Another winter weekend

Hi everybody,

all Kiwis celebrated our beloved Queen of England’s birthday last Monday. Sabrina and I used the public holiday to travel a little more around the country. Even though I had been on the Coromandel peninsula before, the trip was awesome. The most spectacular part of our trip was the sea-kayaking tour we did on Monday. A guide took us along the secluded coastline which had been granted the status of a Marine Reserve to protect the local fish population. This lead to a 1500%!!! increase in the fish population and a similarly amazing increase in “new” or returned species. The white sand cliffs offer nesting places for birds, and stingrays enjoy the calm and shallow waters in “Stingray Bay”, which is hardly accessible from land and thus perfect to aim for on a kayak trip like ours.

We also visited Hot Water Beach again missing the low tides by half an hour which meant that Sabrina could only stick her feet into the warm sand but not dig a hole to create her on “hot-tub”. We have to repeat that part the next time we are in that area which is only 2 hours from Auckland and thus in reach for a daytrip.

My thesis is growing as well, at the moment I am mostly busy writing down and deriving equations with my favourite “Word equation editor” Once I have the documentation for the code done, I will go back to Matlab and program it.

Sabrina just called me and told me about a Postgrad party downtown. You will understand that I have to go…

I don’t want to leave you without posting pictures of our Coromandel trip, though. I hope to talk to you soon,

Timm

Surfing Raglan

Yet another time, we hit the road and drove down to the renowned left-hand break spot of Raglan, on the West-Coast of New Zealands North Island. This time, Sabrina and Julien joined me for a fantastic “winter” day in New Zealand to have fun on the water. We rented gear for half a day, and we were pretty much the first people on the water. After leaving Auckland at 7am on a Sunday, we were very pleased to see that the weather was in our favour and so were the waves…

Incredible conditions for an improving surfer family!!!

On the way back home, we drove past the Bridal Veil Falls again which I wanted to show to Sabrina. I am pretty tired now after driving for four hours and surfing for five… time for bed

Just one more picture

After moving in to our home in Orakei and posting some few pictures of the interior, here is one shot from our balcony towards the Eastern Bays. I will also add some pictures of our room soon….

She is here finally,….

Juhu, Sabrina arrived on May 10th!!! By now, I think she has become used to the new timezone, and her project at the university has started as well. We went on a couple of roadtrips during the first two weekends together, places I had been to before and was happy to show to hear and Tanya, Sabrina’s friend from Stuttgart who will be working for the University of Auckland as well. After staying with us for the first couple of days, she decided to move in to our house as well, with us now being a flat of four, respectively five, once Roland will be back in Auckland. Gary, the sixth flatmate, who is only seldomely staying with us, invited us over to his house in Remuera for another spectecular dinner and a nice red wine.

Work is gradually showing results, although I am a little disappointed with my own progress. Research really takes a while to show improvements at times, and reading papers is not always helpful nor is it clarifying the matter if the authors just copied somebody else’s work…

However, I would never complain, but I’ll rather show you a nice and colourful picture of a possible future America’s Cup sail and some other recent shots from our weekend excursions:

Talk to you soon

Timm

Settling in, oder: “Hab ick ne geile Bude, is det….”

After moving into the new house last week, I am starting to actually live in Auckland. That means I can take my time and relax on the weekend without having to worry about the next crazy party coming up. Today, I drove down into the city with my new flatmate Nadja to organize some things that I needed to complete my room. I will buy another cupboard for Sabrina and me hopefully this afternoon (the trademe auction ends at 4pm). After I finally put some pictures on the wall, my room is starting to feel a little more cosy, which is nice after long weeks without feeling anything close to home in my prior room in Meadowbank.

Right now, I am situated at 3/73A Kupe St. in Orakei, Auckland. This is even closer to the beaches and in close reach of downtown Auckland and my office at the University. I am also getting familiar with the use of our manual Espresso maschine “La Pavona PL Professional” which has produced incredible espresso with an authentic dark “crema”.

My project is also going well, my sail analysis program is running and on its best way to being finished next week.
With Sabrina arriving on Saturday, May 10th, I will probably take a day off on the following Monday to show her the city and the most important places to go. Although the weather is more on the unstable side right now, I hope that we can use one day to drive to the West-Coast and enjoy the first bits of “The Great Outdoors” together.

I took some few pictures of my new house (living room) yesterday, that I posted above. There will be more pictures of the surrounding area and our balcony view soon, but our neighbours wifi-network that I am using right now is probably not going to carry all this traffic

I’ll get back to you later, have a nice weekend!!!

Timm