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Hi, here again, live from Sydney. I do not read the newspaper much here in Australia, but when I accidentally do there is usually something good. This week I got hold off the Daily Telegraph and I found a bit on the second page which I would like to share with you. And I quote:"Chair sniffer denies quokka abuse""CHAIR-sniffing Liberal leader Troy Buswell says there is "absolutely no substance" to report he once did something inappropriate to a quokka. Mr Buswell, who has admitted to sniffing the chair of a former Liberal Party colleague and snapping the bra of a Labor staffer, was questioned on the rumours yesterday. ... Asked if he had done anything inappropriate to a quokka, Mr Buswell replied: "No". ..."
Taken from the Daily Telegraph, thanks Daily Telegraph, on the 15th of May.
Should you wonder what i quokka is: it is a small furry creature, a bit like a very small kangaroo. They can be considered cute and I do hope nothing inappropriate has happened to any of them. I regret that we do not often have these stories on politics in the newspapers at home.Besides this there is not much to report from this faraway country right now. I celebrated my birthday with my house last Thursday with pizzas and some drinks. Besides that all I have is a lot of deadlines coming up and I will be spending a lot of time getting them sorted out. After that all will be good again with the winter holidays coming up.
Today I changed my flight back home. My return to the Netherlands will be a bit later than previously planned. I am staying in Australia for a bit longer, and will go to Malaysia for about two weeks. Because I am not allowed (?! Damn you, Qantas and British Airways) to go to Kuala Lumpur directly, I will be stopping over in Singapore. From there I am planning to take, a hopefully scenic, railway into Malaysia. I will be back in Delft on the 4th of August. My new flight schedule is listed below. So, I will you in a few months...Sydney - Singapore: Qantas flight QF31 on the 20th of July 16.55, arriving the 20th 22.45Singapore - London: Qantas flight QF9 on the 3rd of August 23.05, arriving the 4th 5.25London - Amsterdam: British Midland flight BD105 on the 4th of August 10.4o, arriving the 4th 12.55
Hi! I was just playing with my roadtrip photos in this program called "Photoshop". I like the result, as the gray has now gone from my photos. Nice! See you around, maybe.
Aloha, yesterday I got back from the trip to Sonja's parents. They live in Tweed Heads on the Goldcoast. Sonja wanted to visit for mothersday and Guido, the Italian, and I could come along. In a straight line the trip would have been 650 km, thank you Google Earth, but on the road it comes down to about 850. That's quite a trip.We left on Friday after lunch and arrived at Tweeds Heads round 01.00 at night. Trip was pretty long, about 12 hours. If you want to compare: from Amsterdam to Berlin would be 570 km, Amsterdam to Paris would be 430. Driving this long in Europe would get you from Amsterdam: either half way through France, or to Switzerland or maybe just to the Czech Republic. Here in Australia it gets you to your parents' house.The trip was really cool to do though. Not only does it put travel in Europe into perspective, we also got to see a lot of Australia that I had not seen before. We stopped at some beaches and had a nice Subway sandwich. When it got dark we passed the Big Banana and the Big Prawn. Australia makes up what is lacks in culture in two ways: 1) Sports, 2) Making Big "things" and putting dodgy entertainments in them. Or so it seems. Because it was dark I can't show you any photo's of my own, but follow the links to check 'm out.
On Saturday we had some time to spend on the Goldcoast. In the morning we went to the beach and after that we went for lunch twice. Nice. After that we went up the coast stopping at some nice beaches and enjoying the weather. It is always nice and warm on the Goldcoast. We went up to Surfers Paradise, which was a bit of a let down. It consist of mostly big and nasty flats on the beach and a massive mall. When we got back we went for dinner with Sonja's parents, which was good.
Sunday we had to go back to Sydney, but went shopping first. We went to a Australian mall outside of the town. While Sonja was being outfitted by her mum, I got myself a new pair of trousers, a pair of new Hawaianas and a new wallet. I am quite happy about that. On our way back we stopped at Byron Bay where there were no whales about, but we did see some kangaroos in the sunset later on. We arrived at home in Leichhardt at 1.30. Quite the trip, for some pictures go to my Flickr site by clicking here.
Hi! So what's new? Not much, but I did see a possum yesterday night. I say one in the zoo the other day, but now it was in the "wild". Or in the city actually. I just sat there when I walked out of the rowing club. At first I thought it to be a cat, but then I noticed its awkward shape, small paws and big pink nose. It did not seem interested in me as I walked up to it, even when I got close. I thought about picking it up, but remembered people telling me that they are mean and vicious, will not hesitate to bite you and smell bad. So I decided not to. Besides that I have been to the NSW Art Gallery where there was a Bill Viola show on accompanied with at talk by the head curator which was was pretty nice. The curator man did not tell me much more than I had already seen as he was just describing the work, but I least I had seen it right. I also had a Cold Rock icecream, which seems to be quite something around these parts. The concept is that you can choose you ice and you can choose your add ons (sweets, candybars, fruits, nuts, etc) which will then be thrown on a cold board and crushed and mixed together. It was good.So I am supposed to be off in the car, going up North to the Gold Coast. I'll try to take some pictures for the folks at home. See ya!
Aloha from Sydney again. It has been busy the past weeks with a lot of university work deadlines last week. On Tuesday I had to hand in an Animatic, a rough version of my animation in Maya and on Wednesday I had a report due for a interior redesign for a bus. Creating the animation thingy was rather more difficult than I expected. Besides animating the whole thing using Maya I needed to stitch the frames together in Fcheck and the clips needed editing and adding sounds using Final Cut. Of both of which I know absolutely nothing, so I took me some extra time. All in all it was fun to do and if I ever manage to compress it sufficiently I will put it on youtube. Untill then you'll just have to imagine how good it was. The bus thing had to be handed in the day later and was subsequently under prepared. This resulted in me working till late to finish the stuff and thus oversleeping in the morning. Awaking in panic, I only made the deadline just in time. After a afternoon of recovery in the park I went out to celebrate Koninginnedag (Queensday, the national holiday in the Netherlands celebrating the Queens birthday) at the reception organized by the Dutch Embassy in Sydney. I arrived rather undressed at this 3 part suit orange tie party, but was admitted anyway. Sadly I missed the accordion player, although I suspect he might not have showed up. Luckily there was a lot of Heineken, herring and cheese goodness to make up for that. The afterparty was in a nice terrace house in Surrey Hills where about 100 Dutch people made life miserable for the Australians, so we got kicked out at 1.30, but good times were had all in all.The weekend has been easy going for me. Went out to party with the people living on my house on Friday getting home at 5.30 in the morning, which was late, but nice. I took the ferry to Manly beach on Sunday which was really nice. It takes about half an hour through the harbour from the city to Manly, and the sun was out. Pretty darn good. Next weekend we, me and some other people from my house, will be going to the Goldcoast, 10 hours North, visiting the parents of someone in my house. I think it is going to be fun, but I'll let you know. Bye!
The whole thing took the most of the previous weekend to make and is about 110x60x30 cm big. While I was taking it to uni on the bus a guy almost stepped on it. Holy crapola. But in the end all was well and it got me a "high distinction". Which is nice. The grades here in Australia are different, they range from fail, to pass, to credit, to distinction, to high distinction.
