rastplats

Having dropped off my parents at the airport yesterday I took the shuttlebus back to the city and sat close to a couple of backpackers in their early twenties. Neither of them wore much clothes and discussed whether or not this was typical Australian weather (Melbourne is currently experiencing autumn with 10-15C degrees and windy).. they concluded that Australia is warm all year around.. talk about being in for a treat.

The Sydney vacation is now over and I’m back in my hometown of Melbourne. It’s been a great week with highlights such as hijacking an Internet connection at the worlds shabbiest Internet cafe in the Sydney Red Lights district and hiking around in the beautiful scenery of the Blue Mountains. Below is a short recap of the last days up there.

Tuesday :: One of the main attractions of the day was the evening meal. Reservations was made at Tetsuyas in Sydney CBD which turned out to be a wise choice. Dinner consisted of a 10 course meal, accompanied by 5 different wines, and was without a doubt the most exclusive I’ve ever had. Tetsuyas is by some considered to be among the top 5 best restaurants in the world and I can see why, the seafood (and the other courses as well) was fantastic.

Wednesday :: This morning we left Sydney and headed for Blue Mountains out west. The mountains and the forests actually do look blue from a distance, no hoax there (they are quite green up close though). I wont even try to describe the scenery up here, words wouldnt do it justice.. check the pictures instead.

Thursday :: More Blue Mountains hiking was done today, most notably climbing the stairs down face of the three sisters into the lush rainforest down in the valley. Then entire day prior to heading to the airport was spent at the Blue Mountains hiking and just enjoying the scenery.

As you know I’m kicking back in Sydney during the Easter Holiday with my parents who are down under to visit me. The flight down was uneventful apart from my bag being tossed through the airport x-ray five times before it was handed back to me, I wonder what they were looking at. Below is a short recap of the first three days here. Tomorrow we’ll be leaving Sydney by car to head out to the Blue Mountains.

Saturday :: Our first day in Sydney started with a slow walk through the Royal Botanical Gardens which not only features the worlds largest collection of palm trees but also a huge amount of bats hanging around in the treetops. The botanical garden lead to the Sydney Opera House which was our main destination. Having picked up our tickets for the evening concert we embarked on a guided tour of the premises. This was, much to my liking, mostly concerned with the interior and exterior architecture. The opera house is a truly remarkable building and all the naked concrete in combination with the wood panelling makes the interior stunningly beautiful. These details deserve as much recognition as the well-known facade. In the evening we enjoyed The Passion of St. John by the Sydney Philharmonic Orchestra in the main hall at perfect seats on the front row of the upper balcony. Off late to bed writing a paper for school..

Sunday :: Today was a day full of walking. The morning kicked off with climbing the Sydney Harbor Bridge in excellent weather conditions. Guided ascent to the summit (140 meters above sea-level) are performed by walking on the steel arch making up the bridge while secured to a rail with a harness. The visibility was so good that even New Zealand was visible as a small dot on the horizon. The climb took about 3 hours and consisted of 1.8km if stairs and ladders. As if this wasnt enough we kept walking and headed over to Kings Wharf and walked around in the Sydney Aquarium which was very nice. Most people I’ve talked to rate this higher than the Melbourne Aquarium but I must disagree, they are at the very least on par. Taxi back to the hotel and off late to bed writing with sore legs.

Monday :: The plans for the day was to catch the ferry over to Manly which we did in the morning together with a few thousand other tourists given the beautiful weather. Since I didnt bring my surfboard I was somewhat pleased with the ocean being almost flat. Experiencing near 30 degree temperatures and blue skies was a very welcome break from the last few weeks of autumn skies back home in Melbourne. All in all it was a quiet day walking around the Manly coastlines.

Having forgot to set my alarm this morning I got unexpected help in waking up.. around 8AM I sat up straight by a loud noise. Four cars crashed into eachother on the road just outside my window in a somewhat freak accident. Three of the cars seemed pretty unharmed but the fourth one wrapped itself around a pole and parked in the pianostore across the street. Luckily noone seemed to get hurt and the ambulance personnel seemed mostly bored. Next time I’ll remember to set the alarm..

Sorry for the slow updates here the last few days but school has been pretty busy and my parents are down here visiting me. Having spent a week down here in Melbourne we’re leaving for Sydney tonight for easter. Fall has settled on Melbourne and with it the cold weather so getting some sun will be nice. Expect some updates when I get back (unless I can get internet access up there).

Yet again was a weekend spent surfing. Philip, Austin and me set out for the coast early on saturday morning to catch some waves. The weather was a bit grumpy with onshore winds so after having checked out a few spots we went for the protected beach- and pointbreak at Lorne. On the way there we checked out Point Roadknight and Point Addis which can be seen in the pictures below. Even when the surf is bad these places are worth the travel, the scenery is beautiful.

In the evening, the next surfingrelated event took over after a quick shower. Quite a few of the guys/girls in the surfclub had a housewarming party in their shared East Ivanhoe flat. The evening (and night) turned out nice as usual but the morning could have used some improvements..

Since leaving Copenhagen airport about two months ago I’ve only had telephone based contact with my family. This is about to change tomorrow however as my parents are coming down here to visit me during easter. A lot to look forward to.

Last night was spent at the St.Andrews pub, a short busride outside of Melbourne, with LUST (La Trobe University Snowsports Team). Plans was made for the coming season which I very much look forward to. My intention is to make the school snowboardteam for the Australian University Championships so the winter weekends will be spent at the mountains.. I hope. If the rest of the season is as nice as last nights dinner we’re all in for a treat.

We’re going to use the Jack environment at the university for the Multi-Agent Systems class this semester. Jack is a superset of Java that adds some agent-oriented preprocessing directives, but in the process it upsets the Vim Java syntax highlighter and end up making it all look pretty horrorshow. To remedy this I hacked up a quick syntax file for Jack, you can get it here. This is just a first version, more syntactic elements will be added during the next days.

I was kind of waiting for this to happen.. Last night I was walking home to Reservoir from my friends house in Preston, a short 20 minute walk along one of the major streets in Melbourne. Pretty close to my place a policecar passed me and not at all to my suprise did the classic go-around-the-block-and-intercept turn that seem to be tought in every policeacademy (instead of just stopping on the first pass like any normal person driving a car). On the next pass they pulled up and stopped me, prompted me to show ID and had me answer to what I was doing there, where I was going and where I’ve been. After having checked me up on their onboard computer they let me go without explaining why I was being questioned.. One down, many to go..

Having had a week with quite a few boring incidents I was looking forward to wrapping it up in good way, and what better way is there than going surfing? Me, Ted and Philip rented a car and headed for the coast at dawn, the forecasts were full of huge swell and hard winds so we took aim for Lorne which has a pretty protected beachbreak. Even with all the protection the sea was putting on a huge display of water, slamming us badly and making paddling out a big hustle, but we still had a great time in the water. When getting back to Melbourne the girls of the swedish posse had made us dinner with desert.. one of the best meals I’ve had in a long time. All in all a really great way to end the week..