To Cairns and beyond...

After many days of bumming
around Sydney I am finally
moving again. This time up North,
next friday, as they are saying
it will start raining in Sydney.
I will fly with my trusted
Quantas airways to see
the Great Barrier reef and the
Daintree rainforest. I'll try to
take some photos for you
 people at home. Details below. 

YOUR ITINERARY AND TRAVEL DETAILS:

QANTAS AIRWAYS          QF0167  ECONOMY CLASS   (M)  CONFIRMED
  DEPART     04JUL08   SYDNEY                             0805
  ARRIVE     04JUL08   CAIRNS                             1110
  DEPARTS FROM:TERMINAL 1
  ARRIVES AT:  TERMINAL I
                         NVA 31DEC
 BAGGAGE ALLOWANCE: 20 KILO
-----------------------------------------------------------------
QANTAS AIRWAYS          QF0921  ECONOMY CLASS   (S)  CONFIRMED
  DEPART     11JUL08   CAIRNS                             0545
  ARRIVE     11JUL08   SYDNEY                             0845
  DEPARTS FROM:TERMINAL D
  ARRIVES AT:  TERMINAL 3
                         NVA 31DEC
 BAGGAGE ALLOWANCE: 20 KILO
-----------------------------------------------------------------

And in Sydney?

It is nice to be back in Sydney. I met up with some friends from university for a birth celebration on thursday and went to see the Sydney Biennale with Megan yesterday. Both were really nice. The Biennale is an fairly large arts event in the city and yesterday we checked out one location: Cockatoo Island. Getting there by a free ferry was fun and the Island in itself was an awesome place to visit. It used to be a Australian navy base, but has been abandoned since and now hosts the arts festival. It has cool cranes, buildings and tunnels all over the place and the art was quite nice as well. In the evening we went to see a theatre show in Surry Hills, which although I am not much into theatre, I must admit was very cool to see.

In my house in Leichhardt things are becoming quiet as most kids are now leaving for their parents for the winterholidays. This is a bit sad have come to enjoy living with them. Today or tomorrow I hope to come up with a plan to travel around Australia a bit more (North is warm) and I will let you know where I am going asap. See you!

Ah, and there should be photos on Flickr yet again.

Back from Melbourne

Hi there! It has been a while and a lot has been going on. University ended two weeks ago and I think everything was handed in succesfully, so I should be fine. Now I need to get started on looking for my graduation project, as all courses have been completed. It is a strange thought.

Just as I was enjoying my sparetime and considering finally backing up my pictures and documents, my computer crashed last week. The thing got stuck in a vicious Windows update loop. It keept booting, configuring 0% and restart - shutting down and again. It could not be persuaded to stop doing this so I has to bring out a linux boot cd to rescue my documents and now I have got a brand new Vista running on a otherwise empty harddisk.


When the Vista ordeal was over I went to Melbourne with Guido, the Italian from across the hallway. We took a cheap night bus to get there and that took 8 misrable hours. Once there Melbourne was pretty pretty cool. It has nice and big centre and exels in shopping, coffee - and wine drinking facilities. We also saw some cool expositions in the ACMI: GAME ON a retrospective on videogame design and the National Gallery of Victoria was showing the works of Alfred Stieglitz and Otto Dix among many other things. I'll try to get some photos and maybe more stories online soon, but now I have to go and check on my laundry. See you soon...

Cardboard house

Ha! Here yet again a story from Sydney. This months posts on my blog are definitely going better than last month. As promised I have been spending a lot of time at university this week and some progress at meeting the deadlines is being made. 1.5 week left to go.

Last Monday I handed in my architecture model which turned out quite nice. It is a cardboard house showing my plan for a pavilion in the park next to the Central station here in Sydney. The pavilion should provide shade and water for visitors and has a small pond in the middle of the structure. I made it like a big wall so it can be used to separate the park from a big road and a nasty looking parking lot. And night it should be illuminated by light coming from the pond. See for yourself below.




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.

Besides that I went to the world press photo on Wednesday, which was awesome and in the evening I watched "the State of Origin", which seems to be the biggest Aussie Rules footy match in the year. It is similar to rugby. New South Wales (where I live) played Queensland (neighbours to the North) and won. Good times. See you again soon!

From the News...

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.

Itinerary update

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 22.45

Singapore - London: Qantas flight QF9 on the 3rd of August 23.05, arriving the 4th 5.25

London - Amsterdam: British Midland flight BD105 on the 4th of August 10.4o, arriving the 4th 12.55

Cars Go By...

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.

Possum

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!

Koninginnedag en meer, from Sydney

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!

Sydney update...

Hi! For those who were wondering what has been going on. My parents have left for the Netherlands again and life is back to normal. It was nice that they were here. Before they left we visited the zoo and the aquarium too see all the animals that could not be bothered too show themselves while we were travelling and that was nice. We also had some pretty nice dinners.


Since my parents left I have been celebrating my refound freedom by going out in the city. On friday with some Dutch people and a Canadian - Andre Hazes still lives in Sydney and I can recommend the disco ceiling at the Iguano bar - and yesterday I went to Spectrum with some girls from university. Spectrum is a nice Indie bar kind of thing where we went to see a band. I had a pretty good time.

Now I am looking forward to a nice nights sleep and getting rid of a remarkably high pile of homework tomorrow, hoping to salvage something of my holidays...

Back in Sydney

Hi! Today I got back in Sydney from my trip with my parents. As you might have read before they are visiting me in Australia for a few weeks. The past days we have been driving down the coast in a rented car and it was nice. We took the car down Wollongong, Nowra, Ulladulla and Narooma and back up through the mountains past Cooma, Canberra and Goulburn.

We stopped to visit parks and beaches. It took us a while to find some kangaroos but in the end we did it. There was a group of 'm lying about and eating grass at Pebbly Beach near Ulladulla. We could walk up close to them, and they did not seem scared. The beach was also pretty good. For more pictures of the trip see my flickr site.

Trip to the South

Hi! Here is quick update on my visiting parents. I left you the previous week when we were in the Blue mountains. We had a good time there, but despite all of the effort we did not manage to see much wildlife. Kangaroos are apparently too lazy to hop up the mountains. Or maybe they booked a charter to Thailand as the weather was not that good, it coldest weekend so far. On the leaves of the trees here you can see that autumn is coming, but luckily the temperature is still above 20 degrees.

After we went of the Skyride (a kind of of ski lift) in Katoomba we went to Mount Victoria where we stayed in the oldest hotel of Australia: the Imperial. Or so they claim anyway. There is some very nice walking in Mount Victoria, but still no kangaroos, nor wombats, nor possums. On our way home we stopped at the Wentworth falls, which are pretty awesome.

On Monday I had to be at university again so we had to get back. But Friday we took off again to the south in a rented car (of the No Birds… company, strange name). We want to see some beaches, wildlife parks and maybe some more animals. Friday afternoon we finally saw the first kangaroo jumping across the road, which led to a lot of excitement and optimism about our expedition. But so far that’s the only one.

We did see a lot of birds (yes birds) though: Pelikans, Cockatoos (White, Black, Red, Green, Pink) Kookaburras and more of which I do not know the names. The beaches are also very nice and strangely empty. I’ll try to keep you posted on the animals. Bye!

Visiting parents

Aloha! How are you? Me, I am fine. My parents, Vincent and Rianne, have come to visit me. They arrived past Sundaynight from Kuala Lumpur at Sydney International Airport, where I picked them up and brought them to their hotel. I still have uni going on so on Monday and Tuesday we have gone for dinner and today we went to see the Blue Mountains. The trip in the train was alright and the hotel is okay. We are now staying at the Katoomba Mountain Lodge, which is not great, but okay. It looks a lot like a mountain lodge with a lot of wooden panels on the walls. After we arrived we went to see the Three Sisters and then for dinner at Niche Nosh, a great vegetarian restaurant.

Not really sure what we will do tomorrow as the weather predictions are not that good. I will let you know. Besides all that I have gotten my first Australian grades. 2 D's. I was not really sure what a D was but apperently it is good. D stands for distincion. Ratings go from Fail, to Pass, to Credit, to Distincition to Double Distinction. Or something. Hope to write more soon, now I am tired. Bye!

Sydney update: garagesale

Hi everyone! What's up? Here everything seems fine. I have got a cold that won't go away, I think it is due to excessive rowing at intolerable hours. So I have decided to take a few days off and have been spending the time on some shopping. I now have two new pairs of shorts. Pairs , yes. And a very nice Nintendo tshirt with a Super Mario cartridge on it.


Today I have been to two garage sales, which were nice with lots of junk. Not nice enough to buy though. I was hoping to find a nice lamp for my room. Now I only have a TLlamp which is very domination when on. On the walk to the garage sales I had a very nice view of the CBD, see above. Below you can the street corner I pass most and where I spend ridiculous amounts of time waiting for traffic lights. Below that is a palm tree with electricity wire which I also like. Partly due to the minimalistic cloud free sky. Hope you like it to.

That is about it. Do not forget to watch the boatrace (17.15u?). I have not yet figured out how I am to watch it as it does not seem to be on TV and it will be in the middle of the night. Tomorrow evening my parents will arrive to see what I am doing. I will try to pick them up at the airport. Houdoe!

1668575834,20 cm

Aloha! I have just calculated that I am now 1668575834,20 cm away from home using Google earth. Quite amazing. It is quite some distance and quite impresive that I now know how many cm's (cm's!) + 2 decimals (2!) I am away my house in the Netherlands. Door to door even. I used to think is was further, 20000 km, so I just received a 3300 km discount.
This morning I have been rowing in a boat, at LRC (Leichhardt Rowing Club). I was nice to be out there again and a lot better than the rowing machine I used yesterday. I am happy that I did not see any sharks, but I did see some jelly fish, which I also do not like. After that I have been to school and when that was done I took a look at Glebe.
Glebe is a nice and green neighbourhood which I pass everyday going to uni. Today a took some time to ride down Glebe point road to the waterside. There are a lot of tearooms and organic food stores it seems, and the mood was nice. The waterside had a nice park and a great view. Only too bad that it was raining, but the rain does make me feel more at home somehow.
I also dropped by my favorite motorbike and bicycle store: Deus ex Machina. They've got a very cool collection on classic and custom build motorbikes and do some extremely nice custom bicycles as well. Check m out: here.

LRC

Hi, I decided that I would try to write a little more often and a little shorter. So here is an update. Generally I am still fine, but I have seem to have caught a cold Easter was a bit slow, now the house is getting full again as everyone returns from their parents, which is nice.
To battle the cold I have some throaties. See also the picture below.



The packaging looks awesome, as you can see. Al least I think so. But the taste, is a bit awkward. The butter menthol ones are pretty okay, in awkward, slightly addictive way, but the throaties are bad. But luckily you are only allowed three boxes (!) a day. Also interesting to note is the -ies extension, which is an Australian way of shortening words. This can be used in several ways such as sunnies (sunglasses) or shorties (shorts, although it is not shorter).

Besides al this I have been rowing on the ergometer for the first time today. 2 x 20 minutes. It was not easy, but I made it. I hope to start working out on a daily basis from now. I will try to get some pictures of the club soon and I will upload them, as well as some other pictures, as soon as I can presuade flickr to give me a pro account.

Happy Easter!

Yes, easter! The feast with the eggs and rabbits. And a happy one to all. This morning I found a chocolate egg on my door, for which I am very thankful. It was nice, and very tasty. After that I had breakfast and I tried to explain easter to the Indian from across the hall. "You celebrate Christ?" Yes. We celebrate the resurrection of Jesus, who was hanged from the cross three days ago. "And what do the rabbit and the eggs have to do with it?"
It is strange to explain a feast if that you have always taken for granted. The rabbits and eggs are old pagan fertility symbols. And apparently the eggs symbolizes the spark of new life that Jesus got today. The rabbits got into easter thanks to their prolific breeding habbits. It am not entirely sure what this has to do with Jesus.
Below are my eggs, that I decorated for the occasion, to make sure that Y could eat them.


Besides that nothing much is going on. I was hoping that I might go on a nice trip, but apparently I didn't. Most people in my house are visiting their parents, so its a bit quiet. I am trying to get my portfolio together, which is something long overdue. And I have been looking at graduation projects. The portfolio is a bit difficult because I seem to have very few images of my work, so I am working on that. I hope it will become very nice, ill show you when it is done.

Now I will go and bake an easter pizza. Should you happen to run into good graduation projects, do let me know.

Easter Update

Hi to all! This week has been ranging from really busy, to really slow. I haven't had the time to do anymore surfing, maybe next week again. I had "heaps" of homework. Heaps is the local word to express "a lot", it can also be used for "very much" by making it "heaps and heaps" and for very very much, the correct sentence would be "heaps and heaps and heaps". Etc. So I spend most of the previous weekend on assignments that were due on Monday and Wednesday.

On Monday I had my architecture course again, it is still a lot of fun. We started out drawing an animals movement on A2 and I am making a frog. Jumping. This week we had to try and capture that movement in 3 dimensions using wires. I think it turned out pretty well, it is only too bad that I do not (yet) have any good pictures of the stuff I am doing here. For next week we will have to get the movement into a 3D solid model. Only after that we might need to turn into anything that anything to do with architecture.

On Tuesday I went to the Maya animation course. This one is going pretty fast, and I am going to have to put in some extra time to get better at Maya. The course is only 3 hrs and not so much homework but it is racing through all Maya's applications, so I will have to do a little extra practice. I am also making a scenario for my short movie. Not yet really sure what it is going to be a about.

On Wednesday my first assignment for the Human Environment was due. It was a small ergonomics project which I did on record store displays. Because I wanted to drop this subject and had not put in much effort before, so that meant heaps of work in the weekend and on Tuesday. But I think it turned out pretty well.

After handing in the project I went to a journalism masterclass by two Dutch reporters: Robert Knoth and Antoinette de Jong. They did some very impressive photography and interviewing on a few nuclear disaster areas in Russia. The work was very impressive, but the motivation was a bit strange. They presented themselves as objective reporters, but their work carries a huge anti-nuclear bias and was paid for by Greenpeace. For journalists they did not seem very objective, and I found that odd. As artists they were very good.
Next I went to take a look at a exhibition in the library of 10 UTS Architecture students. This was cool, but the exposition a bit short. So I walked along Circular Quay to the Museum of Contemporary Art. The MCA was hosting a very nice exhibition of Fiona Hall 's work. She has been exploring the intersection between nature and culture for the past 4 decades and uses a wide variety of media. Very nice. The top floor of the museum hosted an Aboriginal Bark Painting expostion, showing the Arnott's (see TimTams) Collection. Bark Paintings are drawings made on pieces of bark, depicting all kinds of Aboriginal themes, such as kangaroos. I am not really into this, but if you like kangaroos: check 'm out.


As you might gather from the story above I have been doing a lot of walking, during which I tried to take pictures of the biggest and ugliest buildings I could find. These pictures are now on Flickr and you can check m out by clicking here. To finish this very culturally productive day I went to have s few beers at the Abercrombie Hotel. The bar smelled almost as bad as Wolbodo at home, and they were have a small art exhibition where the hotel used to be. Nice.

As the story I already very long, I will not bother much longer. But, should you be in Holland and if you happen to be going to Motel Mozaique (11 april?), go and see Pivot. I saw them yesterday at the Oxford Art Factory and it was good.

Today I have been relaxing. It is a bit quiet now, as most of my housemates have gone to their parents for easter. So, I am not really sure what I am going to do now. Bye!

Pi day & Surf Succes!

Hi! and a happy Pi day to all! Today has been a very nice Pi day for me with two joyfull occasions: 1: I had the privilige to surf on a very yellow board today - nice - and 2: I managed to stand up on my board for distances up to 30 meters. So, a good day it was.

Due to some technical dificulties with the ridiculously bad internet I will have keep this post a bit short. Even here at the university pub, the internetspeed and quality is ridiculous. The good news is that all Australians apologize for it when you mention it and Australia is constructing a new cable to Guam (?!), which will, in the future, connect Australia to America which will make life better. So, untill next time!

Whats going on in Sydney?

Aloha! Sorry about the lack of posts lately. If you were wondering: I am still alive, posting just was not on my mind. Just did not feel like it. The previous weekend it was a bit down, because everything here in Australia just seems too go so slow. Long waits for reply’s, long waits at traffic lights, long waits for trains, long waits in the supermarket, long waits for everything. Aaaargh. Also, UTS rowing club told me after three weeks of trying to reach them that there was no rowing for me, school was still boring and I got an email from university the course I wanted to change could not be changed. Crap.

But I have been feeling a lot better since Monday morning. As the introductions for everything are over University seems to be getting more interesting, I contacted another rowing club and have put in a new e-request to change my course. Things seem to be going somewhere again and I have found some peace with the laid-back Australian attitude. It takes some getting used to. Long waits at traffic lights, long waits for trains, long waits, long waits; No worries mate.

The weather has been great. The Monday (Architecture) and Tuesday (Maya) classes were good, and I tried an extra course, Design for Theatre, which seems nice. And on Wednesday the class I wanted to change got a little better, which was good because on Thursday my e-request got rejected again. We also tried to go surfing on Thursday, but because the surf school was fully booked, we have to wait, yet again, until next Thursday. So we spend the day on the beach and going to a party.

On Saturday I went to take a look at the Australian National Rowing Championships on the Sydney 2000 Olympic race course. The race course is really cool with 9 lines, and lies sheltered against the mountains. Next to the race course is a warm up lake. Nice. The Nationals are a bit different then in the Netherlands, because they’re spread out over the entire week so athletes can compete in all boat types. What was also very cool was that every club had brought their own tent, which gave the spectator area a cheerful look. Today I had an appointment at Leichhardt Rowing Club to see what they are doing. It is a civilian club, it is not so big but it seemed nice. Maybe a bit expdensive. I am going to give it a try next Tuesday. At 5.15 am.

Pictures will follow when internet is a little faster then today. Cheers!