Geoverse

G’day,

Today I got the first deposit of money on my bank account! Woohoo! It’s the reimbursement from flight and baggage relocation costs. I’m still going to try and get a (partial) reimbursement of the rent I had to pay to hold my room before coming to Canberra. Life’s pretty good here. Always something going on at work or at home with my housemates.

At work for instance I recently got hold of an awesome computer with dual xeon processors and two monitors, just because it was lying around collecting dust. It was pretty funny when they asked me what I wanted: a pc or a mac. BUT i didnt fall for the evil temptation of choosing a mac because frankly nobody cares about a mac ;-).

Besides that I’m rebuilding the attenuation apparatus i’ll be using together with my supervisor Prof. Jackson and a technician at the lab. We’ll be done tomorrow hopefully. The lab itself isnt that big but when you walk further into the next door buildings what you see is laboratory/workshop heaven! A wideknown fact is that the SHRIMP electron probing devices are actually all build here. YES! Right here at ANU. Sweet as! Anyway, I had a little tour through all the workplaces. I was pleasantly amused with all the stuff they have here. It belittles the HPT lab at Utrecht completely ha ha.

I’m going out with some mates for a steak tonight. There is a really cheap place in Dickson where on mondays and tuesdays you can get a steak and you grill it yourself on the barbie. Plus you get some chips and salad too. Awesome!

Cheers

Today I went on a quick trip to Sydney Airport from Canberra with a good friend who was willing to drive me there and back. It takes about 3 hours to get to Sydney from Canberra as it’s a good 300km away, probably a bit less. The trip was real nice because it enabled me to see some more of Australia. From Canberra everything looked very dry but as we drove further towards the coast, the grasslands became greener and there are big eucalyptus forests too and very narrow gorges where rivers flow through. Lots of sandstone outcrops where the road cuts the hills. Sometimes you could see massive forsets and cross bedding probably indicating that these were dune deposits.

At the Airport we had no trouble finding the customs building. It took about an hour before I cleared my stuff and then we set out to collect it. It was all very straightforward. Soon enough some guy on a forklift came with my stuff and we packed it into the van and headed back to Canberra. We left at 8am and returned at 4:45pm. The van was returned immediately which was just as well because we didnt need it any longer.

I had a good supper at my friends house and rode back on my bike through the rain and thunder to my place. We’ve been having afternoon thunderstorms on and off since i arrived here in Australia. There was one particular heavy storm a couple days ago with hail and very loud thunder. Quite an experience! Anyway there goes another attempt at breaking the myth that when a dutch person visits you, rain follows. 😉

G’day.

Yesterday I have been out and about. As I have recently been able to temporarily borrow a bike, I thought this would be a great moment to check out some of the features Canberra has to offer. I have visited the botanical gardens of Canberra which contain about 7000 of 21000 species of plants Australia has to offer. It was a pleasant walk through the gardens learning all about plants I have never seen before including many eucalyptus species. The park has been layed out in such a way that the locations of the plants in the park reflect the locations of the plants in Australia. High up in the park a bush trail leads to the black mountain summit to where the Telstra communications tower stands. Admission is 6 AUD$ (3 Euro something) but it was quite worth it. I was rewarded with a great panorama over the countryside. See pics below. At around 3 pm I rode past the australian national university (ANU) to the Australian National Museum. The architecture of the museum is rather weird but probably comparable to buildings I have seen in the Netherlands he he. Below is a link to the photos i took that day. Enjoy!!

Botanical gardens, panorama, ANU, museum photos

In some pics you see a creature called the Echidna. I was really lucky to see this creature as it is one of the few mammals that lays eggs.

Well I have finally arrived in Canberra, Australia after a very long flight. There were no particular problems i encountered but it did get a bit irritating to keep having to check it and out and clearing customs at each airport. I arrived on Tuesday at 22:00 which was great because I could use some sleep by then. So I seem to be alright, without a jetlag to speak of.

The house is lovely and I have an awesome room! It’s so big! There’s not much stuff in it thus far. My housemates are great people too. As I’ll get my bearings these days, I’m sure I’ll fit right in. I’ve been to the uni today, first to get a bank account and second to say hi at RSES. It’s not very big but i’d say it’s comparable to HPT lab in Utrecht. They have some pretty sweet looking machines too. I met some professors and the dutch post-doc who works there. Everybody is very helpful to the point i sometimes dont know anymore what to say. I hope they are not queuing up favours in return he he. But I suspect that’s just the Australian way. Below is a link to some pictures I took today. Enjoy!!

Flight and Canberra/uni pics

btw I saw Ayers rock (Uluru) from the plane!!! Wicked!