Lisboa!

Heeeeeyyyyyyy!!!!!!

At the request of several families, or better yet at the request of one of the members of a very large family, here are some pictures from Lisbon and the cat (who I have to take care because of my rent agreement).

Xu the cat, hunter of mice extraordinaire, who is looking suspiciously at my well manicured hand

Mary II theater in Downtown Rossio

View of the Carmo causeway (calçada do Carmo) from the Figueira Plaze (downtown)

General view of the downtown area in Plaza da Figueira where you can see top right of the fountain the Sta. Justa elevator that connects downtown and uptown (or you can stop being lazy and walk there, it's not that far!), and that was designed by Eiffel. At the right from that you can see the Carmo convent ruins. This convent was partially destroyed during the Great Lisbon earthquake of 1755.

View up to the Chiado, a comercial area of uptown Lisbon. The "bridge" you see there is the causeway connecting the top of the elevator and uptown. The Chiado was completely destroyed during a huge fire in the 80's. It has since been all rebuilt according to the original plan and modernized slightly. It had H&M!!!! (Those two dudes got in the way of the photo....bastards!!!)

Animals and party animals

A pretty moose!

With her calves.

And two silly monkeys...
And a bear!

A reindeer on summer camp, getting strong for chistmas present delivery.

Jocke (my brother) and his friend Martin.




Pratthana (my second cousin) and Taline (one of my best friends) at our small house warming.

Off to the Wies'n!

Ok so now I have made my first trip to Oktoberfest - I think I'll be back. Here are some of the reasons why:1: Huge beers

2: Drinking said beers with friends

3: Drinking beer and singing and dancing whilst standing on the chairs all night.

4: With about a million other people!

5: Getting little gingerbread hearts 'cos it's your birthday too ;)

Stockholm - not that bad at all!

Hey guys!
Finally Broadband in the house!!! And finally I can give my side of the story over here instead of the whining from one famous Brazilian filmmaker... ;-)

Enjoying sunny autumn weather by the water.

Then we took a picture of Ri's favorite building - the Swedish royal castel! ;-)

This is the view from our balcony. We live in an old are called Johanneshov, just outside the south area of Stockholm (less than 10 min by subway into central Sthlm). Anyway, just wanted to illustrate the sixties 'compact living concept' or whatever you might call these square buildings.

To the right we have a view of the concert/sports arena Globen - an icon of Sthlm.

And in the night they highlight it in different colors depending on what hockey game is playing, or whatever the event is... guess what was on this night? Ladies night! hahaha.
I wonder what Gwen Stefani gets next week when she plays there?

Then we have our small living room, but with a big sofa bed especially for you guys ;-)

The sixties kitchen is my favorite, it's some how just cosy with an old style kitchen...

Ok that's it for now, I'll be back with pics from our housewarming party and the visit to Skansen where they have only Swedish animals (wolf, bear, reindeer and so on)...

Hej då!

Autumn in Muenchen

Hey everyone,

Well now I've had a chance to get into the city in the last few weekends, I've been relaxing in the gigantic English garden in the centre of the city. It's quite huge, with a regular drum circle sending beats out across the park, and the occasional jazz band starting up. But mostly it's just nice to sit in the sun and watch people go by - mostly playing football or frisbee, but lot like me just lying in the grass watching the world go by.
Here my two flatmates Diana and Jonny are kind enough to illustrate the concept...


And now some random photos from around Muenchen, including Stacchus, the Main LMU building, random train bridges and other buildings ;) Enjoy!


And this week marks the beginning of Oktoberfest (noone knows why it isn't called Septemberfest but anyway) and I shall have the arduous duty of attending with my lab one of the massive tents at the Wies'n on my birthday on wednesday. Sucks to be me, really.
Miss you all though, and keep the posting up, I shall try my hardest :) Though it may take me some time to recover from the minimum 1L size beers on offer.
Love from Muenchen,
Kiri

House warming party in Stockholm

Tomorrow, we're thinking in having a small HWP in our place. Off course it is BYO, because I cannot afford even my beer (and I cannot leave at 3PM, before the beer shop closes)... But if you wanna get heroine, there are a 24h shop just across the road.

Raul und Kiri in München

(taken in a cocktail bar with the camera pointing at the mirrored ceiling... in case you want to know. ;))

Bolder Boulder

I was hoping our first blog entry would be accompanied by a breath taking photo of lycra-clad Boulder extreme cyclists with waxed legs, but we have yet to buy a camera. So the photo of the "triatha-dicks" as Alex affectionately refers to them will have to wait until the next posting.

It's been a week now, and I'm still refusing to change the clock on my computer to US time. It's still 4:24pm on Saturday as far as I'm concerned. Obviously, I'm reluctant to let go of Canberra and everyone there, but it has been a pretty smooth transition so far. Alex and I have reconnected with some old friends from when we lived in Boulder before. So hopefully we'll soon be out painting the town red along side them.

Richardson, you ought to come visit-the beer is CHEAP here!

Miss you all!

Capital Punishment III - or why Sweden never gets the nobel prize...

Well, I know I complained a lot about Canberra, and with all the respect, that place is a craphole. But, the John Curtin and the ANU were a fantastic environment. I had total freedom to run my work over there and be a productive scientist. But here, in Sweden...:

* Scientists are very, very underpaid;
* Post-doc is just a fancy name for an extended PhD, they don't even pay you a salary, they pay you a scholarship!!!
* I felt a general lack of motivation;
* One always has to leak the asses of the 'superiors';
* Too little resources;
* Grants seem to hard to get;
* A lot, I mean: A LOT of stupid bureaucracy;

The first sentence a secretary here told me (with an awful swedish accent):

'that's a strange name you have...'

I know that since I was 3...

AND After seeing Raul's pics of beer in Munich...

What can I say...:

1. I cannot afford to go out here... so no beer drinking in pubs;
2. I cannot buy beer here... because when I get home the System Bolaget (the 1984-tyoe of citizen control tool used to disallow beer drinking and increase the rate of suicide... I believe that improves the accounts of the superannuation system...) is closed;

But...

After some days of anger... I thought a bit and yesterday I was seeing this whole stockholm story as a burden and today I am seeing it as a challenge.

Raul's life in Munich

Beer!

Meat!

More beer!

This is the life! Ahhhhhhhhh!!! ;-)

More Munich

Kiri with an amazingly large apple struedel and a very nice weiss bier (@ Augustiner Brau)

Ian (NZ) and Diana (Germany - housemate)

An overview of the massive Augustiner beer hall




Some tosser with leatherhosen and a tuba playing the American anthem (yuck!)

B&W Sunset over the train lines near the Munich central station (Hauptbahnoff)

Farewell to Kaori!

Kaori is probably boarding the plan in Sydney now.... heading off after tearful farewell drinks organized by JB (his speech seamed scarily sincere - I think he will miss Kaori a lot).

Ps. no need to try to download the photo... it got blurry! Darn....