Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

I hope that all of you had a lovely relaxing Christmas with family and friends and I wish you all the best for the New Year 2007!

I am HOME again!

“Two weeks away it feels like the world should've changed but I'm home now and things still look the same… (Dido – Sand in my shoes) ”
I have been away for more than 7 months and nearly nothing has changed in my little home village in Thuringia. The houses look the same, the neighbours are the same and everyone still seams to do the same things. It is so fantastic relaxing to come home and everything is still the same! It feels like home!
I really enjoyed the Christmas holidays with my family! Decorating the tree in the morning of the 24^th, going to church in the evening, having traditional potato salad and sausages for dinner and unwrapping presents afterwards. This year we had duck à l’orange for lunch the next day – yummy :-) We didn't had "white Christmas" as such but it was kind of white because of foggy weather on Christmas night. But finally today it snowed for the first time.
After some very relaxing days here at home we are preparing now for New Years Eve in Dresden. I am really looking forward to see the fireworks in front of the old skyline of Dresden!

Sentosa Island

On my last day today I took the cable car over to Sentosa Island, a poxy little island south of Singapor. This is the plainly the tourist island of Singapore. I think it is just there to please the tourists and to “steal” their money. You either hate or love it, but I knew what to expect.

So I just wandered around the island and had a look at everything. Apart from the various, expensive tourist attractions (underwater world, sky tower, 4D magic,…) there are also nice nature walks through the rain forest. And because it was a very rainy day there were only a few people on the island so I enjoyed walking through the green forest all by myself :-) The beaches are not natural, they had to bring the sand there and they look so unnatural! Especially the big container ships in the background are very pretty ;-) I also went to the “Southernmost point of Asian continent” but why is this point in the SOUTHWEST of Sentosa ISLAND???

Singapore City

On my third day in Singapore I met with a friend early in the morning and he showed me around his home country. In Singapore everything is about food - Chinese, Malay, Indian! So we started the day in a typical Chinese food hawker or centre. This is a huge hall with lots of little food stands with tables and chairs between them. I just watched while Kevin ordered bits and pieces of everything. The first course was frog porridge! YES! Poor little frogs drown in hot rice porridge. But if you don’t think about it frog really tastes like chicken :-). Then we had something Indian which I can’t remember, essentially it was a crepe like thing which you dip into a spicy curry. For dessert we had bean something – a kind of sweet soy bean soup with solid soy bean bits ;-) And we drank cane juice. They crush bits of sugar cane and extract the juice – very yummy!!

Then we walked through Chinatown and started our little sightseeing tour in “Little India”, followed by the Raffles Hotel, the Esplanade, various temples and of course shopping malls :-) We had lunch near the “Fountain of Wealth” – apparently the world’s largest. The special dessert comprised of ice (water ice) with a sweet corn – durian flavoured sauce on top of beans and black jelly – DISGUSTING!! Durians are very smelly fruits with a very distinctive flavour! You either love them or hate them! Some hotels even forbid durians because of their smell :-)After about 7h or so of walking we were both pretty tired and finished the little sightseeing tour with a cocktail in the “New Asia Bar” which is located on the 71^st floor of the Stamford hotel. You probably get the best view over Singapore from there.

After a short afternoon nap I walked along Orchard Road and admired the amazing Christmas decorations. But the weather got slowly worse. On my first day it only drizzled a bit at night. On the second day it only poured down when I was sitting in the bus. The third day had long non-raining periods between short showers. Today it was raining pretty much the whole day – long drizzles alternated with short heavy showers. This is also the reason while I am writing this while still in Singapore. I saw pretty much everything I wanted to see and after visiting Sentosa Island this morning I am now enjoying WIFI in my hotel room :-) because sightseeing in the rain is not really fun. It is still raining outside and the forecast doesn’t say anything different. The positive side: the temperatures dropped from 30°C to 26°C but the humidity is now pretty much 100%.

Malacca

The next morning I got up very early to go to Malacca. It was an organised tourist tour but there were only 6 others with me in the bus so it was not too bad. Malacca is a historic town in Malaysia, just 3h form the southern border. So the procedure to leave Singapore and to enter Malaysia is as follows:
Everyone has to get out of the bus before crossing the bridge to Malaysia, queue up, present their passport and stamp-out. Meanwhile the bus and the bus driver are checked as well (death for drug traffickers!). So we get into the bus again at the other side of the building. After crossing the bridge the same procedure again – everyone out of the bus, through passport control and into the bus again. The same actually holds for every passenger on any bus or train. It is really quite funny to see the crowds leaving and entering the bus at the borders :-)

The first thing we visited was a traditional, family run tin factory where they showed us how to make all sorts of things out of tin. But it was more like one of these typical tourist stops where they chase you through shops expecting you to buy all this crap.
On the way to Malacca we drove through huge palm plantations. They produce palm oil for cosmetic products or cooking.
In Malacca we walked through the old city and visited temples. We watched people praying, sacrificing incense sticks and this paper money. They burn special sheets of paper and by this they send this money into the next world to deceased. But you can also buy big paper cars, paper houses, paper “hell passports”, paper visa cards,… every you might need in the next world :-)
The whole time we were pretty lucky with the weather because the wet season just started. And the rain started as soon as we entered the bus to drive back to Singapore. It actually poured down!! And we say flooded areas and people trying to get to their houses.

Singapore Zoo and Night Safari
I was already pretty tired when I arrived at the zoo and so I kind of ran through the whole park aimlessly for 2h. But nonetheless it was good! The landscape designer did a really good job. The animal enclosures look very nice and natural – I just hope the animals think this as well… because after all it is just a zoo. So you also see small and poxy cages with animals walking around in circles like they are crazy. And of course there are huge souvenir shops trying to sell EVERYTHING! :-)
After dinner at Bongo Burgers I visited the Night Safari as well. After sunset you can see night active animals in another zoo next to Singapore Zoo. Visitors are driven through the park in small trains while a ranger comments on the animals. The ranger asked a couple of times to be very quite so not disturb the animals but somehow Asian people don’t understand that… they were happily chatting along and it wasn’t like whispering or so… But apart from that the tour was very good. All the animals had dinner so they were exactly at the spots where we could see them :-) The “Creatures of the night show” in the end was also quite entertaining.

Singapore

So we went to the Perth airport on Saturday morning. The flight was overbooked so they were looking for volunteers to go onto a plan later this afternoon. In reward they were offering S$500 (250€ or A$490) + taxi vouchers + upgrade vouchers for business class. And of course I volunteered but unfortunately I wasn’t the only one. So I only made it onto the waiting list and in the end they didn’t need that many people :-( But at least Ian and I got a free breakfast at the airport while we were waiting.
I arrived in Singapore half an hour earlier due to a strong tail wind :-), took the bus to Chinatown and got a room in a nice and cosy backpackers. After I checked in I took the MRT (mass rapid transit train) to the famous Singapore zoo.

I am excited!!

I am flying home tomorrow! I can’t wait to see all my family and friends again!
But before I arrive in Frankfurt I am going to make a little stop-over in Singapore. A friend of mine from uni will be there as well. He is visiting his family. So we are going to meet and he will give me a little insider tour :-)
But right now I am very busy packing all my stuff! I am afraid the suitcase will be much too small or I bought far too many Christmas presents :-)
We started this day already very relaxed! Ian took half a day off and we went for breakfast to this lovely restaurant directly on the beach in North Cottesloe. It was a beautiful morning! The ocean was totally flat and had this amazing colour!
When Ian comes back from work we will have our first little Christmas! Because we will both spend Christmas with our families in Germany and Australia respectively, we decided to exchange presents today, so we don’t need to take them to Germany and back.

…. and ended very good!!

After I wrote the last blog entry I felt still really unhappy and worried about my little scooter. So I decided to go for a swim, distract me and think of something else. I took a little detour because I hoped that the thefts dumped the scooter somewhere around here maybe. And really I spotted something mint-green in the grass just 200m from here! I started running and couldn’t believe it!!! It was my scooter, standing there happily :-) No scratches, no broken mirrors… but the steering lock is broken, so I can’t start it. But I will get this fixed easily! I am so happy!!!

The weekend started off very good…

My weekend actually started on Thursday already :-) I went shopping with a friend from uni. I haven’t been shopping for a long time! So we two girls visited every single shop in the city in order to find the best Christmas presents for our families. It was so nice! Girls just love shopping ;-)
On Friday I left uni early after lunch because I hade to prepare the dinner. We invited two other couples – a German/German and a German/Australian couple – over for dinner. So we sat outside in our front garden (actually the nicest part of the house at the moment ;-) ) and ate our way through entrée, main and dessert – yum! It was a really lovely evening, we enjoyed each others company and enjoyed eating, chatting and drinking :-)
The Christmas shopping on Thursday made me feel like more shopping – I haven’t been shopping for new clothes for ages!! And while walking across the Freo markets I saw this beautiful designer skirt and top! I tried it one, Ian said ‘yes’ and so I bought it!

The Saturday ended with our first visit at the Somerville outdoor cinema this year. As it is tradition we packed our little picnic back and sat in front of the big screen to have dinner. Then we watched “Infamous”, a really good movie about the writer Truman Capote. But it was kind of weird seeing Daniel Craig (the new James Bond) playing a gay guy and kissing other men…

So far the weekend was pretty good! But what can you see on the picture on the right? Nothing?! Correct! This is the place next to our front door where my scooter is usually parked… YES, they nicked it last night!!! When Ian got up at 7am this morning to go swimming my lovely little green scooter was gone! Even though we leave windows and doors open (but locked) during the night we didn’t hear a think!! And the scooter was parked right next to the front door! So as you can imagine I was pretty unhappy this morning and still am… but in the end it is ‘only’ money…maybe they find it…
So if you see a cute little mint-green scooter (license plate: 1CA524), please let me know!

Coffee induced insomnia

I usually don’t drink coffee, especially not late at night. But the other day we went to see some friends we haven’t seen for a while. And they make really good coffee - freshly grinded beans, coffee plunger – yummy!
But it was 9pm at night when I drank 2 big cups of coffee… so when we went to bed I was lying there and thinking “I am AWAKE!!!” I was lying there with my eyes wide open and thinking about what to do… couldn’t read, the light would have waken Ian up who was sleeping peacefully next to me already…. So I ended up watching him sleeping :-) Eventually he turned and squinted at me. I think I scared him a bit when I stared at him because he just mumbled “what?!” “Sorry, I am just bored!” :-)
But I managed to fall asleep eventually.

1st of December

I opened the first door of my advent calendar. My mum sent me this calendar from Germany after I requested it :-) [I guess I will never be too old for this.]
But even though it is December already it doesn't really feel like Christmas here. You can hear Xmas songs in the shops, you can buy Xmas chocolate, everything is decorated and I even saw a big tree with fairy lights! But when the sun is shining and it is 30C outside, it doesn't at all feel like Christmas!!
Today I just realised that I will be home very soon! In just 2 weeks from now I am flying home again! I am sooo looking forward to this! I already arranged to go to the Christmas markets when I come back, so I will hopefully get into Xmas mood in time before the 24^th.

Addictive Photos

I am just flipping through some photos taken by Michael Poliza. They are just beautiful, breathtaking, amazing,... I am addicted already! Hopefully my next bigger holiday / journal will be in Africa *dream* :-)

Robot Soccer

On Sunday I went together with a couple of friends to the AIBO Robot Soccer Exhibition. Three different teams (4 AIBO dogs each team) were playing soccer against each other.
The technical leader of AIBO, Dr Masahiro Fujita, gave a talk about the “History of AIBO League at RoboCup”. He showed videos of each years RoboCup, starting in 1998. While the robot dogs still moved pretty slowly in 1998, it was very interesting to see their improvements over the years.

Sunset at the river

On Saturday evening Ian and I decided to have dinner down at the river. There is this really lovely spot just here. So we went to the Boatshed (our favourite supermarket) and bought lots of yummy stuff: German bread (quite close to real German bread but still too white), smoked salmon, camembert, sparkling apple juice (Apfelschorle :-) ), fresh mango and peaches,…
It was really great! Just sitting there and enjoying the warm colours of the sunset (we actually couldn’t see the sun). But unfortunately we weren’t the only ones who knew about this spot. Two bridal couples came there as well with a photographer who took their wedding pictures.
But the high light of the evening was a school of dolphins swimming up the river and catching fish. We saw about 5 or 6 coming really close to the shore!

Data Collection

On Saturday morning we went to the CAT bus depot and installed 6 additional cameras in one of the buses. I had asked people to come and help me collecting data for a face recognition database (as part of my PhD). I was really happy that more than 30 people came and showed their faces in front of the cameras :-)
Some pictures of the day can be viewed here.

Daylight Saving, Finally!!

After 3 rejected referendums WA finally voted for a 3-year daylight saving period, after which there will be another referendum! So for the whole time of my PhD I will have daylight saving :-)

Work, work, work

I am really busy at the moment, lots to do at uni. At the beginning of December I have to submit my “candidacy”. After the first 6 months each PhD student has to write a short plan of what he or she is proposing to do during the next 3 years. Once this candidacy is accepted I am a “proper” PhD student. During these first 6 months the supervisors will assess the skills of each PhD student and have the chance to reject the candidacy of necessary.
Additional to this I am currently planning and organising a big data recording day. As I am working on face recognition from video at the moment I need a database to test my algorithms. Therefore we were kindly made available one of the CAT buses on the weekend. Probably next Saturday we will record lots of people while entering the bus. Unfortunately we are not allowed to drive around but we can mount additional cameras in the bus and ask people to enter and leave the bus a couple of times. I am actually really looking forward to this.

Red Bull Air Race

The weekend in short

We went to see the movie “Who killed the electric car?” on Friday. It was a really interesting documentation about the EV1, a “electric vehicle” by General Motors, which was one of the first electric cars on the roads in California.

On Saturday we went to a late “Oktoberfest BBQ”. A German guy from uni sponsored German sausages, Leberkäse and made potato salad from his grandma’s old recipe – really yummy!! We had a really nice, relaxing, chatting,… evening.

Today Ian went on a bike race again. But because I don’t like getting up early in the morning especially on the weekend I stayed at home. I just love laying in bed until half past nine on a Sunday morning! And after a yummy breakfast outside in the sunny courtyard I took my little scooter for a ride to Freo. Strolling around the Freo markets (fresh fruit & veggies) and along the cappuccino strip – I love lazy weekends :-)

Denmark

We had such a great weekend! But no, we haven’t been to Europe just for the weekend like actually a lot of (non-Australian) people here at Curtin thought… they should leave their computers more often!!
So we went down south Friday night. We stayed together with 7 others in “The Lookout” which was only 5 min. away from the beach where we went surfing.
I started the Saturday really lazy – I slept in, while most of the others went for a surf early in the morning. We had a huge breakfast together and went to visit some wineries afterwards.






A couple of weeks ago we had dinner with a couple of other Germans and they introduced me to this fantastic wine. They were raving about this little family business near Denmark that produces such lovely vines. So I had to visit Moombaki while we were in Denmark.

And it was indeed a lovely spot - a small estate in the middle of the forest surrounded by wine yards. Lots of birds were flying around and I spotted this beautiful little blue bird, a fairy wren. I never saw such a bright blue bird before.
A couple with 3 little boys (you can actually see them on the wine labels) runs this business. And I think they love doing it! They hand pick their wine and try to avoid chemicals as much as possible. We tested their wines and I was really happy that our friends loved these wines as well. My absolute favourite is the 2004 Cabernet Sauvignon, Cabernet Franc, Malbec. I think we ended up buying 2 cases (24 bottles) in total.
At night we had dinner in “Mary Rose Restaurant and Tea Shoppe” which is probably the best place in Denmark for eating out.
Sunday morning everyone went for a surf and we had lots of fun. I tried the buggy board for the first time and improved my surfboard skills. But even though I still can’t stand up, I just love lying or kneeing on the board, catching a wave and being pushed to the beach!
Unfortunately the weekend was much too short!!

STRATA AGM

Ian wants do renovate or rather change his unit. He thought about the plans for this about a year ago already. But because his unit is managed by a strata council everything gets more complicated.
Technically he just owns the paint on the walls and the carpets on the floor, everything else belongs to the strata, even the tiles on the walls! But the strata will also pay for all the maintenance of the tiles, the roof, the windows,… but if you want to change something you will have to ask for permission, especially if it is likely to increase the overall maintenance costs.
So yesterday was the big day – AGM (annual general meeting). All the parties (there are 26 units in the complex) come together to discuss general stuff and to vote for or against Ian’s changes. In fact everyone had to accept his changes in order for us to do the renovations.
And so everyone voted ‘yes’ apart from ONE neighbour!! Now we have to talk to him and find out what his “real” concerns are and call another meeting in order to do the vote again… :-( It is just a pain in the bum!
But we are looking forward to the weekend! We are going down south to Denmark to relax and to improve our surfing skills :-)

Allendale Square Abseiling

About 2 weeks ago Ian mentioned that he needed to get up early on Saturday to go to his abseiling lesson. And I just thought – WHAT?! He never told me about abseiling before… [btw abseiling sounds really weird to a German as abseilen is actually a German verb]
Anyway, so yesterday Ian abseiled down from Allendale Square, a 135m high skyscraper in the Perth city. It is a charity event where each abseiling team raises funds for the Prince Margaret Hospital in Perth and YouthFocus. Ian’s team raised about A$31.000 and altogether they try to raise about A$250.000 this year.
Afterwards the whole team was invited for some drinks and nibbles at the 30^th floor of Allendale Square because they were amongst the teams that raised most money. The view from there was just stunning!!
Afterwards we went to this Good-Bye-Party of one of Ian's friends who is going back to Melbourne. There were thousands :-) of kids between 10 days and 6 years! So while all the parents were busy running after and watching their kids we ended up in this circle of single and/or unmarried persons without kids. It was pretty funny to watch but we still had a very good time!

Experiencing Ramadan

Yesterday was the last day of Ramadan. Muslim people all over the world weren’t allowed to eat or drink from sunrise to sunset for the last 4 weeks. But as soon as the sun goes down everyone started eating :-) Usually they break their fast with dates and a salty and spicy yoghurt drink (similar to Lassie). After that the men go to the mosque for praying and the women prepare the dinner and pray at home.
A friend of mine is Muslim, she comes from Bahrain. And she used to brake the fast with her “family” here – a couple of other Muslim girls. On the weekends I was also invited to break the fast together with them.
Here I have to add that I tried fasting myself …. but I gave up on this after 2 days or so. I was soooo hungry during the day! But what is even worse in summer time – you aren’t allowed to drink! Nothing for me…
But I really enjoyed gathering together with the girls and break the fast together with them. They start with dates and sesame sauce and this salty, spicy yoghurt drink. After that we shared some really yummy traditional food where everyone brought a different dish. This was really nice and I am happy that I was invited.

Setting up a bushfire

We drove up to the Hills on Saturday morning to help Ian’s mum and dad with their bushfire. The place were they live, up in the Hills is really lovely! They have a big house in the middle of the bush/forest. You can’t hear any other neighbours nor see any other houses. When I walk around the property I see all sorts of different wild flowers and plants I have never seen before – it is really a nice place.
Once every year they burn off half an acre of their 5 acre property in order to prevent bush fires from reaching the house. So every half an acre gets burned once every 10 years and if there is a “real” bush fire in summer the change of reaching the house is smaller.
First Ian’s dad had to get a fire permit for this day. Then we were armed with hoses, watering cans and water canisters with a little hose and hand-operated pump and Ian’s dad lit up a couple of matches to get the fire going. And our job was basically to watch the fire and prevent it from going up the trees [once the tree tops are burning the fire will spread to the other surrounding tree tops and we can’t control it anymore] or spreading to other areas where it shouldn’t go to.
It was very interesting to see all the little creatures, bugs, beetles, ants and spiders running away from the fire. This was actually the first time I wasn’t afraid of these spiders because I knew that they were much more afraid than I was. And there were magpies everywhere hunting for these running insects – it must have been a real feast for them. They even picked little creatures out of the burnt black areas – they really must like BBQ’s :-)
But I can now say that I appreciate the work of “real” fire fighters much more. I mean we just had to control a very small and slowly burning fire and it wasn’t that warm that day…. but fighting a really big bush fire in summer time when it is 30 – 40°C is something complete different.

We celebrated a friend’s birthday yesterday. So we went to this really fancy restaurant just 2 min. from where we live. It was just recently reopened.
The interior looked really stylish, modern, with lots of funky lights and even a small waterfall - everything was newly renovated. But somehow they couldn’t get the service right… we were sitting there for 1h!!! without drinks – all we got was water! Nobody asked for orders or anything…. The food was good but for what we got definitely overpriced.
One of the presents he got this evening was a stamp saying “Absolute and utter Bullshit” and of course we had to try this stamp on the menu… I wonder when they will find out :-)
Anyway we definitely had lots and lots of fun this evening! But I think with these people we would have fun no matter where we are – in a cheap fish and chips shop or a very fancy restaurant.

Little Miss Sunshine

Yesterday we went to see “Little Miss Sunshine”. It was one of the funniest movies that I’ve ever seen; it is number 208 out of the 250 best movies on imdb.com ever and deservedly so. But it is actually a really dark comedy that takes the piss out of Americans and Beauty Contests – maybe that’s why I liked it so much :-) I really recommend watching it!
After that we (6 people) went to have dinner in one of Ian’s favourite restaurants (http://www.ginoscafe.com.au/index.htm) in Freo. And as usual we shared a “Penne a la Vodka” with spinach. But somehow we ended up eating from each others plate. Three of the others shared a sea food platter where we all picked out some nice bits and in the end we just eat from the other plates as well – was good fun :-)

Daylight Saving in WA

Everyone has daylight saving - nearly all western countries use daylight saving to save energy and to make more out of their summer!
But only the northern states of Australia (WA, NT, QL) don’t! But have a look at the different time zones within Australia during standard time and during daylight saving time – it is just crazy!
I would prefer to have daylight saving. It is so nice during summer time in Germany when you can sit outside until 9.30pm and it is still light. Here in Perth the sun sets at 7.30pm latest!!
They tried it 3 times, each time for one year only (1975, 1984, 1992) but somehow it was defeated every time. So recently there has been an article in the Sunday Times concerning this topic once again including a voting. Unfortunately this voting is useless because you can click as often as you want - click it 10 times and vote 10 times... but maybe it will help.

Growing fern in our garden. One of the oldest living plants on earth.

Garden Stuff

About 2 weeks ago we bought some basil seeds and I sowed them right away. The package contained about 150 seeds and I thought, well they will not all bear fruit… but they did… So I put about 120 little basil plants in separate pots.
But we already know what to do with so much basil – pesto!! Once these plants are bigger we will harvest most of them, add garlic, pine nuts and parmesan cheese – yummy!!!