Erquy-jerky

It was off to Erquy on Thursday for our annual seminaire d'équipe, where we chat about research direction and wander around on beaches. Previous years were at Piriac-sur-Mer and St Jacut de la Mer, and this wasn't too far away from the latter, both of them on the north coast (côte d'armor, armor meaning "the sea" in the local dead language).

So on Thursday morning we had a few presentations from some of the first-year PhDs - JM, Martin & Erwan, and a brief chat from Didier about the state of Kermeta. All very fascinating.

In the afternoon we gathered a bunch of people and went down to the beach for a game of aussie rules. You read correctly. I showed a bit of the anzac day game and tried to explain some basics of the rules, then we hopped into it with a game of 6 on 6 or so on a 60-80m patch of sand with rocks for goal posts. People picked it up pretty quickly, particularly JMJ and Jacques, who had played rugby before, and so could kick a distance, but mostly the ball moved frantically by hand, and there was no positional play. My team got roundly thumped, but it was great fun. Ironically, it was possibly the first game of footy I've played, and I played it in France. There was a little interest, mainly from Erwan, about doing it again sometime, so we'll see if that pans out. After the encroaching tide took away our field, we retreated to a paddock on higher ground and played some European football, proving beyond doubt to everyone involved that footy is an order of magnitude more physically demanding than soccer.

Friday we had more talks, this time second-years - Franck C and Seb - and some chat about more general direction stuff. There was a discussion about custom concrete syntax stuff. Having spent 4 years of my life working on model/syntax standards and tools, I was a little disappointed that no-one has come to see me about this stuff. On the other hand, I've been happy enough to put HUTN behind me a little, and I suppose I can't have things both ways. There was also talk about requirements modelling stuff, which by my reckoning should go pretty well as a future avenue.

My favourite song

Right now, and for the last month or so now, my favourite song has been 'Fiction', by the Luckies, off Warmer Corners. One might say its too good to be true.

Written down here, gentle reader,
It seems too good to be true,
But there's a girl in kansas city
With my favourite tattoo.

Oh why would I lie to you?

This was in another century
Somewhere near the summer's end.
The fahrenheit was frightening;
I was awake the whole weekend.
Invited to a barbeque,
I found refuge in the kitchen
Discussing post-war U.S. literature
With a girl whose upper arm read "fiction",

Like it might have been typewritten.

When I asked her its significance,
She said she sometimes took reminding
What she wanted to be doing,
Whether reading it or writing.
I admitted admiration
For both typeface and intent,
And said, more softly, sotto voce,
I knew too well what she meant.

She just smiled and, in a while, she went.

For a time I forgot this ever took place.
She left her bottle on the bookcase.

So though I leave you little option
But to take me at my word,
I assure you, dearest listener,
That it happened as you've heard.
A beer left on a bookshelf
At a byegone barbeque,
By a girl from kansas city
With my favourite tattoo.

Oh why would i lie to you?
Oh why would i lie to you?
Oh why would i lie?

Weekend of Warcraft

Another 3-day weekend spent mostly playing WoW. I'm to a level now where instances are in play, and playing a priest, I'm in good demand, so I've been having a fairly good time of it, finishing off lots of quests and generally learning my way around what is a very, very deep game. Partying with Julz, Mick & Paul has been good, but Paul is so far above that a lot of the time there's no real tension to it. Still, being able to voice chat (with skype conferences) between the 4 of us makes a real difference to reaction time. By contrast, the instances I've done with other parties have tested me more, since we've been punching above our weight. We ran RFK last night with a party of 24/26/26/28/31, and it was pretty testing most of the time, running lvl32 elite bosses that seem to come in 3s. That last sentence was probably overgeeking things, wasn't it ...

One of the very few other things I managed to do over the weekend was order some prints of my photos from Australia. I expect they'll arrive either today or tomorrow, and I'll be interested to see what they're like, since its the first time I've ordered prints of my digital photos, and I didn't photoshop them at all.

I have so little to do socially, especially compared to how it was in Brisbane, where it was just to easy to go hang out with people. Fortunately, we have a team retreat Thursday and Friday which should be fun (Aussie rules lessons on the beach Thursday afternoon, weather permitting and participants willing). Then I have a weekend away the week after, and I'm looking at getting up to Basel to see Chris for the 4-day Ascension weekend.

wigs yo

wigs yo.

We saw Chrizzou off in some style, with hair not our own and beverages not of our own controlling. This was a rare calm moment snapped amid the madness.

Myriad apologies once again to those I invited and gave the wrong evening. I'll blame the time difference and run quickly in the other direction before the questions come.

roo at rest

roo at rest.

Just before I headed down to Canberra to see Lee & Em, I went with Chris and Anjum to Lone Pine to see some strine fauna, including this chap. My guess is he (she?) was tired from having being chased by human children. In the roo paddock, the ecosystem was reversed, and food chased the eater in the eager hands of smiling kiddy kind.

Mt Castle

Mt Castle.

Continuing the pictures train, another of our jaunts was down to Goomburra, formerly known to me as Gordon Country, although I didn't make the link until we got there. We drove up a winding track out of the valley into tropical rainforest, wherefrom some short walks took us to spectacular (I reckon) vistas like this one, out to Mt Castle.

mum on highfield falls

mum on highfield falls.

One of the sorties I made into the strine wilderness was with Mum one afternoon. We drove out to highfield falls (here), then around past a couple of dams, and up onto a hill to see the view out across the downs. Highfield falls was one of the few wet looking parts, although we got some rain during the course of our tour.

the weeks roll by

Great finish to the basketball game Saturday night. Avenir played pretty poorly through the 4th quarter, and were down by 9 with just under 2 minutes to play, but lifted to break almost even. With 5.6 seconds left, Chartres led by 1 and had the ball under the basket in attack, but they turned it over, and Avenir ran it up the other end and scored as time expired for the 1-point win. Very exciting, and a bit of an escape in their last home game. Few drinks after the game, met Liz's mum & aunt who were over for a week. Home about 3:30.

Went and saw the 2s on Sunday, too. They had a win on the back of Sandy hitting 3s through the 4th quarter. Weird vibe with J in the crowd - things have changed there recently, hardly surprising.

Other than that, plenty of WoW over the weekend, including a run through deadmines with Paul, Julz & Mick on Monday. Good craic, and will be even better once we start to get closer to Paul's level. Called Mum & Dad Sunday for a chat.

Played basketball yesterday, pretty crappy time of it. Pretty crappy day all around, in fact. I was grouchy and the world around me seemingly had no problem feeding me crap. Probably need more sleep.

Just when I thought I was out...

I got back to Rennes. I guess I could tell how. The flight to Singapore was OK, watched many movies although the system was not video-on-demand, first time I haven't had that on a Singapore Airlines flight. In Singapore I lashed out and bought wifi access, since I didn't feel comfortable paying for a train ticket using the free internet machines. The flight to Paris went well - I had a window in the exit aisle, which meant I could straighten one leg, which was something. After the meal I popped a couple of sleeping pills and zonked out for 8 or 9 hours.

In Paris, I grabbed my suitcase pretty quickly, jumped the shuttle bus to the RER station and caught a slowish RER down to Denfert-Rochereau, then a metro to Montparnasse, getting there with 15 minutes to spare for my TGV to Rennes. I was going to go into Rennes in the afternoon to get my hair cut and stuff, but in the end I just managed some grocery shopping and a little WoW at home.

When I hit Paris I was wondering why I'd traded Australia for France again - there was dense fog and it generally didn't feel like I'd traded "mid-Autumn" (which has no meaning whatsoever in Brisbane) for mid-Spring. Still, once I hit Rennes it was actually a beautiful day.

I thought for a while that I'd beaten the jetlag by staying awake so long and then getting a good whack of sleep on the Singapore-Paris leg, but around 4pm I lost all energy, and about 5:30pm I crashed for a few hours. I awoke, had some dinner, and played a little more WoW until around 11:30pm, but woke up pretty brightly around 3am. Hopefully tonight will be better.

which will bring us back to 0

Back from Canberra to Brisbane, and more hanging out with Chris, Anjum, Mick, Paul, Julz, Anthony, Celia, and others. Tough life.

On Thursday I gave my spiel at QUT to a small but interested (well, half of them were) crowd. I was happy to get some feedback from Keith, Michael & Kerry, and the discussion we had afterwards was really stimulating. Its nice to come and talk to people with a shared vision and common understanding (delusion? relative....) of the field I'm working in. It also Kerry & Michael are settling in well at QUT and working on various funding ideas that might make a return possible for me at some point in the future near or medium-term.

After the chat I drove back to T'ba for one last time (this trip) with Dad. We went for a game of golf on Friday afternoon out at Borneo Barracks. Last time I was back 15 months ago we squeezed in 3 games, and its a shame there wasn't time for more this time around. I really enjoy the ambiance hanging out on the golf course with Dad, and although I played like a mangy dog, the few good shots I managed were really worthwhile.

That done, it was back to Brisbane for a farewell bbq/pissup for Chris, who's heading back to CH this week, all things going well viz-a-viz visas. Beer, punch, whiskey, calva and wigs all chimed in to make it a memorable night. There are awesome photos on Chris' camera, Mick's phone, and Anthony's computer, and even one or two passable ones on my camera, which might find their way onto this forum at the upcoming flood when my return to Rennes prompts a reconciliation. The day after said party was a slow one, shall we say, not least of all for Chris, who was beyond the aid even of bacon and coffee until well into the afternoon.

Which brings us to today. I catch a plane in a handful of hours, and Australia is once again antipodean to me, probably until I have a PhD. Its kind of sad leaving - I know so many people here, and have so much in common with them, be it from having hung out together for so long or just come up in the same sort of surrounds. The conversations move faster, the comedy comes more easily, and its just a different vibe to the social milieu I have in Rennes. Now, as Chris has so often protested, if only we can get some more good jobs and European women over to Australia, it'd all be beer and skittles. For the moment I'll just have to settle for baguettes and a European summer.

hell. frozen.

We interrupt your travelogues to bring you shocking news.

I agree with John Howard on this one.

Slow down there, tiger, what's doing? The Solomons thing, I mean. Sending troops in to quell the unrest there was right a few years ago when they did it, and its right now. More importantly, the policy of committing resources to the south pacific in the interests of stabilising those countries, and the strategy of trying where possible to respect their sovereignty and only send troops when they request them, seem right on the money to me. Hats off also to Labour for not turning it into the politically expedient Iraq analogy that it could so easily (and mistakenly) be made to be.

Normal service will now be resumed.

c to the anzay, b to the erray

It can only be a good sign that I haven't been finding time to blog. I've been running around and having a great time on my holiday, so I hope you'll* forgive me if this entry is a little late.

* In french or some other language I'd use the grammatic differentiation between singular and plural second person to insert some Adamsish reference to the fact that I almost certainly have only one reader. In English it kind of just doesn't appear.

So, Friday 10 days ago I pushed off to Canberra to see my sisters. Despite her blog indicating that she's in fact still in Rennes, she moved back to C'ba in January, into the house she was in before she went to Oslo. Em was also up from Hobart, for the easter weekend and also to do some training.

We had a good time on Saturday morning having breakfast overlooking the lake - hot air balloons were scheduled but didn't show - followed by a walk through the farmers markets. In the afternoon we went shopping and bought Em an iPod and me a footy, then went for a walk from Lee's place over to a Thai food festival, where we sampled some excellent pad thai and green curry, and some mediocre crapes [sic].

On Sunday we went for a drive out to Tidbinbilla Nature Reserve, and did a walk of an hour or so up to some high rocks with a nice view out through valleys that are still looking very much the worse for wear from the bushfires a couple of years back. We also walked down through the wetlands, the highlight there being a couple of platypii that came out to frolick (more likely chasing food, I suppose) in a little prepared lake. We had a picnic lunch under some autumnal trees while a family nearby prepared to play some backyard cricket. In the evening we went out to dinner, then Lee & I went and watched Capote at the cinemars.

Monday was the pick of the weekend. We headed around to Liz & Mike's place mid-morning with fresh-baked muffins, and helped Daisy with her Easter egg hunt. That done, 7 of us (Lee, Em, Liz & Mike, Daisy, Toby & I) headed out on bikes for a roll around the lake. We stopped after maybe 10k at a picnic area where, joined by Tom, we broke out the snags & salads and BBQ'd. After eating I broke out the footy and Mike, Toby, Tom, Em & I played some kick to kick. We rode home the other way around the lake, completing a circuit that was probably 30k or so. To finish things off we cooked a lamb roast back at L&M's. I haven't gotten and don't get to spend much time with that mob, and really enjoy their company, so was really glad of the chance to hang out with them.

On Tuesday we went shopping in the morning before a lunch with cousin #3 (for the weekend, not implying any sort of hierarchy), Joe, at a cafe at ANU. Leonie (wife of previous) couldn't make it, since she had some big meeting at PM&C. It was interesting to hear about Joe's impressions of Europe from his postdoc in Ferrara, and how he was doing in getting back to things in Australia. They had just exchanged contracts on a house that very morning, which was very exciting.

Then, on Tuesday evening, it was back to 'Vegas.

and then

Ah, so much to tell.

So I had a barbeque at Jesse's place with Jesse & Al, Nee & Andy, Gav, Mick, and Dave. Snags were cooked, sauce added, beers opened, and much catching up done. All was good with the world.

That evening I went to the footy with Mum & Dad to see the Lions beat the Bombers in a reasonably entertaining affair. Then on Sunday we drove down to Mullum to see Granny for her birthday. We had a walk along the beach at Brunswick Heads and had lunch at the pub. On Monday afternoon, Mum & I headed down to Goomburra, which in a former life I had known as Gordon Country, although in said previous life I hadn't ventured up into the hills into the rainforest they have there. The forest and the views were pretty awesome; photos to follow once I get some time.

On Tuesday it was back to Brisbane, hanging out at Paul's place. In the evening we went and picked up Chris & Anjum, status clarified, from the airport, and grabbed a meal before I headed over to Jesse & Al's place to crash. Wednesday, Chris, Anjum & I did the citycat thing out to Brett's Wharf, then back to uni where I grabbed a quick lunch then went to give my model typing spiel to a group in ITEE. Response pretty good, had a beer with David & Jörn afterwards.

In the evening it was the dream team for quiz night, Drs Chris & Anjum on Chemistry/Physics/Astronomy, Dr Brammer on matters medical, Paul & Jules on musical, myself and others as cleanup hitters. We pinched Dave Coyle from his regular team, too, but it didn't help, as we lucked out to them on a dodgy bonus question and came in second.

Thursday, Anjum, Chris & I continued the tourist thing, chooffing off to Lone Pine to look at koalas, roos, wallabies, snakes, wombats, etc etc. Once again, photos to follow when I get to it. In the evening we went for Punjabi with a big crowd - the Abingdon mob, Jez, Mick, Paul, etc. Afterwards I had a moment of weakness and died my hair what was purportedly blonde but what turned out to be a pale orange. Photos, well, we'll see how courageous I'm feeling. They exist, suffice to say.

the socialite

OK, so yesterday I remembered part of why I like coming back to Brisbane.

Throughout the day I managed to

• bump into Emma in the city


• have lunch with Kerry, Michael, Keith, and David


• bump into James Cole at Taringa station


• catch up with Lach at his place in Taringa


• have a beer with Ian and Bill at Mantara


• go to Ginga and a movie with Mick, Paul & Julz

That's a dozen people from four different social scenes in a single day. I don't think I know a dozen people in Rennes, and yet here I'm only a third of the way through the list I made up the other day of people I'd like to see around Brisbane.

Of course, at the same time, I couldn't find a croissant for breakfast this morning.

back in a wide brown land

morning magpie.

I'm back in the sunburnt country.

I spent a few days with mum & dad up in toowoomba, and got some time in for walks out around the dams through some really nice eucalypt forests.

On Wednesday I hit Bris'vegas to catch up with friends, to date Paul, Mick, Julz and a few others. I'm having lunch with the old Pegamento crowd today, possible beers at the RE this evening with the Mantara folks, and a barbecue tomorrow with Jesse and a few hangers on from the clans, before football in the evening with M&D again. I made a list of people I want to catch up with while I'm here, and its way longer than the time I've allocated, so there will no doubt be some casualties.

Despite said list, I don't feel quite as at home in Brisbane as I used to. That isn't to say that it isn't all familiar, but when I was here last time it still felt like it was my home town, but now I'm not so sure. I suppose its inevitable that with more and more time away I'd become more and more the nomad, but realising it is interesting.