Tuesday, February 28, 2006

First university day

Yesterday was our first official day at uni. That means: HCI lecture.
Dave, who is teaching the lesson, is a really relaxed and funny guy, so I think it will be ok. Even though I have the feeling that this semester will not be the most interesting one I've ever had. In the HCI course we have a strong focus on Web usability, and (surprise, surprise) thats what we have already learned about last semester. Well.. But as we also have to do a project there, we could find something interesting to research/program for that.

The most exciting thing about the lecure was probably the Fire alarm. At first we were not sure about it, but as the alarm was speaking to us ("This is a fire alarm, please leave the building immediately"), we knew what to do. We packed our stuff, left the windows and door open and strolled outside. Three cars of the Fire Brigade arrived. They had about the same pace than we had, and after a few minutes they left. And we went on with our lecture.
(Alex has taken some pictures by the way..)

And as it was the first day of O week, we went to check out the evening program. We were watching the movie (Serenity) and went to the Hillcrest Tavern. And I have to say: they don't know a lot about partying: The bar closed at 12pm (!!).

Oh, I made bread yesterday, too. But as I had to leave for the cinema, it is not as cooked as it should probably be ;-)

Current mood: relaxed

Fine again

As the weather changed (sunny again), my mood changed, too. I am fine again, being able to see the positive aspects in life (listening to what jule_ commented ;-)).

And well, what choice do I have. This is probably the only planet I can live on at the moment, right?

Monday, February 27, 2006

First time going out

Tonight Alex and I went out to the Outback in town. It is over half an hour walk, but that was fine (we were the only people with a jacket there though).
They gave away free T-shirts for the first 500, but we were too late for that. The live-band was quite nice, but the rest was not really fascinating. They had some kind of strange show where people could win money and would do anything for it. First there was the Mangina contest, where boys had to pen in their penis, so that they would look kinda female. The second was a girls kissing competition.

They had free beer and BBQ there, and when I saw and smelled it the sausages, I felt really sick. Alex was eating one of those, and suddenly I realized (again) what is going on in the world. All these poor creatures suffering. Can that really be true? Can it be most of the people eating that?

Krystian asked me if New Zealand is paradise. Despite the fact that I don't believe in paradise, a country where BBQ is the main dish is definitely not paradise for me.

I wonder if people would still eat the same if they had to breed the animals themselves in animal factories.
I wonder if people would still eat the same if they had to treat them that badly.
I wonder if people would still eat the same if they had to kill in the slaughterhouses.

Most people that I met have never thought about that. Most of them don't care. My friends are amongst them.

Today I don't like this place. Today I don't like this planet.


Current mood: sad

Sunday, February 26, 2006

Kiwi english #1

Kiwi slang is a bit different to what I've known so far. The first word we could not understand was: power

So, let's try.
Pronounce it like PEEEEEO
(with a long E that sounds like the one in the German word "Tee", and a short O in the end, which is more something in between O and U)

once again: PEEEEO, PEEEEEEO!
good.

Anna


For anyone of you who knows Anna Prommegger: The woman on the picture helped us a lot with our registration and the new visa. Her looks and her way of laughing/reacting were just as if she would be Anna.

And guess what: the next day I found out that her name is Anna!
Strange..

Market at Hamilton Gardens art festival

Today Lauren, Justin and I went to the Hamilton gardens to visit the market that was going on there. It was mostly about organic, natural stuff. So I found a stand that sold organic food - and bought my first bread with a hard crust here (german sour dough whole grain bread), I ate organic hummus with self-made chips and salad, and I bought a Basil plant that was raised in permaculture. Unfortunately they also had animals ther that had to sit in small cages directly in the sun. Poor them..

Two bands and a drummer-group were playing, and flower-girls and frogs were walking around. Have a look at the pics.

Tired and not willing to make the poster due tomorrow.

temperature

The temperatures change a lot here. The afternoons have been mostly sunny, and it is really hot then. In the mornings up until noon it us usually colder. But it gets really cold in the night. Yesterday I was sitting in the living room with my jacket and scarv on, covered in a thick blanket. I wonder how winter will be like..

5 things to remember

- tomorrow: landlord at 10 am. tell him about all the broken things in a way that he is going to fix them..
- 27/02/2006: start of the semester. first HCI lecture.
- 01/03/2006: Dad's birthday
- 03/03/2006: new visa!!
- next week: PARTY!! Alex and I bought tickets for all concerts going on in the orientation week :-)

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

I N T E R N E T !!!

Tadaa! Finally, we have managed to have Internet at home. Jernej's girlfriend will come over for a visit in March, and she will bring a wireless router. Cheap and easy solution to share the Net. In the meantime we try to setup our own small private Ad-hoc network..

La vita e bella.

Tuesday, February 21, 2006

Visa

Did I already tell you about the visa?
Finally we figured out that we had the wrong visa for our studies here. What we have is a special kind of work permit. What we need is a student permit. Otherwise we cannot enroll for the courses.
But hopefully we can get our visa here at the Uni, so it should all be fine at the end of this week. Courses are starting next week anyways..

Flat is filling up

Lauren, the girl from Minnesota (if I remember correctly) has moved into the flat yesterday, and Justin, the guy from somewhere in New York, will move in today. They both seem to be very nice, and they also seem to like the house. So no picky people, thats very good.
We had a relaxed evening yesterday. A friend of Lauryn was here, she'll be leaving tomorrow and is staying in our house until then. We talked about this and that, and we watched some TV. So nothing really to talk about..

Well, what else to tell?
Ah yes, something important! We will probably have Internet tomorrow at our place! I called Telecom to ask if there were any cancellations, so that we could get our connection earlier, and there were some. So, somebody will show up tomorrow. Hopefully everything works out just immediately..

What I like: nice people in the house
What I don't like: moskito bites on my legs and arms. Hundreds..


Current mood: very good, a bit cold in this room without windows

Monday, February 20, 2006

Flatmates

Last week we were at the Accomodation Office and contacted two girls if they wanted to live at our place. One of them, an American girl, showed up today (can't remember the name at the moment..). She is really nice and will probably move in today.
One room left!
Well, Helen from the Accomodation Office sent us another person, an American Boy. He has just arrived and wanted to think about taking the room. There is only the room behind the kitchen left, I don't know if he really wants to take that one, as it is quite shiney and small. But, we'll see..

I have to say, I like the house, I like the people who (will) live in there :-)

Sunny day, burnt feet

Today is a very sunny and warm day. And I had incredibly good idea to go outside without shoes on. The effect: blisters on my feet :-|
Well, one has to try before one believes :-))

Yesterday we were invited to Jackie's and Tim's place. Quite a lot of people vom the Computer Science department were there (I can't remember all the names..).
It was BBQ again. Unfortunately the Kiwis seem to be meat-eaters par excellence. They had quite a lot of salad and fried vegetables though, so there was a lot of vegan food to eat. And I brought a pack of veggie-sausages, and most of them tried them (as they could not tell that they were meat-less *hehe*).

The house has one of the most beautiful views I have ever seen. We were there just before the sunset, it was incredible.
I'll post some more pics as soon as I have them all sorted out, until then I have one in my panorama set at Flickr.

Current mood: just normal

Saturday, February 18, 2006

Market and campus tour

Today we have been in the city with Jernej to go to a Saturday market. It was not really what I wanted to see, remindet me of an Austrian "Kirtag". Anyways.

Afterwards we cooked Falafel, with everything you need with it (Pita-bread, hummus, salad, onions, ..). Was quite nice. I am improving my cooking skills here (hihi).
Apropos cooking: yesterday we did some Asian-style cooking. I tried to remember the dish that Julian cooked shortly before I left Hagenberg (thanks again :-)). We ate it with rice-noodles this time though..

After eating we went to the campus to take some pictures and to see the Cricket-game (small part of it at least). Pics will follow somewhen..

Current mood: jolly

Friday, February 17, 2006

Picture upload

I uploaded some pictures now to my Flickr page. Did not make a lot with the Canon yet, but as I am planning to buy the UV filter today, it will then be up and ready for good pix :-)

Alex made more pictures than I did, and he writes more exact things about our stay I guess (in German), so look at his page, too..

Current mood: tired

Thursday, February 16, 2006

First pics

As I cannot upload pictures to Flickr at the moment, I will post some initial pics directly in the blog. So, there they are:

This was the view from the hostel:

My room:

Alex' room:

Living room during cleaning:

Kitchen with Alex working (me not):

First self-made bread:

Bridging the picture gap

Because people are complaining about not posting any pictures, I am linking to some official pics of the region. First of all, this is where I currently am:

Hamilton, North Island, NZ

This is how the city looks like:

And this is the beautiful university campus:

Really nice here..

Current mood: too early in the morning to tell :-P

House rules

1. Don't look up
2. Don't look at the cleaning rag after you wiped over a surface
3. Overall rule: don't look too closely

Wednesday, February 15, 2006

NZ water

Because jule_ asked in his comment: you CAN drink the water right out of the tab, if you want to. But it is full of chlorine. Really.
We bought a huge bottle of water (100% pure, it says on it). It is better as it does not taste like a swimming pool, but it is still normal mouldy water. Nothing fantastic.

Pictures

I have a problem with the picture posting: Currently the tools provided by Flickr don't work here because I don't know the password of the cache. Uploading by email seems to be far to complicated. So I'll wait until things clear up.

In the meantime, please look at Alex' page, he already posted some pictures from our travel. This is one of my favourites by the way:

Jernej arrived

Today Jernej from Slowenia arrived here. He is currently sitting next to me here in the Uni, chatting with his girlfriend at home. He is joining us in our flat. Seems to be a nice guy.

I went to the post office today to buy SOME post cards. Pretty expensive to buy that many. And it will probably take me half a year to write those 40 cards. We'll see..

Current mood: happy, relaxed, a bit tired (again)

Extended first days report

This evening we take our time to sit in front of our laptops, sorting the pictures we took recently and writing down the latest impressions. It is the first time that my laptop runs longer than 10 minutes since we arrived here in Hamilton.

So, for now, I am trying to write a longer report of the last days.

Our first day in NZ was the 10th of February. We arrived at about 1 am at the Auckland airport, where we had to wait for our taxi until 5 in the morning. Time went by quite fast, as we found a free Internet terminal there. The taxi arrived on time, and it was our time to say goodbye to Reinhard. Hopefully he is doing fine in Wanganui, and courses don't stress him out too much.
The taxi driver was very friendly, and as we arrived in Hamilton, he gave us some initial info about the most important places in the city (city center, how to get to University..). Most of the houses in this area a very small. Bungalow-style flats, even the houses in the city center mostly don't have more than 2 floors. And they all look as if they would break apart in a second.

After we arrived at J's backpackers, we decided not to sleep in order to get into the "new" day rhythm. It worked quite well, even if the concentration was really bad. Couldn't recall everything I said this day.
Anyways.
We were at the Accomodation Office at 8:30, met our future landlord at 9, arranged to meet him again at 3 pm, went to the Computer Science department to confuse the people there, went shopping at TheWarehouse, managed to get some food there, wet to the backpacker's for cooking, ate, went back to the University region, talked with the landlord again and asked some final questions, agreed to move in the next day, went back to the Accomodation office to check some details about our future flatmates and went home with Rosina from the office, her son and his dog.
Then I was that tired that I hardly managed to brush my teeth. Slept from about 5-6pm until 7-8am. Had no watch really..

The best thing to have on the morning of the 11th: shower.

We went into town then, to get our phone numbers and the money for the rent. I wanted to buy sunscreen at the Body Shop, but they did not have any there. Strange.
But: they have quite a lot of so-called Health Stores, and there I could decide between Weleda and Dr. Hauschka sunscreen. Felt like at home ;-)
So I succeeded to get the sun protection. Failed in buying bread though. If you should ever come to New Zealand and read the word "bakery", don't expect to get bread. If you find bread, don't expect it to taste like REAL bread. Have written that already I guess :-)

Back at the backpackers, we called a taxi to bring all our stuff to our new home. Gave both taxi driver and Alex a big laugh as I tried to sit on the right side. Right side = wrong side. Left side = right side. Strange kiwis..

There we were. At OUR house. On the second day in NZ. We were very enthousiastic at the beginning, but quickly realized that we had to do a lot of cleaning. We did a lot on the first day. Did the laundry to have fresh blanketes and sheets, vaccumed our rooms..
2 days later we are still not finished with all the cleaning. Kitchen and living room not finished yet..

Sunday evening we were invited for BBQ at the landlord's house. It was a family gathering. The two sons were there with their wifes(-to-be), and even one father-in-law. I had brought vegan sausages, and they had a lot of salad, so it was not too bad for me from the nutrition perspective (even if I normally avoid BBQ's if it is possible - they make me sad). The evening was quite funny - and strange. We did karaoke-singing and Alex joined their capitals-guessing game. The landlord is a weired person. He loudly speaks about the big breasts of his daughter-in-law, he calls his woman a good breeding-machine, and simply throws half of his salad into the grass behind him. Hopefully that's not typical kiwi.
It was a nice evening though, even if my brain was full of weired stories and happenings afterwards..

Today I woke up at about 9 when the sun started shining onto my bed. The jalousies (or however you use this word in English) were closed, but still the sun managed to find its way through to my face. Nice though..
Full of energy, I decided to clean our oven. In order to bake bread we had to do that sooner or later (baking without cleaning would be like suicide..).
At 11 we had a meeting at the University, where they showed us the speech editing software they had written, a quite nice tool, but unfortunately built upon Microsoft's speech recognition software ;-)
We'll probably work on that project this semester, we might decide on that at the end of this week.
In the afternoon I finally tried the bread-baking thing, and it went quite ok. Have to get used to the oven, and probably have to get better flour..
I failed on making "Gröstel" though. Stupid white NZ potatoes.

By the way: stupid NZ water. Smells and tastes like swimming pools.

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

From university

So, for now we have a temporary account at the university. And one PC where we can use it. And no install rights (no Skype or what so ever..). But, we are doing fine, sun is shining, cleaning of the house more or less (more less) done.
Today will be the day of first self-made bread. At least planning to.

We got 2 books about HCI already, so work is approaching.

Tip: when you do cleaning, don't (DON'T) look up.

Current mood: whatever

Sunday, February 12, 2006

First days

Good news from us here. I have 10 minutes left in the Internet-cafe, so lets see how much I can write..

The transport from the airport was good. We went directly through the city center. First impression: film-town of an old western movie that will be destroyed in 2 weeks. (second impression was better though.. :-)

We arrived at the hostel at 7 am, got our room and decided not to sleep. So we took the half an hour walk to University, and went to the accomodation office. They told us about a house to rent, and so we met the landlord at 9. The house was nice, so we decided to take it straight away (pics will follow).
The house is for 5 people, Jernej from Slowenia will join us, the other two will be casted by Alex and me :-)

The first night we were at the hostel, which was very nice (own kitchen to cook, but blankets and sheets to be paid extra).

On our second day we went into town, doing our first shopping. Bought German sun screen, sim-card and other more or less usefull stuff.

Oh, by the way, our address is: 20 Liston Crescent, Hamilton, NZ
phone: +64 210392672

They dont have any postal codes here, strange.
Another strange thing: bakeries normally dont sell bread. just sandwiches and other stuffed bread. But no normal bread. And if they have bread, then it is the toast-style sort of thing..

More info if we have some Internet connection available

Current mood: happy

Friday, February 10, 2006

Arrived in New Zealand

We finally arrived at the Auckland airport. It is somewhen in the morning/night, and quite boring. Our transfer to Hamilton starts at 5 am. Maybe. Hopefully.

Our flight was nice, we managed to sit together and I even got vegan food (even if the stewards were not quite sure what they are serving).

What we do like: we are here.
What we dont like: waiting. No free Internet on most of the airports. (or too stupid/lazy to hack it).


Current mood: relaxed

Thursday, February 09, 2006

On the journey

Wireless Network is not free in Singapore, but at least they have two Internet terminals (could not live without ...).
The journey went quite fine until now. First problem: being at the airport 2 hours before takeoff is too late. The flight was completely full, and we were lucky to get seats on the plane. And somehow we even managed to get seats next to each other (quite a lot of discussions with other passengers).

My vegan meal was not really vegan, but they managed to serve me something..
So: we are fine, happy, and waiting for our next flight.

p.s.: Yes, mom, I am drinking enough. Actually I am drinking more than the whole last week in a few hours now..

Current mood: happy

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

Leaving Hagenberg

Today I moved out from Hagenberg. No problems with the cleaning women, they did not find any claims that I should pay.

My next destination then was Vienna, where I could stay at Chris' place for the nicht. All afternoon I was walking around in the city, later on accompanied by Noel. It was a really nice time, I have to say..
After that (and some additional shopping), I was spending te late afternoon / early evening with Sigi. Haven't seen him for quite a while, so it was time to meet and talk with him again.

When I then came "home", Chris had already prepared some wonderful food. Thank you very much, you saved my day!

Now I am very very tired, should get some sleep before I leave Austria..
Next blog will probably be from New Zealand.

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

Kiwi - here I come!


<-- Kiwi to eat.


<-- Kiwi NOT to eat.


<-- Kiwi not to eat either..


That's about all I wanted to say.
Current mood: very sleepy

We know where we are heading to

We now got a mail from the accomodation office that our transport from Auckland to Hamilton is arranged and that we have a temporary accomodation for the first few days. Sounds good, right?

One and a half day left until departure. Today was saying-goodbye-day in Hagenberg. We ate out for lunch in the "Schlossrestaurant". It was really good food: vegan Ayurveda plate, cooked with soy milk. Did not think that this is possible in Hagenberg.
In the afternoon/evening I visited some people that are important to me, to say goodbye to them. Now I'm sitting in my room, trying to finish my animation-project..

By the way: if you want to see some nice pictures of the country I am going to, visit:
http://tinyurl.com/55dgw

current mood: sleepy

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Harddisk Bag


This bag is quite a masterpiece ;-)
I made it today due to the fact that I have/want to transport my external hard drive to NZ. And as I cannot (don't want to) carry the cardboard box around, I had to invent something.
And there it is, the only Austrian-style self-made harddisk-case :-)

It is Sunday, the last day with my family before I leave to NZ. Another exam tomorrow, last project-call, and then I'm gone. Btw: I started packing already. Seems that my clothes a) fit into the bag and b) don't weight a lot more than 10 kg. Nice..

p.s.: still no information about the transport/accomodation after our arrival. Hopefully the woman from the accomodation office is writing back tomorrow..