Donnerstag, 25. September 2014

A weekend in Adelaide and a new chapter begins

And another 3 months have passed with no news from us...
What are they doing? Where are they? What has happened since June?

Bine is really busy so I took some time to report to you what has happened so far.

Well, we're doing really fine, we still live in Tasmania and will move in about 3 weeks into a new flat not too far from were we are at the moment. We are now definetely staying here for at least another 3 years as I just got my scholarship approved and will start my PhD within the next week or so. For those who don't remember: It's about biodiversity modelling in the southern ocean using sparse data. In a short version this means I will first have a close look at an area in the southern ocean, where there is some data on fish species and their abundance  as well as data on the physical environment (like water temperature, cloud cover, bathymetry, ice cover etc). From this I will try to build a model that allows to predict biodiversity using just the physical data. The data is already collected so my PhD is strongly based on the statistical analysis of the data. However, I might still be able to hop onto a boat to the antarctic sometime in the next few years.

Bine is currently in Adelaide beeing trained in managment and administration. When she comes back in about 4 weeks she's supposed to take over and manage the tasmanian office of her company. She's doing really well and I'm pretty confident she's going to have a lot of success with her job.
So at the moment we're exactely where we want to be: at the start of a really exciting new life in Hobart.

Enjoy the pictures and if anyone wants to give us a visit in Tasmania you are very welcome :-)

Cheers Jan and Bine

Last weekend Jason and Chanda (the owners of the company Bine is working for) invited me over to Adelaide to spend a weekend with them. I had a short stopover in Sydney on my way to Adelaide and the pilot was kind enough to take a little detour around the bay


That picture was taken shortly after I got notified that I was getting my scholarhip for the PhD

The next day Jason and Chanda invited us on a hot air baloon trip an hour away from Adelaide. We got up at 4 o'clock after having a few drinks the evening before. Everyone was a little tired at the beginning, but the excitment soon took over and a later event made sure we had lots to talk about for the next few days.


 group selfie

and lift off

Jason and Chanda

About 5 seconds after the pilot f#### up and we landed in the water. I somehow didn't get too scared and took this picture of Jason.

Thinking about it afterwards, it was quite scary as water got into the basket pretty quick and pretty high up to the knees on one side and over the ankles on the other side of the basket. A little less hot air in the ballon and I don't know how our trip would have ended. The pilot somehow still managed to get us up high to enjoy the view. 




 short before landing

our wet feet

lunch at a farm in a beautiful setting

BabyBjörn


Montag, 16. Juni 2014

Tassie life

Hello everyone,


we have been living in Tasmania for about 4 months now and its time for a little update.
Its winter in Tasmania, so temperatures have fallen quite a bit since our last post. It gets to about 5°C at night, or pretty much a soon as the sun is setting. When there's sunshine and low wind its still really nice during the day with 15-20°C. However there are now more overcast days than in summer and it is therefore quite often a little chilly.
After staying on a very basic caravan park for almost the first 2 months, we moved into a nice little house in West Hobart at the end of march. Finally we got out of the van! It's been nice, but as it got colder and with Bine working everyday it was just about time to move back into a real home.
After looking at a few places we decided for this place where we are house sitting (zwischenmiete) for Leah (the main tenant), who is in France on a 7 months trip and we are also taking care of her cat and of the garden. Leah also allowed us to use her car, which is a lot more convenient than the van. The view here is also quite nice as you can see in the pictures below, however we should cut down those trees... It's too bad we have to move out in october and look for a new place, as we really like it here.
Bine is currently in Western Australia for work and will be back in about 5 weeks. She's doing quite well in her job, however there are a few issues with the visa that we have to deal with. It might take a little longer to get the working visa for her than planned, but we are positive it'll work out. We'll know more on that in the next few weeks.
For me, nothing major has changed in the last few months. I have been working on publishing a paper and have been preparing myself for the PhD. Apart from that, I've found some really nice surf spots, but as the surf is quite inconsistant, its more of a once in two weeks sport, so I guess I need to find something additional to keep myself busy.
About a week ago I applied for a scholarship for my PhD and I should get notified on the outcome within the next few weeks. Let's hope for the best, but as my paper has not yet been published, I'm not too confident about it. We have to wait and see, but if its granted I could start immediately which would be absolutely amazing.
Last weekend we had our first visitor when Bine's cousin Allan flew over from Sydney where he attended a conference. He's on holidays and stopping over in Australia before vising home in the Philippines.

Enjoy the pictures and  if you don't hear from us that often it usually means we're fine ;-)

Cheers Jan and Bine



 Still on the caravan park, in the suburbs of Hobart

 Artistic/funny show by a french sailing couple at the Hobart harbour

 Free campsite about 50km outside of Hobart

View at our garden and at the sea from our dining room

Lots of birds enjoy the berries next the windows in our dining room

Bine's cousin Allan on a short visit during his holidays from his UN-job in Liberia

 Stunning view at Hobart and surrounds from the top of Mt. Wellington

Samstag, 22. Februar 2014

South Coast and back to Tassie

Hello everyone :-)
Again, its been a while since we last posted pictures on the blog. A lot happened since, with Bine starting in her new Job and Jan awaiting further details on a PhD in Hobart. But lets start from the beginning:
After leaving busy but beautiful Sydney, we again met up with our two Estonian friends and their friends, to continue our trip south along the coast. Along the way we visited plenty of nice beaches and had a few surfsession in between, with the water getting slowly colder the further south we got. A few hundred km before Melbourne, the gearbox in the Estonian car stopped working. Luckily one of their other friends (they're everywhere :-D) towed them to Kyabram, the place where we all met last year, and they've been fixing up the car and working ever since. We on the other hand headed further along the coast to Wilsons Promontory and into Melbourne.


Estonia in Australia

Nice spot for a workout


Wilsons Promontory


Back in Melbourne to visit Bine's family

Heatwave 44°C

Jason's "stumpy-tail-lizards"


Once again, we headed to Tasmania. Jan wanted to find a PhD at the university, and Bine was looking for a job in sales/marketing. Here's our office and where Bine was applying for jobs.


The next day we arrived in Hobart for Bine's job interviews! Yes, the next day!... After the weekend she started her job (03.02.), and yesterday she already got promoted! What a great start. 

Jan also had a good start with a really interesting PhD-project available at the University of Tasmania. However, there's still more work to do for Jan as the funding and scholarships are not secured yet. We'll be keeping you up to date on Bine's and Jan's further career. Also, we'll hopefully be having an apartment soon, so our Mitsu-on-Tour will probably soon be a Mitsu-in-Hobart :-)

The Royal Tasmanian Botanical Garden in Hobart

The rugged coastline with a little longboard-wave

Freitag, 17. Januar 2014

East Coast Beauty

Here a little shot of a little gem we stumbled upon while travelling down the east coast. Its places like this that make us go out there and explore :-)

Australian summer

And it got even worse later in the day, all thanks to a little breeze from the desert





Donnerstag, 16. Januar 2014

New Year's Eve in Sydney

Where to spend New Year's Eve 2013? In Sydney of course!! Spending NYE in Sydney was an easy decision for us. The Sydney Habour Bridge with the Opera House right behind it seemed to be the right location to say goodbye to the old year and start into 2014. It was a nice sunshiny day. To be sure to get a nice spot with a great view we had to get up early to safe us a nice place. Equipped with lots of food, drinks and games we spent the whole day at Sydney's Blue Point, one of the nice NYE spots.

 9am and the spot's already almost full. Turned out that a lot of people camped out to secure themselve a good spot.

Although we've been a little bit "late" we finally found a good place to stay.

The view wasn't too bad, was it? ;-)

The Estonian-German-French-NYE-Crew

15 hours of waiting for the year to be finally done and the hot sun made some of us sleepy.

But in the end noboby overslept the new year.

Goodbye 2013! Thank you for the nice impressions and the nice people we were able to meet.
Hello 2014!! We are looking forward to find out how everything will turn out ;-)