.

Bondi, Boogie Board, Batman Begins. Yesterday we went to Bondi again. It was really hot and Sander (who had slept at our couch), Marc and I simply needed the refreshing sea. I called Greg, who joined in and about an hour later we were on our way to Bondi Junction where we wanted to catch a bus to the promenade. We had no luck with the connections and waited a long time at different places. That sucks, I don't get why a city like Sydney has such stupid timetables.
And then, at Bondi, we did not even have a lot of time to hang out. Why? A strong storm came up wich literally blew the crowd off the beach, I guess this is what sandstorms in the Sahara could be like. One time my frisbee went out of control, taken by the wind, and made it further than I could have thrown it, crashing two meters next to some people into a stone wall. Wogga! Of course all this started while we were having our burgers for delayed lunch. If the weather had gotten better again we would have had the beach for the four of us, but we didn't wait that long and went back sooner than planned.
We agreed on having a dvd session at my place, we picked up some pizzas at dominos, got ourselves some wine and beer and watched Batman Begins. An entertaining movie, though people may claim that it's not close enough to the comics. It was a real quiet night and we all were pretty tired. But as the movie wasn't finished before the last trains left Newtown sation, we decided to wait for the first ones. We had some random movie sessions, hacked on Greg's Sodoku generator and it's objective c frontend (how geeky) and watched funny pictures. I also took the opportunity to call my mom at 19.00 German time - rather unusual. In the end Sander crushed another night and I went to sleep around 5:30. Yawn!

This is Peter, my boss. Isn't that a great picture (and a great hat)? He seems so relaxed though having a lot of things to care about ... and is just great fun to be with. More bosses should be like him, I reckon. His comment to me taking this picture: "Yeah, right, this is what all Australians look like sitting in their office." Don't think he was serious.

This year I totally forgot to put out my shoes. When I was reminded to that it was already the 7th, but how could you think about these traditions while enjoying the summer? And - what could be put in a pair of thongs?
But this doesn't mean that I didn't have a special day. Marc and I (once again) had invited Joachim and Mani, Damian and Kathryn (she didn't make it) and Greg to come to Marc's place in Summerhill, where we wanted to serve a typical German dinner. It was kind of a hassle getting everything done, for we played a tennis double that afternoon. But it worked out: we rode our bikes to my place, where I got ready and picked up some ingredients, rode on to Summerhill, Marc did the shopping and I started to cook, while he was getting ready. Busy schedule.
I prepared the Käsespätzle recipe of Heike's mum. This is a typical south German dish, so I am actually not the best person to show off with that. But as I live in that region, it's a vegeterian thing and spcial for our guests as well, it was our choice. Marc got a bit annoyed because of not being able to find real mozzarella - at least not in the supermarkets. For that reason the tomato mozzarella plates he dressed were somehow special but still very tasty. Of course we were not ready when the bunch dropped in which gained me some credit for my cooking skills (haha) and led to even more hunger.
According to the others the food was delicious and I have to say, that I really enjoyed a home cooked meal at a private place having that nice company and conversation.

Last Sunday Marc and I checked out another beach: Maroubra! We walked there from Cogee Beach, which is easy to reach via public transport, and for that reason discovered the next part of the cliff walk, we had seen some weeks ago. Well, in my opinion it actually is the better part, leading over some wooden bases through a swampy area. Unluckily it takes a while and at one point you have to go back to the main road (where you could also discover weird things), but within an hour it's easily done and it's definitely worth spending some time on the rocks next to it.
The big and obvious difference to Bondi and co is, that Maroubra is not as crowded but really nice and big. The other thing is, that the surf seems to be way stronger than anywhere else. I enjoyed the body surfing for half an hour till I got hit on the ground (feeling the snap in my back). The rest of the day (we made it to the beach only two hours before sunset) I spent chilling, listening to music and catching some sun. Gettint to back to Newtown afterwards took a while, but hey ... who cares?

Australia is not only far away from Germany, it's way nearer to the moon! So I had a little promenade there a week ago! Well, it also happened that there was another picture taken showing me breaking a bond given to my mate. Please have mercy, I would cause to much sensation otherwise and never be an Aussie!

As I have mentioned before, from Wednesday to Friday all of NICTA's phd and visiting students went on a retreat in Gosford, north of Sydney. We had chosen Joachim and Seokhee to come with us, the schedule was arranged to have quite an amount of group sessions as well as some time to relax and enjoy the resort we were staying in (or the beach next to it). I also had to give a talk on my current projects and my background, and as everybody's timeslot was only twenty mins, I really had to struggle with getting my slides ready. As always it was hard getting started and after a while really hard to stop, having in mind that I would have to cut out some of my material. On the whole I am quite satisfied with how it went, although I would have liked to get more feedback.
Of course I checked out another beach (maybe I'll come up with a really cool picture later) and did some sports. Playing table tennis was great fun though not a real challenge (except for my colleague Lanbo, she's quite good). Unfortunately the karaoke machine was broken, but we found an alternative: Joachim, Marc, Sander, Damian and I went to my room and had a bottle of wine when we finally decided to involve the guitars Damian had brought. That was brilliant for he is a really good player and doesn't mind singing as well. The video is way to big, but you can check out a picture!

It happened again. I am not even sure if I should write something like this, for it could lead to others not giving me ride again. But still, the world has to be aware of all of that. It was last Wednesday, we got ready for the retreat of all NICTA students at Gosford, I was about to go to Joachim's car, a Holden Vectra, which normally is an Opel Vectra, but they make it their own brand here, weird, huh? Well, I was making fun cause our car had an air conditioning system while the others were about to sweat within the 40.5°C outside and probably even more within their cars. But somehow the air in our vehicle didn't get colder. Not at all. We had already taken the Harbour Bridge when Joachim came up with the bad news. He had discovered that the engines temperature was reaching a critical level and we needed to stop the journey immediately. Shit. Why do cars always brake down when I wanna go somewhere? We ended up in Crows Nest, a suburb (is it?) north of Sydney, that has as much to offer as it's name makes you assume. Let me recall that: 40.5°C, no ac, not even a working vehicle. Luckily Joachim is insured by the NRMA (comparable to the German ADAC), after a (quick) call we got to know we would have to wait for 60 to 90 mins.
I left the group to look for some refreshing drinks and found a supermarket around 15mins down the street. So we had a least some water and icecream while sitting in the sun playing cards. I told Joachim about my track record and so he probably wasn't surprised when the car just worked being started by the mechanic ariving after a bit more than an hour. We checked that for a while and had just went on driving when I received an text by Sander telling me, how refreshing the pool was. No more jokes about other people's fate.