rastplats

The first days of lectures has been good and so far all my courses seem interesting, luckily for me this year they’ll use BGP instead of EGP in the routingclass. The course workload will probably be pretty tough though, there are a lot of assignments and handing them in late is not an option over here. Time to get my hands dirty in code..

Tomorrow there’ll be an outdoor moonlight cinema downtown at the Botanical Gardens, the film however is a sequel. To remedy the fact that not many of us had seen the first film, a small moonlight cinema was set up on Jonnos roof tonight. Although being a bit chilly we had a great time and the movie was fun as well (I’ve already forgotten the title).

Since arriving in Melbourne I’ve only blogged about what I’ve been doing and whom I’ve met, not much has been said about my studies which is the actual reason for me moving across the globe. Given that I have my first lecture tomorrow morning now seems like a good time for an academic update. During the first semester I will be studying the following subjects:

:: Decision Support Systems :: Protocols, Performance and Routing :: Multi-Agent Systems :: Real Time & Fault Tolerant Systems

During my second semester I’ll move more towards databases and distributed systems which is the area in which I hope to do research on later, distributed transactions and database parallelism. My current plan is to try to purse a PhD degree as soon as possible, hopefully in less than two years. If everything goes according to plan I’ll be spending quite a few years down under.. keep your fingers crossed!

Moving halfway across the globe puts you far far away from the people you love but also far away from everything you’ve accumulated around you to make your life pleasant.. fixing this is way easier than the poeple though so that was my mission for the day. In the 35° C weather I headed down to Preston Market to stock up on cooking supplies to make myself at home. Left on the shoppinglist is a good knife, the ones we have in the kitchen where I live is utterly worthless for anything else than killing ants. It’s the small things you miss when they’re not there.

Speaking on investments, I bought a surfboard yesterday and signed up for another surflesson.. surfing is without a doubt the most fun you can have when the water isnt frozen (and isnt residing in a highball glass). I got the board really cheap from a guy in the surfclub, although it’s not really the kind of board I was shopping for. I had planned to get a mini malibu board, a long easily surfed beginnerboard.. the one I got is a shortboard which require big waves. To quote Geoff from the surfclub: “This way you’ll be forced to learn real surfing!”.. The other guy in our swedish posse, Ted, got a board as well so from now the weekends are booked =). It’s going to be shitloads of fun and I’m really looking forward to it. This time around I’ll bring a sleepingmat though, sleeping on the ground didnt really perform miracles on my back during the last trip.

The other day I was at the Melbourne Aquarium which was a blast. The place is just big enough so that you don’t get tired of it halfway through. During a small lecture there I learned that more people die in Australia each year from falling vendingmachines than from sharkattacks.. the human species never fail to amaze me. Check out the marine wildlife on the pictures below.

The surftrip kicked off at the same evening as the Welcome Week Party at the Uni so the buses got loaded up at the door of the Eagle Bar, needless to say there was quite an atmosphere during the ride to the camp. We arrived quite late and more or less headed straight to bed since the surflesson was to start quite early.

After having a bit of breakfast and stretching out stiff limbs from a night spent on the hard packed soil we headed down to the beach for the surflesson. Our camp was situated about 100 meters or from the beach nicely tucked away among trees to protect from the wind. The lesson commenced at the beach where we were instructed on how to catch the wave and how to get up on the board when we did.. (if we did). Catching the wave requires some timing but once on it getting up wasnt all that tricky since we used beginnerboards. Manoeuvering the board is quite similar to snowboarding except for the lack of bindings. After about two hours in the water every muscle ached and we headed for camp and a long busride along the Great Ocean Road. The scenery along the road is breathtakingly beautiful with the ocean on one side of the car and green rolling hills on the other. The endstation of our daytrip was the 12 apostles, huge limestone cliffs, which majestically rise from the sea. The remainder of the day was spent heading back and then throwing together a large bbq which ended far into the night, chilling at the beach with a few beers.

Since most of us got to bed at around 2AM and the sunday surfsession started at 9AM we seemed to be off for a slow day.. until we hit the water. I have no idea where all the energy came from but suddenly noone was neither tired nor hungover. The rest of the day was spent in Torquay, the world capitol of surfing (at least according to the locals).

All in all I had a great weekend and I’ll definately pick up surfing, after all.. why come to Australia if youre not going to surf?

The last few days have been pretty hectic so the surfpictures are still awaiting some much needed TLC. Hopefully I will have time for that tonight.

I have received a lot of mail from you guys and I really cherish that, unfortunately I have been quite shitty at replying and I apologize for that. I havent spent so little time at home since during the dot-com times when I had a bed in my office. I’ll get back to you all though, take care folks!

Having just returned from a weekend surftrip at the Great Ocean Road with the La Trobe Surfteam my entire body is killing me.. the parts which arent sore from surfing are aching from sunburn and if theres any parts left they’re numb from lack of sleep. I’m way too tired to write or post any pictures (about 300 taken) for now but I’ll probably hit it up tomorrow. I did have a great time though and I’ll definately get a surfboard of my own now.. surfs up and time out.

The housing situation seems to have been resolved prior to even becoming a minor problem.. The rest of the swedish posse (neither of which currently have any decent accomodation) are renting a 4-bedroom house down in Preston and since Elin is leaving in six months, when my current lease ends, I’ll move in when she moves out. Sweet.

In the evening we headed down to the local bottleshop to get a few beers when I spotted a bizarre sign (see flog for evidence) on the pokiesshack nextdoor (kind oof a whitetrash slotmachines-only casino here in Australia). Photographing the sign did however alert the management who turned up at the door together with the hired muscles to see what was going on.. the level of security in this country is of Orwellian magnitudes. After some explanations we made friends and the muscles went back inside. What I wouldnt do to get the pictures for you..

This weekend we’ll head off for the coast to do some surfing and checking out the great ocean road so there wont be any updates until next monday. Expect some surfingshots and great scenery by then. Have a great weekend, I will!

Last night we headed into town, after having had a few beers on campus, for a night out in our new hometown. When I came back to my room I had a new encounter with the local wildlife, a quite large spider in my roof, but since it seemed like quite an enterprise to do anything about it I let it be and went to bed. Nothing much out of the ordinary happened today (partly as a result of yesterday), the authorities raiding the trams for fare evaders was probably the most exciting event of the day. Went into town in the evening and had a small photosession.

First day of activities at campus all done and over with. The day started off with welcome speeches and social activities for making connections, the international students at my faculty seem to be mostly asian and indian. The day also saw some presentations of the sports clubs at campus and instantly we (the swedish crew) had signed up for a weekend surftrip starting this friday at the great ocean road.. expect some photos of us doing newbie surfstuff on lame waves on monday. The snowsports club was also there and I’ll probably sign up with them as well and try to do some backcountry skiing at the local alpes, Mt. Buller.

In the evening when I came back from campus where we hung out at Teds place I found the reason for my waking up 4 AM last night.. the cricket from hell. Not that I mind the local animal life but bugs the size of my fingers that are as noisy as ten 7-year-olds at a McDonalds party is just plain evil to have in your bedroom.. it turned into mortal combat with me coming out winning and he (it?) ending up in the trashcan. Revenge is sweet.

I’ve been hanging out with a few fellow swedish students these past few days which has been great fun. Exploring a foreign city is always more fun when done in groups. Yesterday we had a small picnic in a park near Queen Victoria Markets before heading out for some noodles (asian-style food is everywhere here). In the evening we had a few beers at a pool hall. Today we headed out to St. Kilda Beach which was the place to be on a hot day, endless streches of beach and countless cozy bars and restuarants. In the evening we roamed the streets of Melbourne without a clear aim.. all in all a very nice day.

Tomorrow is the first day at school which will commence with a welcome festival for all of us international students, having had a few days vacation the slow start is welcome. More will come on this tomorrow..

Just a few notes on all things Australian..

Driving : Everyone seems to own a car.. the roads are choked every hour of the day and the public transports always have room. Not only do they drive a lot, they all drive on the wrong side of the road.. (which make perfect sense since all cars are broken and have the steeringwheel at the wrong side too). At a recent headcount less than 10% of the 3.5 million citizens used public transports.

Coffee : They have a lot of coffeeshops but one is not to be fooled, not all of them have a barista. A lot of them doesnt know what an espresso is.. some of them even have espresso in the name of the shop. (Hint: Ask for a short black)

Liquor Stores : Shopping for booze is way easier than shopping for milk and toiletpaper.. they even have drive-thru stores for buying beer.

B.Y.O : Bring your own.. You can actually bring your own drinks into the restaurant and have them while eating. I cant decide on whether I like this or not.. it takes some time getting used to.

I took a long walk/tramride around town today and shot a lot of photos which can be seen below. Slowly I’m getting to know my way around this gigantic city.

Some spammers are really taking advantage of the modern technology, I got the below instructions in a SPAM mail advertising university degrees.. perhaps they should have enrolled themselves..

--Re-moval instructions:Fax your email to the below # (best/acurate method) please allow 7 days for removal (206) 203 - 0120

I paid my first visit to the La Trobe campus yesterday to register for my program and perform the paperwork. It takes about five minutes on the tram to get to campus, to get to the Beth Gleeson building where I’ll be spending my days an additional five minutes walk is required. The campus is huge but contains almost everything one needs such as banks, restaurants and bookstores and so on. The campus can be seen on the photos from today.

In the afternoon I took the tram downtown to check out Melbourne which seems to be a really nice town with a lot of sushibars. Walking around aimlessly I tried not to get lost.. and failed. Luckily the city center is pretty easy to navigate buy following the tramlines so within soon I was back on track. New attempts at getting horribly lost are planned for today.

Bara - Copenhagen - Amsterdam - Kuala Lumpur - Melbourne

I’ve finally settled in at the motelroom in Melbourne after a very long journey. It kicked off at 3.30 in the morning in Bara Sweden when I left for the first flight between Copenhagen and Amsterdam. For some reason the attendant couldnt enter my passport number into the system with check-in being delayed. To make up for the trouble, the excess weight of my luggage was overlooked. A good start and I was off for Amsterdam.

It was my first visit at Schiphol at I wouldnt mind it being my last, so many tacky stores and so few places to sit. It almost made Heathrow seem clean.. The four hours passed pretty eventless except for the shakedown I recieved by the security officer when boarding the plane. It was far more thorough than anything I got taught in the military when guarding fighter airplanes. Given the early start I slept most of the flight which passed fairly quick. For some reason I never sleep for more than one hour at a time on planes.

The Kuala Lumpur airport was a welcome change from Schiphol being well cleaned, having lots of places to rest and free internet access. Having spent three hours waiting for boarding, the delay notices we’re starting to appear. Due to technical reasons boarding was prohibited and would commence shortly.. it didn’t. After three delay notices we we’re released from the gate with a transit pass to be able to get something to eat. Upon returning to the gate we we’re informed of a gate switch, the plane had been grounded. All in all we had close to four hours delay before finally heading for Melbourne. Not that I’m sure of the reserve aircraft being that much better, they had to change tires during our boarding and given the heavy deceleration due to wheelbraking at touchdown the airbrakes must have been bought second hand from a Cessna.. Again I spent most of the time sleeping in one hour chunks.

Upon arriving to Melbourne, immigrations and bagageclaims went without any problems and the motel was at walking distance from the arrivalhall. Time for some jetlagged sleep..

In about six hours I’ll be leaving Europe for Australia, not only will I leave this part of the world geographically but I’ll be leaving everythnig I know and everyone I love behind. It will be an adventure and hopefully a fresh start from a life outgrown. Keep your fingers crossed that things go my way, the lump in my throat is growing.. (but I guess thats a good sign too..)