End of Daylight Saving

It seems like the end of daylight saving is also the end of this years summer :-( On Sunday morning we turned the clock back one hour and it looks like Sunday was the last summers day with temperatures up to 30C. Today it is raining non-stop and I got pretty wet riding my scooter to uni :(
The only good thing about the end of daylight saving is that the time difference between Germany and Australia dropped from 8h to 6h which makes phoning and chatting so much easier.

Girls Weekend

This weekend was full of girls stuff :-) I went out for a girls-only-night on Saturday and it even happened to be a German-girls-only-night. We had dinner in a funky little Indian restaurant called "2 Fat Indians". The name actually made us going there. But it was worthwhile, the food was really good. And this afternoon I went to a friends "Baby Shower" - actually my first one ever. She is 8 months pregnant and a bunch of her girl friends gathered for a nice afternoon with (German!!) cake and lots of talking about babies :-) We also gave her lots of cute little baby presents. One of the girls there actually gave birth to a baby girl about 6 weeks ago. So we all had a go holding her :-)
Ian on the other hand did lots of boys stuff this weekend which included wood working and a triathlon on Sunday morning. But hopefully by next year I will be able to do the triathlon together with him.

My Mouse

Recently my computer mouse stopped working. The cable close to the USB-plug broke slowly, which meant that the mouse would still work after a bit of wiggling, but after a while the cable broke totally. So I was looking for a new mouse and bought the only one that I liked in the shop - a small Microsoft laptop mouse. I wanted one that is small and light, which meant that it had to be one with a cable since all wireless mice have batteries, ie are heavier. But this mouse was crap! I want to use it on nearly any surface, not just on a mouse pad. But the mouse pointer kept jumping all over the screen on most of the surfaces I use - unlike my old mouse. So I took it back but was unable to find a really good replacement for my old mouse, plus my old mouse is not produced anymore :-(
To cut a long story short, this weekend I bought a simple USB cable and cut off one end of the cable and the USB plug off my mouse. A little bit of fiddling with the 4 wires running inside the cable, soldering, insulating and my mouse is working again :-)

Krav Maga - Women Self Defence

During the last couple of weeks I participated in a women's self defence course. According to our teacher "The techniques are based on Krav Maga, an Israeli self-defence system taught to the military and adapted for civilians. The main feature of Krav Maga is that the moves are simple and practical, and designed to be used by men and women of all ages, shapes and sizes."
It has been pretty good fun so far. We learnt how to fend off a knife attack, how to escape if someone is choking you or sitting on top of you,... There is always lots of giggling when we practice on each other and I don't know whether I would be able to apply these techniques if I had to. Anyway, I did this course just for fun and hope that I won't need to apply it ever!

Ian's birthday

The last couple of days and weeks I've been busy organising a surprise for Ian's birthday party yesterday. I wrote several spam emails to his friends in search for old pictures of him. I also got the baby album from his mum - he was such a cute baby ;-) In the end I got more than 100 great pictures which I then assembled to a 2 big A0 posters. And they were a success Ian loved them. We even hung them up in our living room now - at least until the renovations.

The party itself was great too! The location - Mosman Park Bowling Club - is just stunning, overlooking the river and the city. It was great to be surrounded by so many good friends!

Long Easter Weekend

Even though it is Easter I don't really feel like it. We didn't do any Easter egg hunts or bought each other presents or anything. We are actually rather busy preparing Ian's birthday party tonight. We are expecting about 60 people! Hope everything will go well!

Be Kind Rewind

We went to the movies last night and watched "Be Kind Rewind". Plot outline according to imdb.com: "A man whose brain becomes magnetized, unintentionally destroys every tape in his friend's video store. In order to satisfy the store's most loyal renter, an aging woman with signs of dementia, the two men set out to remake the lost films."
Reading this outline, I just thought what a stupid dumb film! But it was surprisingly hilarious! And there is now a whole fan community sweding there own movies! It is great :-) [For those who haven't seen the film yet, a sweded film is a Hollywood movie reproduced with a rather small budget.]

Good Friday - Karfreitag

Easter is coming up and tomorrow is Good Friday. And I have asked myself for a while why is it called ‘Good’ Friday, since it is the day Jesus died on the cross. In Germany it is called 'Karfreitag' - Old German for Mourning Friday which I think is much more appropriate.
I found an attempt to answer this question on this page here. Maybe it is God's Friday or Holy Friday. I still think it is a bit odd to call it Good Friday.

Sculptures by the sea

... is the annual art exhibition at Cottesloe. Artists put up their work on the beach for free public viewing. It is a really great idea! So on the weekend we went down to the beach, had fish and chips and had a look at some of the art work.

Freeway Bike Hike 3

We drove to the Esplanade early in the morning to catch the train down to Kwinana. About 2000 other cyclists did the same. The trains were packed - full of bikes! It took quite a while to load and unload everybody so the start was a bit delayed. But I managed to click in without falling over ;-) and everything was good - for the first few kilometres. Then some muscles started to hurt - muscles I didn't know that I had them! I wasn't used to riding with click-in-shoes - my position on the bike suddenly changed and we didn't adjust the bike accordingly. So I had a bit of a hard time. We finished in about 2h and 15min and averaged 27km/h. It was alright but nothing compared to Ian, who averaged about 40km/h!

Freeway Bike Hike 2

So on Thursday I wanted to ride to uni as a last training session before the race on Sunday. But just 2km from home one of my pedals broke. They were rather old pedals with little metal straps that held my feet in place for better efficiency. Ian said it was a sign from above ;-) and he wouldn't fix my pedals - I had to get 'proper' click in pedals and shoes. But I had a big reluctance especially because it was just a few days before the race! You need time to get used to click-in-pedals - if you can't get out of them quick enough... you can image what happens.
So this morning - 1 day before the race!! - I bought a pair of click-in-shoes. Ian set up a wind trainer and I practised clicking in and out of the pedals in our court yard. Next, we rode over to the oval to practice clicking in and out while actually riding. At that point I was already pretty scared of falling over. And guess what happened.... when I arrived at the oval I braked and... didn't know / didn't remember to click out.... and fell over... and made a couple of people laugh :-) All this didn't really make me more confident. But I guess I only have to click in once at the beginning of the race and click out again at the end - there are no traffic lights or intersections - I hope I will be alright!

Freeway Bike Hike

My second bike race is coming up - wohoo! I am already excited. But, well, not everyone would call it a 'race'... it is actually 'just' a charity bike hike for asthma. They expect more than 7000 people to participate this Sunday morning. Compared to 4500 participants in the Great Bike Hike - which was my first bike 'race' last year in November when I cycled 53km around the river. For the Freeway Bike Hike this Sunday they are going to close one side of the freeway all the way from Kwinana to Joondalup - 60km!!

Pizza Oven Christening

Friends of us just moved into their new home and we were invited to christen their pizza oven together with a bunch of other friends. And it was soo much fun! They prepared the pizza dough and chopped all the other ingredients and we helped them creating fantastic pizzas. They were so yummy and disappeared so quickly ;-) And after experiencing this - I want one too ;-) But I guess it doesn't make sense to heat up the pizza oven just for 2 pizzas - you would have to have a couple of friends over for dinner.... but I think we could arrange for this ;-)

Our Court Yard
The last time I posted a picture of our courtyard was in May 2006. And since then our little tipuana tipu tree grew enormously. Soon this little monster will soon provide enough shade for us in summer but I think we have to start trim it to shape.

Young IT

I went to a presentation of the ACS (Australian Computer Society) yesterday - ACS YOUNG IT "FROM EDUCATION TO EMPLOYMENT 2008". A couple of companies introduced themselves pointed out possible IT careers. The situation here in Perth is actually quite interesting at the moment. While many people still believe that the IT industry hasn't recovered yet and as a result extremely the number of first year students is still extremely low (30 at my uni this year!!!), the opposite is actually the case! Many companies are struggling to get graduates! And with student numbers that low - this situation won't change that quickly :-)

Demerit Points

... are the equivalent to "Punkte in Flensburg" here in Australia. And compared to Germany you can get them here much easier!! PLUS on public holidays and during long weekends you get double demerit points! So if Monday is a public holiday you will be penalised with twice as many demerit points as usually from Friday through to Monday!

Labour Day

Just like Queen's Birthday, this public holiday is celebrated on different days around Australia. Western Australia is the only state that celebrates it on the first Monday in March. [VIC, TAS - second Monday in March; QLD, NT - first Monday in May; ACT, NSW, SA - first Monday in October].
But there are university public holidays and non-university public holidays - usually during the semester we don't do public holidays, so the students don't miss any lecture. And to make sure that we don't forget we all received an email from our secretary ;-) "Just to remind you that Monday is a not a public holiday. If you wish to take this day off, pls submit a leave form." So while Ian is going for a swim on Monday morning I will have to go to uni :(