woensdag, september 10, 2008

it's so unfair

vrijdag, augustus 15, 2008

veni, vidi, vici


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[for some reason this map appears zoomed in at Mission Beach. please zoom out for a full view]

With the central most important point: the wedding of my sister Hester with her Ozzie Daniel. Some preliminary pictures here.

(at the moment in Sydney, packing our bags :( )

dinsdag, juli 22, 2008

A trip into the Flinder's Ranges

Last weekend Petra and I went into the Flinder's Ranges, about six hours drive north of Adelaide. We camped and hiked in a place called Wilpena Pound and saw loads of different plants and animals - was great! For pictures, click here.

a red sunrise
Our campsite at sunrise. I did not touch this picture, these colours are real.

the gorge
Into a gorge, perhaps once a year a river.

wedge-tail eagle
A wedge-tail eagle.

maandag, juli 07, 2008

Bustling Adelaide

They say not much happens at Adelaide. Not much nightclubs, pretty boring and small really.

I must say, I am not into nightclubs that much, and I wouldn't dare call a city with 1,500,000 people small. So I'm having a great time.

Last night, cycling home at around 23:30 on a Sunday, I did finally see what they are going on about. On the way through the city, Rundle Street (dubbed Adelaide's Cosmopolitan centre) looked like this:

Adelaide at night

(those lights in the back are NOT head lights. They are street lights.)

vrijdag, juli 04, 2008

Ode to the Ozzies

Aaah finally back in a country where they serve you the right kind of coffee. They've got espresso machines everywhere, and will never serve you filter coffee, let alone instant. Whether it's in a climbing wall or café, beans are freshly ground on the spot and then you hear the satisfying espresso machine rattling. lovely.

The more surprised I was then, to find 3/4 of the part of the supermarket devoted to coffee, to be instant. On the picture below you see the last tiny bit of the isle where the 'normal' coffee is sold. So does this mean that the Ozzies want to serve proper coffee to clients but don't care too much themselves at home? Perhaps most Ozzies that care a lot about coffee just don't buy it in the supermarket and those who don't, get instant. And very few people drink filter coffee. (See these are the things that keep me busy now, when I'm not thinking about my thesis ;)

welcome to instant coffee land

Alright, on more typical Ozzie thing. The commercials are pretty bad. Well, maybe not bad in the sense of being extremely simple (and therefore reaching a larger audience perhaps) and straightforward, but they are really not a pleasure to watch. I tried to watch a bit of telly the other night, but got hugely annoyed by the overflow of uninteresting commercials. But then, the simplicity makes some of them pretty funny. I think the guy on the ad below is particularly ehm... straightforward.

I just love this ad