Hmm, it seems I haven't updated my journal in a while, despite the fact that I've done quite a bit since the last update... this is mainly due to the fact that I've had very restricted internet for a while and also because I have a large number of photos to sort through to find the best ones to add to my gallery. So, what have I been doing since the last entry (bear with me, it's gonna be a long one)...
On the weekend before I left Amsterdam (about the 10th of June I think) I cycled out to Muiden and visited the castle out there. This is quite a cool castle in my opinion (though I think most castles are cool), what made it extra neat though was the fact that they had a couple of falconers out there with a few falcons and an owl. They didn't make the falcons kill anything during the display but they did make them fly back and forwards a few times and we got to stroke the front of the owl (the birds seemed quite happy with the attention).
From Amsterdam, I flew to Bari in Italy and then was taken to a place called Capitolo near Monopoly which is essentially a seaside resort with one or two local shops and several pubs. My reason for being in Capitolo was to attend a conference on Structural Dynamical Systems and to present a poster at this conference. Being a seaside resort, there wasn't actually that much to do there except listen to various talks on the subject (mostly about computing fast matrix exponentials) and then head to the beach for a swim and a laze in the sun. We did however, go on a conference excursion to Lecce (which is known for it's white stone buildings) where we wandered around the narrow streets for a while then found a gelato shop (I ate a lot of gelato in Italy ).
After the conference was finished, I headed to Rome for a holiday where I spent 5 nights in a backpackers. Rome is simply amazing! The backpackers had a map with practically all the tourist attractions within the Aurelian Wall, so I tried to see everything on the map (this is possible, although I could barely walk at the end of each day).
On my first full day in Rome, I took a combined tour of the colosseum and the Palatine hills. The colosseum is huge and very impressive but it's best view is from the outside, however, the Palatine hills were excellent. To make things better, the tour guide for our group was a kiwi who knew a lot about the region and told us the story of Romulus and Remus and various other cool tidbits about the hills and the neighbouring Roman Forum (we gave him an ovation at the end and several people gave him tips, i.e. extra money for those of you who don't know what tipping is). What makes the ruins on the Palatine hills and in the Forums below so impressive is that a large portion of these structures, which were made of primitive bricks and cement then covered with marble over two thousand years ago, are still standing despite the best efforts of the Christians and various other pillaging and destructive groups throughout the centuries.
For example, there is one set of pillars which the Christians attached ropes to the top of them and tried to pull them over, but what they didn't count on was that each pillar weighed about 60 tonnes and had a third of it's length in the ground... obviously these pillars are still standing.
In one of my later days there, I visited the Terme di Caracalla (one of the Roman baths) which is similarly old, huge and extremely impressive. The sign there claims that several million bricks were used to construct the baths and that it would have taken 9000 slaves working all day every day for 5 years to build them. While there are still a few fragments of the marble tiling still around, almost all the marble from the baths and other Roman ruins have been pillaged for the construction of other buildings and monuments, most notably the decorations in the Vatican.
The Vatican and it's museum were one of the other sights that I went to see. These were also very impressive, though personally I preferred the Roman ruins. Of course, I did the climb up to the top of the dome on the Vatican and took overlapping photos to make a 360 degree shot from the top.
Other attractions of note that I saw were Trevi Fountain (I threw in a coin), Castel di Sant Angelo, several obelisks, several more fountains, several other large churches, the enormous monument of Vittorio Emanuele II (perhaps compensating for something? ) and many other random things. I also, walked the via Appia, though I took the long way... I walked out one gate in the wall, walked around the outside of the wall, then back in through the via Appia (I had VERY sore feet that day).
(I'll slowly add photos to my gallery as I sort through them).
From Rome, I headed back home to NZ, though only for a short while... To get home though, I had to fly from Rome to Amsterdam to Singapore to Auckland where one of my best friends came to pick me up and I stayed at her place for the night before flying down to Palmy where another of my best friends was visiting. Anywho, with waiting periods of 4-5 hours at each airport and long flight times, it was about 38 hours after I left Rome that I arrived in Auckland at about mid-morning. Needless to say, I slept like a log that night/morning/almost afternoon. After meeting up with yet another close friend (who is about to leave the country) and having an early dinner, I flew down to Palmy, arriving late at night and checked into the hostel I was to be staying at for the following few days (where the second friend I mentioned was staying).
After visiting my office at Massey Uni and saying hello to my colleagues/lecturers there and trying to catch up on emails, I went to a 1 day conference in Wellington (which we had to get up by 5:30am for! plus I still had jet lag!). Anyway, the conference was ok, nothing too difficult or too related to my work and I got to catch up with a couple of people I used to work with. Once my friend who was visiting left (I saw her off to the taxi at yet another rediculously early hour in the morning), I spent the rest of that week modifying a talk that I have to give soon and making a little bit of progress on some other work.
On the 1st of July (less than a week after I got back to NZ), my supervisor, his family and myself flew to Brisbane (which is where I am now) where I'm attending a winter school on computation methods for PDEs (my supervisor is one of the lecturers). The weekend I arrived was mostly spent setting in, figuring out how to get back and forth to the city and meeting the other people in my course (several of which I already knew). All of last week was spent in an intensive course, I have filled up a 64 page book and run one pen dry from taking notes and that was just the first of three weeks.
This weekend that's just been however, a group of us decided to have a bit of fun. We started off by going to town on Firday night to visit a few pubs, though I wasn't allowed into some places because I was wearing shorts (stupid dress codes). On Saturday most of us caught up on a bit of sleep before having a pretty bad game of soccer then making our way into town to watch Pirates of the Caribbean 2, which was pretty good (I liked the first one better though). Then on Sunday six of us went to Dreamworld for the day and played on all the thrill rides, my favourites were the Giant Drop and Wipeout. In the Giant Drop you are taken to the top of a 120m tower and then let go until you almost reach the bottom (about 4-5s worth of freefall), the view at the top is great and when you start falling is one of the scariest things I've done (and I'm a white-water kayaker so that's saying something :-P). The Wipeout however, is just heaps of fun, it's like being worked over in a huge hole without actually getting wet! Anywho, after going on the big rides (most of them twice), we headed back to the college where we're staying, where I had dinner then went straight to bed, it was an exhausting day and I had to get up early for the world cup final (I wore my Italian shirt so was happy that Italy won, although I thought they played like crap all throughout the second half and through extra time).
So now we're into the second week of the winter school here and working hard again, so that's as far as this update can go... thanks for reading