Oz Part III - Melbourne - Adelaide - Brisbane

Finally, the weekend. Been travelling like mad. From Brisbane to Melbourne to Adelaide and back to Brisbane in two days. I am staying at Eelco and Ebba's for the weekend, which is really relaxed. Enjoying a beer or three, having a barbecue with the family. Here are some photos.

Adelaide - city of churches.

Van the Man

Jensen the Great

View from the balcony

Oz Part II - Brisbane - Melbourne

G'day, how are you going?

In the meantime, uncle Roger has travelled from Brisbane to Melbourne to Adelaide. I can define my experience in four simple statements.

- I have never been this far south in my life!
- I grow an Ozzy accent already! Good on you mate!
- I've met more Ministers in three days than in my entire life!
- My tie looks great, they think I have a 5000 dollar suit!

And now the photos: starting in Brisbane ending in Melbourne.

The Brisbane river bank

The wheel of Brisbane

A guitarist in the game room of the conference. The game room of the conference?? Yes, the game room of the game conference.

Gerard Eckdom!! Oh I mean, Neil Diamond.

Melbourne: old European Style mixed with skyscapers.

Oz part 1 - Brisbane

Well, I am in a terrible state of jetlag, so nothing much to say really. Feels like I am in Barcelona or some European city, while I'm at the other part of the world. First photos are nothing more than some pictures of my hotel room. Ehm hotel room... sorry I meant apartment villa, having two bedrooms, two bathrooms, kithchen, dishwasher, laundrywasher, dryer, balcony terrace, etc. More to follow of course!

My short sleep in Singapore was in the Airport Hotel. Literally, as you can see fro the window view.

View from the Brisbane hotel (23rd floor)

View from the Brisbane hotel


My apartment from the inside (living room)

My apartment from the inside (balcony terrace)

There is some serious flooding going on over here. For some a a curse, for some a blessing. This is what I picked up from the newspaper

Taipei II

After a very interesting conference, we had our own presentation on the fourth and last day, Friday. This went quite ok, of course, and we saw that the second and fourth day were the days with the highest quality. Nonetheless, we got stuck in our own paradox conclusion of this conference, that there is a whole world of other people not listening to openmindedness. But ok, let's just talk about the beautiful country here. I have honestly never felt so safe and never seen such friendly people abroad. Taiwan hardly has any police, because it doesn't need it. Today was a feasting day, so really really crowded, but we could have taken the metro with our eyes closed and of our bags open! And so we did. Enjoy the photos!

To prove that we actually did something, here is Marcel photoshopped in someone else's presentation.

Especially for all people named 'Daan' (Daan, pay attention here!).

We decided to go on a hike trail up to the tea mountains. Steep stairs, but really worth it!

On our way up, we had some great views. This is just one of them.

This is another great view at the tea-house

...where we had tea for several hours. The ritual is great and relaxing.

Marcel enjoys(?) his Taiwanese potatoe that was served with the tea

This day was a day of honouring deceased family. So everyone lit incense in this dragon, served food at graves and visited the temples in the mountains.

Just another great picture of a big city

Taipei I

Hello,

My colleague Marcel and I are in Taiwan for a conference on geotechnical and geophysical site characterization. So far, we haven't been out of the city Taipei. It's a bit of a weird city: clean but smelly, green but full of skyscrapers, cloudy but warm. As it is the first time for me in a country where they speak Chinese (actually Mandarin) we get a bit of a 'Lost In Translation' feeling. Especially because the hotel is so luxuruous.

View from the 101 Tower, the highest tower in the world, has it's flaws: you're in the clouds...

The 101 tower as seen in the city, between other skyscrapers

And they're still building....

These photo's (above and under) are from an amazing scene: a herb garden ('moestuin' in Dutch) in the middle of the city!! Would you eat it?

Latera, Italy [EN]

October 2006,

For a European project involving research on the monitoring of CO₂ in the subsurface (JRAP) we were sent to the village Latera, Italy. This small village in the mountains is situated approximately 80 km above Rome. All kinds of geopyhsical techniques were used to monitor a CO₂ , like electromagnetics, resisticity, groundradar, HRS and magnetometry. Unfortunately, not only CO₂ was coming out of the vent, als H₂S, which sometimes gave a terrible smell. Usually, the weather is cold and rainy during this time of year. But hey, it's us, the lucky bastards: not one cloud, during the two-field survey, except the last day when we left. In short, a report of two weeks driving and measuring on a cross-road in the Italian Appenines.

Driving is so much better than going by plane! This is on our way to the Gotthard pass.

On a beautiful day we drove over the Gotthart. Beautiful blue skies make wonderful photos.

The city of Latera as seen from above.

This farmer went to work undisturbed by the European geophysical invasion and made sure we had a dusty stage...

Me and my colleague doing electromagnetic EM34 measurements in the centre of the gas vent. Because of the high concentration CO2 and H2S, nothing grew here. On the other end, at the sides of the round vents grass was growing more rapidly than elsewhere, creating weird 'halos' in the landscape.

Performing resistivity is a tough job. But someone's got to do it….

Having one day off, we immediately went on a … yes, geological excursion. The city of Civita di Bagnoregio. It teeters atop a pinnacle in a vast canyon ruled by wind and erosion. But, while its population has dropped to 14, the town survives (and even has a website: www.civitadibagnoregio.it).

n Perugia, the town famous for chocolat, there is a feat every year called Eurochocolat. In this year's event, there were all kinds of sculptures made by artists. The chocolat that was cut away, was thrown to the people.

In the series 'promotional pictures for geosciences' the number 1: Go study Geosciences, it's fun!

The surveying people from TNO (NL) and La Sapienza - Università di Roma (IT) on a group photo.

And the domestic cat of course...

Poland [EN]

March 2007,

For a EU project we are doing a geophysical, seismic, survey near Psczczyna in Poland. This small city is in between Katowice and the Czech and Slovakian border. The measurements are done in a gravel quarry with seismic measuring equipment from TNO (NL) and a huge vibro-truck from DMT (Germany).

At arrival we immediately started working. The weather is miraculously ok (for March), about 15 degrees Celsius, with sun and a blue sky; generally, the weather at this time of year is about minus 10 with loads of snow.

The background shows a pump (it is an old Dutch one!).

The surveylocation, the gravel pit, as seen from the top. You cannot see the area of research, but the reflection from the sun is beautiful.

My colleage Chris is always grumpy

And colleague Vincent is always cheerful!

View on the bottom of the gravel pit.

Colleague Oene makes lunch: pigfat-sandwich. In Holland 'not done', in Poland a delicatesse.

The Vibrotruck on its transporter. The size of this thing is incredible!