Flashback: New Zealand News [en]

This is a flashback post, that is, it refers to a long-passed event, or contains content that was originally published through a different channel.
In this case it’s based on an e-mail I sent to a bunch of friends on 2008-03-08 from my trip to New Zealand.

Hi there!

Once again, I’ve been too lazy to write for a couple of months. This time of course I’ve got another excuse: shortly after writing my last newsletter, my old notebook computer broke down:-( I didn’t feel like spending all my time asking my flat-mates to use their computers or running to an Internet café. Though I didn’t hurry to replace the computer, I finally got a new one half a month ago. So now I’m part of the information age again:-)

P1: Looking Stupid in the Mountains

The fact that I got my first non-IT job in years in December is another reason for not spending too much time on computers recently. As indicated in my last mail, I applied for several bar jobs in Queenstown. I was soon accepted at a place called The World Bar, one of Queenstown’s most busy backpacker bars. Work there was quite stressful and shifts usually where from 9pm to about 4:30am. However it was an easy job with no responsibility and consequences whatsoever, and therefore quite relaxing. It was also good fun as you can imagine. It’s not like you get drunk during work, but more often than not you get around to have a couple of drinks yourself. Also, you get to know lots of people working at other bars in town, so you get great discounts everywhere. After a
couple of weeks, Queenstown really began to feel familiar, cause I met friends anywhere I went.

P2: Top of the Remarkables: Single Cone
P3: Descending the Remarkables towards Alta Lake

The more relaxed work schedule at The World Bar also gave me the opportunity to explore more of Queenstown’s surroundings. I was able to do a couple of nice one-day hikes, with my flat-mates and my colleagues from the bar. For instance we hiked the first section of the famous Routeburn Track, a place called Glacier Burn near Glenorchy [P1], and Single Cone [P2][P3], one of the highest peeks of The Remarkables (and pretty scary.) I also bought a used mountain bike, and did some tracks around Lake Wakatipu and Queenstown Hill. One day a friend took us to the other side of Lake Wakatipu by car [P4] and we cycled about 60 km through a lonely valley and along the lake’s shore until we reached Walter Peak, a place connected to Queenstown by a tourist ship [P5].

P4: Another Cable Bridge Near the Movora Lakes
P5: Free Boat Trip on Windy Lake Wakatipu

As mentioned last time Queenstown offers a wide range of organized tourist and adventure activities. One of the advantages of working in hospitality is that you get lots of activities discounted or even for free. Consequently I got to do a rafting trip, a riversurfing trip
(floating down a white-water river on body boards), and the Luge (similar to a downhill go-kart track using unmotorized vehicles). My flat-mates also bought me a “Fly-By-Wire” ride for birthday, which let’s you fly around in a a small propeller-driven plane hanging down on a long rope. You then swing around on that rope like a giant pendulum. Sounds weird, but it’s good fun. Moreover there actually are some free adventures in Queenstown: There is a really nice cliff that allows diving into Lake Wakatipu [P6] and nearby lake Hayes even has a nice swing leading into the water. Admittedly, I’ve avoided the Queenstown’s classic Bungee attractions so far, partly due to their high price but
mainly cause I’m really scared of that. Probably I’ll take my chances with that later on…

P6: Cliff Diving into Lake Wakatipu

Since I wrote last time, I’ve only been to longer trips twice. The first time, I celebrated my first Christmas on the beach in a region called The Catlins in the very south of New Zealand. We went there with my flat-mates and some other Czech guys (yeah, I’m rather improving my Czech over here than my English) and we visited some local sights [P7][P8] and had two nice days at the beach and a Christmas Eve BBQ. I did miss the snow of course, but it’s good to have some change from time to time. On that Christmas trip I also tried surfing on a body-board for the first time in my life. At least it was the first time I tried it seriously, and it worked out very well!

P7: A Beach We Visited at Christmas
P8: Inside the Cathederal Caves

The only time I did some real surfing so far, was on my second trip, which was to Dunedin. That’s one of the largest towns in the south, and we stayed in a sweet little hostel that was located in an former lunatic asylum out of town. The first day we went to explore Dunedin and the surrounding landscape, seeing lots of beautiful landscapes and exotic wildlife [P9]. The hostel also offered surf trips for a small fee, so we joined in twice. Though we had some surf, the conditions where far from perfect, and two days is simply too little to get into that sport again. So I really hope I can get some more of that in the future…

P9: Penguins at the East Coast by Dunedin

That’s one of the reasons why I left Queenstown [P10][P11] one week ago and why I’m heading for New Zealand’s North Island now. Though I know some other guys traveling north at the moment, we were not able to agree on a common schedule. Most people here are somewhat chaotic unfortunately:-( Therefore I bought my own small camper van (a used Nissan Vanette) and I’m traveling on my own for now. Let’s see if I’ll be able to meet my friends on the North Island:-)

P10: Rainy Queenstown
P11: Me and My New Van

As mentioned, I already left a couple of days ago, and so far things are working out quite fine. Surprisingly, the car has been doing pretty well, and I hope it won’t give up on me during the next couple of weeks. I’ll fill you in on the details of my travels next time. For now, let me just tell you that I’m on the northern tip of the South Island and I gonna ferry over to the north soon. There I hope to find some nice beaches and finally do some more surfing amongst others.

If possible, I’d like to pick up another Job in a nice little town nearby the sea (I already know about some candidates) and stay there for about 2 months. However, I will return to Queenstown eventually, since I decided to catch the beginning of the next snowboard season in June. I already bought a season pass, since they give you good discounts when you buy early. But now worries, I won’t be staying in NZ for ever. The flight ticket I have is only valid till August, so I won’t even be able to stay till the end of the season.

This of course means, that I will finally be back to Munich then. I have to admit, I’m beginning to miss it a lot. Hope to see all of you Munich guys after I return! I know you may have your own traveling plans, but I’m really looking forward to meet you back home eventually! That’s all for now, I must have filled up pages already. I’d love to read your story soon!

See ya,
Michi

PS: I already got rid of that strange beard you can see in some of the photographs. No worries!

Flashback: Tales from Middle-Earth [en]

This is a flashback post, that is, it refers to a long-passed event, or contains content that was originally published through a different channel.
In this case it’s based on an e-mail I sent to a bunch of friends on 2007-12-02.

Hey girls, hey boys!

Time sure passes by! Last time I wrote, I was sitting at the beach in LA. As you may remember I went on to New Zealand the next day. Now, more than two months have passed, and I’m still stuck here in NZ! Of course that’s a good thing, and lots of stuff happened since. So let me fill you in on the details…

Changing planes in Auckland I arrived in Christchurch, a small city on the South Island. After experiencing the American lack of urban planing in Las Vegas and LA, Christchurch turned out to be refreshingly European. Several aspects of the city center (P1) made it
quite hard to believe that I had actually arrived down under.

P1: Neuschwanstein Wieners @ Christchurch

Anyways, the next day I continued my Journey to Queenstown, a small resort town in the middle of the Southern Alps. There I met Vonkish — an old friend of mine from Prague — who has already been living in NZ for 1.5 years. As promised, I could move in at his place, and that’s where I’ve been living ever since.

P2: Lake Wakatipu @ Our Living Room

We share the house among 7 people at the moment, which is quite a lot considering we only have three bedrooms. However, it’s very close to the center of QT, and we have a great view on Lake Wakatipu from our living room (P2). The house itself is not overlygood-looking. Moreover, Kiwis haven’t heard of double glazing or other means of insulation yet. That’s no problem now, but it was rather inconvenient in the winter.

Speaking of which, I was actually able to spend the first few weeks of my trip to NZ enjoying winter. The ski fields closed down about 3 weeks after my arrival, but I was lucky enough to get a cheap pass for the rest of the season. So I’ve been up a place called “The Remarkables” about a dozen times.

While it is one of the most famous resorts in NZ, it is by no means comparable to Europe. They only have three chair lifts, which are all painfully slow. Also, you have to go all the way up by car, and they only have a dusty gravel road. So in the end it takes you about 40 minutes to reach the lifts from Queenstown. To preserve Vonkish’s car, we’ve been hitchhiking most of the time.

Nevertheless, it was a lot of fun to go snowboarding there. They have a pretty decent snowpark and also some nice beginner rails and boxes. However, we got lots of fresh snow on the last days of the season, so we went free-riding most of the time. Even after all accessible slopes are pisted, you can get some great runs hiking up to the ridge of The
Remarkables. And the view up there is astonishing! (P3)

P3: Snowboard Hike @ The Remarkables
(BG: Lake Wakatipu, Queenstown)

After the lifts where closed, the season was not over yet. We still hiked up a couple of times, both at The Remarkables and at Coronet Peak, the other nearby resort. There I met Petr, another Czech guy who has been living here for some time. Since then we were up several times mainly for building boxes (P4) and kickers (P5).

P4: 50-50 to BS 180 out @ Coronet Peak
(BG: The Remarkables)
P5: Frontside Air @ The Remarkables

I also learned some new tricks during that time, including a frontside boardslide and a proper backside 180 over a medium size kicker (6 meter table)(P6). So after all, the snowboarding season was quite good over here. But I’m still a bit pissed hearing that you’ve already got heaps of snow back home in Europe now!

P6: BS180 Mute @ The Remarkables

On the other hand, snowboarding is not the only thing to do around here. Though I haven’t been traveling too much yet, I did a nice trip to the west cost about eight weeks ago. I visited Wanaka (P7), Mt. Aspiring National Park, some nice beaches (P8)(pretty cold though, I was lucky I bought that wetsuit in the US), and the glaciers Fox and Franz Josef, which descent from the Southern Alps and almost reach the sea, surrounded by tropical rain forests.

P7: Lake Wanaka
P8: Haast Beach

Queenstown itself is a rather interesting place, too. Though it only has about 12000 inhabitants, it is crowded with tourists and long-term visitors. Rumors say, there are some 3000 Brazilians living here, and there definitely are heaps of Aussies, British, Irish, Japanese, Koreans, etc. However, you will rarely find Kiwis here!

As you can imagine, this place has anything to rip of tourists. Besides skiing in the winter Queenstown focuses on a wide range of adventure activities. The world’s first commercial bungee jumping site is just a couple of kilometers away, and it’s not the only one nearby. Otherwise they offer stuff like helicopter trips, river surfing, para-gliding, and jet boating. The latter usually costs 60 EUR for a 20 minutes trip, but me and my flat-mates did it almost for free on locals’ day. For 8 Euros, this was actually fun! (P9)

P9: Jetboating @ Shotover River

The other thing I did after the snowboard season ended was getting a part-time job. So I’ve been working at a small computer company for about two months now. They do websites for customers from the tourism industry, and they are a rather relaxed employer. Though it has been fun working there, I decided to quit now and try something else for now.

Last week I applied for a job in some of the local bars here in Queenstown. I was actually invited for a trial in a place called World Bar yesterday, and I’ll start working there next week. Though the place is pretty busy, this kind of work seems very relaxing so far. No
responsibility whatsoever! And it’s only three nights a week, so I should finally have the time to travel some more.

Though I really enjoy working at that bar and going out in Queenstown, all the pubs, bars, and clubs around here are actually pretty crappy. Well, most of you know, how picky I am about the places I go to in Munich. And I have to say, I really miss places like KuK, Favorit,
Hochhaus, and Registratur! On the other hand, it is fun hanging around in these tourist joints with lots of drunk people from all over the world. I even don’t care about the boring music any more. I guess, that’s what it’s like being on vacation!

So that’s about all for now. Just for the record, I intend to stay in New Zealand for another two months. That means, I should be back to Europe by the end of February.

It also means, I’m going to spend Christmas and New Year’s Eve here in Queenstown. Pretty weird considering it is summer by now. We’ll probably do a BBQ by the lake or something. Should be fun! At least I won’t have to put up with all that winterly Christmas decoration crap!

I hope I’ll manage to send my next report a little sooner than this one. Until then, I’d appreciate to hear lots of stories from you! Though I’m not home-sick yet, I definitely want to hear what’s going on at home!

Peace out,
Michael

PS: I still haven’t seen “The Lord of the Rings”.

Perspective [en]

I love how science puts things in perspective:

The earth is a microbial planet, on which macroorganisms are recent additions—highly interesting and extremely complex in ways that most microbes aren’t, but in the final analysis relatively unimportant in a global context.

[…]

Microbial life on this planet would remain largely unchanged were all plant and animal life eliminated, but the elimination of microbial life itself would lead in very short order to a completely sterile planet.
— Carl Woese
(1998) PNAS 95:11043-11046
(first paragraph from private correspondence with Mark Wheelis)

And that’s merely biology. Think physics…

I Feel Hate [en]

Danke Donna! Und danke Giorgio! Schad’ ist’s.

Sehr viel weniger Dank hingegen an die GEMA und die GEZ:

Screenshot der Tagesschau vom 17.05.2012 - Anmoderation des Beitrags "Donna Summer Gestorben" Screenshot der Tagesschau vom 17.05.2012 - Standbild mit folgendem Hinweis: "Kurze Unterbrechung (Dieser Beitrag darf im Internet aus rechtlichen Gründen nicht gezeigt werden)"

Gesehen im Podcast der Tagesschau — einem der wenigen Gründe, die mich noch dazu bewegen ehrlich meine GEZ-Gebühren zu bezahlen. Statt aber auch Internetnutzern adäquate Inhalte zu bieten, halten es ARD und ZDF wohl für sinnvoller mich mit zig Briefen (ja, auf Papier, im Briefkasten) zu belästigen, um zu fragen ob ich nicht doch einen Fernseher hätte.

Hm, bei YouTube ist’s leider auch nicht besser. Zumindest nicht, wenn man’s von Deutschland aus aufruft.

Sacral Architecture [en]

Admittedly, religion can be good for something. What I enjoy most, is some of the architecture it left behind. As for Christianity, some of their buildings even prove useful for skiing:

Shout-out to the rider and the photo team! I think I know who you guys are;)

Btw, found this on Facebook, with no copyright notice in the metadata. So I just assume it’s public domain. Please let me know if you have plausible claims on the image, and want credit or removal!

Update: Rider confirmed as Tobi. Kudos. Turns out however, it’s not exactly a sacral place. More like a mini theme-park, called Play-Castle Tirol. Well, at least the snow is real!

Getting Old in Other Fields [en]

I notice that a most of my recent (!) posts are related to atheism and similar. Didn’t I study computer science and software engineering? Does that mean I’m getting old?


A comic that makes fun about how physicists when they get older inevitably have to be smartasses in other fields.

As seen on SMBC

Hm, I have to post some more on computing in the future. That’s serious stuff, but I can still pull it off. It can’t be true that I’m that far along the line already!

Then again: computer stuff tends to be soooo nerdy. Why not more travel reports? Or snowboarding pics? Or why not express my reservations about surrealism? Ahhhrgg!!! I’m going there, and I cannot help it…