Tim Minchin

Went and saw Tim Minchin at the Sydney opera house last night. Pretty funny dude. He sang the two songs in the following video at the performance



worth a look

Graduation

Thursday night was my graduation ceremony. Mum and dad came down to see me wear some funny robes and a funny hat. Although my garb was a little more extravegant than the normal undergraduates (lots of red) it was nothing compared to the academic peacocks who adorned the stage. The evening was the usual graduation fare sit down and wait while everybody congratulates each other and give each other awards and then walk across stage when your name is read out. Because I graduated as a PhD. I also got the title of my thesis read out (Kinetic and mechanistic study of the reversible addition fragmentation chain transfer process) which was widely understood and appreciated by the audience :)

Anyway pretty good night and a great outfit.

The next night we went out to dinner with a few people from the lab dad looks like he wants grandchildren... opps jennifer better get on that.

Big Ships

As was reported all over the Australian news (Andreas' blog being the most reputable) there were two giant ships in Sydney last week. Luckily my new desk has views of the harbour so I had a great view of the Queen Mary 2 docked at Garden Island.



And could watch the little sister Queen Elizabeth 2 making its way down the harbour



Of course at this distance you can't really get a feel for how big the ship actually is so we joined the rest of Sydney down by the water trying to get a good photo of the boat. Two big boats is not that interesting the best thing has been the political blow out over the issue. The NSW state election is in a couple of weeks and the liberal opposition is using the traffic chaos (Due to everyone in the city coming to the harbour to see the QM2) as a example of bad governance. Even the federal health minister piped up about it today... It just shows how much a shambles the NSW liberal party is in. They focus energy on a freak boat visit rather than terrible public transport, terrible use of public space, slowing economy, and huge rental crisis. Two groups of idiots... hard to choose who to vote for.

Back down under

So my dream life in Bayreuth is over. No more Haxe and Beer on a Monday night. No more decent soccer on TV. I'm now working for a company in the city and no more lazy university days...

I've been so slack with this blog and people were giving me some shit so I am going to get it back together... hopefully a couple of posts per month! If i can find the time of course :)

Frohe Weihnacht

So it is Christmas! The whole family is here in Germany to celebrate. Unfortunately this year it is so warm in Europe that there is no chance of a white Christmas. So to see some snow we headed south and drove through the Alps. I'll put some photos up after Christmas. I've also finished my job here in Bayreuth. So the party post doc is finished and on the 3rd of January I'm going back to Australia. Bit of a mixed feeling about it seeing the last nine months have been great fun with great people. I'll just have to come back again.

For a Christmas gift for all of you there is a video of a few people from the lab singing Christmas songs at the work Christmas party... Happy Christmas to all of you and hopefully see you soon.

Tania's Blog

Tania has just started a blog about her travels here in Germany. Its got some photos and things so check it out if you have a few minutes.

http://TeaZerz.blogspot.com

If you are typing it into your address bar make sure you get it correct. I'm sure if you mistype it you will end up at a pr0n page :)

Ski'in Dirty

So unfortunately I didn't win the trip to Paris. Apparently not sexy enough :( But I was able to drown my sorrows with a skiing trip to Austria. Andreas, Darkeyah, Tania and I hired a car and drove the 3.5 hours to the Alps for three days of alpine adventure.

The town next to the slopes is called Soelden. In the deep winter (jan-mar) the snowline is all the way down to the valley and so you can catch a ski lift from the main street of the town and when you are finished for the day ski to your hotel. We were a little bit early so we still had to drive back and forth to the main ski fields. The ski runs in Soelden are super long and run over of two glaciers. You catch a ski lift up to ~3300 metres and then have a good 20 minute ride all the way back to the lift again. The snow was excellent and the best thing about going a little early is that the slopes were not crowded.

I thought I would do something a little different this time so made a video compiled of photos and videos taken using our digital cameras. You can see we found another use for the bunny suit :)




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TAGS: Austria, Ridin Dirty, Soelden, Video, skiing

Win a Trip to Paris?? UPDATE

Well tried to upload my photo. Its been about two days and still not there. I tried doing some voting but realised it is one of the most annoying things ever. They are ordered by when they were uploaded so even if my photo does appear it will be at the end of about 300 photos... Pretty shit website design. So if you are really really bored then vote. Otherwise even I am thinking I can't be bothered... vote?

Looking at the other photos is a little interesting. There seems to be these three dudes who bought the costume and then stood in the street in front of the store and got photos of every single person that walked past. There is curly haired guy, guy with the black headband under his suit, and guy who purses up his face in all the photos.


At least curly haired guy is trying to be enthusiastic. The one with the black headband looks like one of those people who hand out leaflets for warehouse computer sales and dodgy mobile phone offers.

There is also the dude who went out for a night on the town and took photos with whomever he could find. Between the four of them they have uploaded about 200 photos on the website. If you know one of these guys (or can travel to Berlin where the curly headed guy lives - look at the yellow sightseeing bus in the background) sit them down and explain slowly how uploading 100's of photos isn't going to increase their chance of winning (or failing that, kick them in the balls which would be more satisfying).

Another thing you notice is the guys who insist on wearing sunglasses to "protect" their identities... I mean if you are going to wear a giant pink bunny suit at least show your eyes :) Wearing sunglasses isn't going to make it cool. Revel in the idiocy

Win a Trip to Paris??

As I said here is a link for the photo competition...

So if I can mobilise my loyal readership (of 5 - 10 people) to follow this link:

LINK

Them vote everybody else as one bunny and mine as three bunnies (naturally!). Unfortunately there are a shitload of photos so might take a while to scroll to my photo. But negative votes help me out as well so if you get bored just stop...

Here is a copy of the photo just in case you've forgotten what I look like :)


Danke Danke


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TAGS: Costumes, Competition, Photo

Halloween Party

I don't usually go to too many halloween parties. It is basically an American thing noone I know in Darwin or Sydney really had enough motivation to organise one. But seeing it is another way to make people spend money on crap (like huge bland pumpkins) the tradition has started to move to Germany. A guy from my work, Felix, moved into a new place earlier this year and seeing the 1st November is the religious all saints day and, hence a holiday in Bavaria (and nowhere else in Germany), he organised a housewarming/halloween party. He gave very clear instructions that everybody should come dressed up. By coincidence a chicks clothing shop called Tally Weijl is running a promotion with the most ridiculous costume I have seen. When you buy clothes from them they also try and sell you a costume that if you take a photo of you wearing your sexy new clothes and your boyfriend wearing the oufit you can win a trip to Paris. So for halloween I went dressed as a giant bright pink rabbit... by far the most ridiculous thing I have ever worn.

















It took a little while to convince me to go through with it and now I think about it there is nothing that "spooky" about a rabbit but I suppose the nightmare is that you have to wear something like that to a party. If I ever run for public office I am sure these photos will be leaked to the press :) So now I own a rabbit suit and I'm sure it will be making an appearance somewhere else. We are planning a ski trip later this month so I'll take the costume and can be the ultimate skibunny.



Now the next mission is also on hand. I am going to enter a couple of the photos in the Paris competition. I'll upload some photos in the next couple of days and then post the link.... thanks in advance :)








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TAGS: Halloween, Costumes, Bayreuth,

First Snow

Quick post just to say (and show) that the first snow of the season is falling in Bayreuth. The photos don't do it any justice but it snowing quite hard and everything is slowly getting covered in white. Although everyone is complaining that is too cold today (max -1) I think it is beautiful so took a video. Then thought I might end up like that dude from American Beauty.

"It was one of those days when it's a minute away from snowing and there's this electricity in the air, you can almost hear it. And this bag was, like, dancing with me. Like a little kid begging me to play with it. For fifteen minutes. And that's the day I knew there was this entire life behind things, and... this incredibly benevolent force, that wanted me to know there was no reason to be afraid, ever. Video's a poor excuse, I know. But it helps me remember... and I need to remember... Sometimes there's so much beauty in the world I feel like I can't take it, like my heart's going to cave in."

worst part of a generally decent film ;)

The ground is still too warm so it won't stick around for long... I hope I can keep appreciating it even when I am frozen to the core in a month or so.








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TAGS: Snow, First Snow, Bayreuth, Video

Jai Yin und Yan' s Traumhochzeit

A couple of weeks ago the labs of MCII (where Jai Yin works) and PCI (where Yan works) got together and organised a wedding reception. Jai Yin and Yan got married (in quasi secret) in Munich a couple of months ago so we decided we needed to celebrate. The idea evolved from a simple German dinner at one of the Franconian restaurants to a full-on traditional German reception. So we told the couple a date which they had to keep free and then organised the rest in secret.

The first step was the decorations. Luckily Manuela has some great wedding decoration ideas so she organised buying and/or making the decorations (with manual labour from MCII). The photos below show the before and after shots of the table...











The best part of the wedding was the German (Franken?) traditions. The first task was the wedding couple had to cut through a log together. This symbolises the first obstacle the pair will face and show that they can work together. So they got a blunt saw and spent about 15 minutes hacking through some wood while the rest of us drank champagne, great! Next came the bouquet throwing, buffet dinner and drinking. Then we played a wedding game where the happy couple are asked a question and answer with a piece of paper (ie they cannot see what the other person is answering). For example "who makes most of the decisions in the relationship?" (answer: our parents) or "who does the most work around the house?" (answer: both put their own name up).


Next was a wedding dance and cake cutting and more beer. Then my favourite part of the evening. While Jai Yin was distracted Yan was kidnapped by the people from PCI and taken to another pub. Then Jai Yin had to take the wedding flowers and search from bar to bar to find his bride. This included an obligitory shot at each pub... So the half the party walked around Bayreuth stopping at about three places before finding her. Was a pretty original wedding present.







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TAGS: Bayreuth, Wedding, Traditions

Light up the sky like a flame...

Finally I have been recognised...



and online here

The local paper came around looking for a generic "chemist in the lab" photo to accompany a story about Uni Bayreuth so Jai Yin and I obliged. To explain the photo I am stirring a flask of water while Jai Yin puts an empty flask in some liquid nitrogen. The magic of the media :)

Oktoberfest!!!

After a few weeks of just hanging around in Bayreuth and visiting the local bars and restaurants the last week has been crazy. Started off with a wedding party for a couple of people from the Uni (which ill talk about next blog entry) then Tania arrived from Townsville and finally pgiddy flew across and a group of us went to Oktoberfest.

Unlike last time we hired a 9 seater van and party bussed our way to the Wiesn. So by 8am we were speeding at 160kph to Munich and by 11am we were inside the festival. Although it took us about half the time to get to Munich than last year it turned out we were a little late... All of the big beer tents were full and had closed their doors. So we wandered around trying to get into places but without any luck. Even the beer gardens surrounding the tents were splitting at the seams with people well on the way to being trashed. So desperate for a beer we walked up to a little restaurant tent and they managed to squeeze us in (with instructions to be out within 1.5 hours). After a beer and some Bavarian fare we headed back onto the street (decidedly more happy!). A crucial experience of oktoberfest is to drink beer and then ride one of the rollercoasters and try to keep it down. Everyone passed that test and seeing it was impossible to get a beer at the festival we headed into the city. On the way out (around 3pm) we passed two guys who obviously started a little early and had passed out together on the street... classy!!







Munich city was also ridiculously packed as everyone who cannot get into the beer tents heads to the city. We got into the Hofbrauhaus and found a table in the back corner and the drinking started in earnest. I decided I would drive back to Bayreuth so only had a Radler (German name for chandy) although it was one litre so in fact was the same and having a normal 500ml beer. With drinking games and German songs it was a great party. After a few litres of beer we headed back onto the street and on to a small cafe for final drinks. Patrick and Andreas managed to drink 5 mass beer and even had a couple of chasers on the 2.5 hour drive back to Bayreuth. An obligatory stop at Burger King (and compulsory wearing of BK crowns) finished of a hilarious Saturday.

Creepy

Saw the trailer for a new doco the other day and it is so creepy thought I would post it.



It's been ages since I've posted anything because it has been pretty quiet in BT. Just going out to local places and working. No beer festivals for a long time. Tania comes next week and we are going to Oktoberfest will have something to write about then :)