Queen Mary 2

A couple of days ago we went alltogether to the Woolloomooloo bay to see the cruise ship Queen Mary 2. On this particular day the Queen Mary 2 met the Queen Elizabeth 2 (at circular quai) for the first time after a long long while in Sydney. The Queen Mary 2 is truely a big big ship as you can see in the photos..

For this special occasion massive fireworks were blown into the air. Since there were two boats, there were also two fireworks of exactly the same kind, like twin fireworks.. Cruiseships of this kind must be good business.

After the fireworks we went to have dinner in a chinese bbq restaurant, where an old chinese man chopped all the grilled ducks and porc (and probably his fingers for the special taste...) with great pleasure and pasion into little pieces. pretty good....

Cheers to the MSG mafia

29th APS in Tasmanien - Searching the devil

I spent the last week in Tasmanien for attending the 29th Australasien Polymer Symposium. The conference was actually very good and i met a lot of nice people. But enough about business, let's talk about Tasmania.
I think we all loved Tasmania. It is a wonderful island, a kind of natural paradise with weird animals and beautiful landscapes. Hobart, the capital is located in the south and has a nice harbour area and the famous salamanca square as main tourist sites.


However, leaving Hobart and exploring the island is basically the best you can do. So we hired a car and went to the Mt Field National parc, which hosts some of the tallest trees in Australia, has beautiful water falls and lakes. It is located straight in the center of Tasmania and is only 1 hour drive away from Hobart. It is really worth going there as you can see in the pictures.






On the way we found a wildlife park with coalas, kangaroohs, wallabies, emus and the deadly deadly tasmanian devil....



It was actually very nice seeing all these animals and feeding the wallabies. Later on we actually found some in the real wildlife, togethere with tiger snakes and platipus..

On Saturday we had decided to do some white-water rafting on derwent river. The river originates in the national parks, thus the water is very clean, you can even drink it. And since it was so hot, we just jumped over board from time to time to cool down on this very hot day. Simply a great ride down the river..




Great time there, 30th APS I'm coming....

MORE PHOTOS ARE HERE

http://picasaweb.google.de/andwalther
some are actually videos, like a jumping kangarooh or a moving wombat.
a little square at the bottom left corner indicates videos.

My office

Tomorrow it is time to depart to hobart in tasmania for the aps conference starting on sunday. So, everybody is getting the presentations and posters ready. Today i just want to show to all of you what a lovely view I have from my desk.. It is a really wonderful view of downtown Sydney..

These days it is a bit cloudy outside, but still pretty warm.

Besides, one of my lab mates, Tony, got a new massive tattoo on his back. Have a look.
You can see a bit of the office space behind him, if you're interested :-) ..

Fight these little bastards..

Today I have officially declared war against the mosquitoes in my apartment. After being bitten by these little bastards a hundred of times, I went to the supermarket and bought basically everything which is available. I am now supplied with the finest chemical warfares and I'm gonna use them. I have even bought an outdoor spray which is usually used to set a perimeter around your house.
I'll keep you informed about the battles.
Cheers

Melting Pot or Salad Bowl

At last I have some kind of internet access and so i can post something about my first week in sydney. In fact i wasn't really jetlagged and so i could enjoy my first weekend in sydney straight away. I went down into the city and went up the Sydney tour which guarantees you a magnificent view over sydney.




Afterwards, I went down to the Opera, which is in fact a real masterpiece of reinforced concrete, and stayed there for a while just enjoying the nice view back to the city and the harbor bridge.



Sydney appears like a very nice fusion of old and new, european, asian and american influence and the people here are extremely friendly and helpful. The combination of old and new architecture works out much better here than in London..

My first night out in sydney started with an indian restaurant near the uni in Randwick (delicious) and then we went to the Sydney Opera Bar, which is definitely a place to be. It is just wonderful to enjoy a cool drink while looking at the opera and harbor bridge. I also met Andrew and his pimped :-) colleagues there. As it turned out, they are all very nice, which was a bit unexpected for the new stars of the business world..
Well, finally I went up to andrew's office. Deutsche Bank tower, 22nd floor, view to the opera. Thank you - good night.

More soon from the melting pot..