Au Canada...

Hi everyone,

this is a report on the conferences I visited so far and first thoughts on the one I am currently at. The i-Know'07 in Graz was a very nice first conference. Lunch, coffee breaks (with a selection of nice cakes) and a nice gala diner with live music were included in the conference fee. There were about 500 attendents and I easily managed to get into contact with a set of nice people. My paper attracted quite a lot of people (the room was so full some people had to remain standing at the sides) and the questions were very focused. I received a lot of positive feedback from people who had seen the presentation, so overall I am quite content. I collected business cards like a madmen and handed out my old one, which reminds me: I need a business card holder.

The City Hall of Graz housed the Triple-I Conference 2007

Graz was also nice as a city, though it was raining most of the time and though it was actually quite similar to most German citys, down to the same kinds of shops. Well I know Austria isn't that far away, but I had expected more diversity. What was funny however was that along the central townsquare there were at least 20 loungerie shops ;) They sure like their sexy underwear the Austrians.

The Bell Tower of Graz - The city's landmark

The Hotel Feichtinger where I stayed was very nice and comfortable and had a simple but nice breakfast included in the price, just as well as free wireless internet access. It was really hasslefree and good service and also located in walking distance from the city center, so if you're
staying in Graz I can only recommend you stay there.

The 'Graziens' sure like their pillars and statues

More proof of 'pillarism' - Sadly the weather was a letdown...

The next conference the GMW ("Gesellschaft für Medien in der Wissenschaft" = "Society for media in the sciences") was quite a different thing: It took place in Hamburg and our research group tried winning the so called 'Medidaprix' which can mean a funding of up to €100.000. Originally my prof wanted to do the presentation there, but when the jurors came over 10 minutes before his presentation, he asked me to do it. So in just ten minutes I went through my prof's presentation, built my own presentation sheets together in a consistent manner, added a few new ones and raced to the assigned room to present out paper. It was rushed and that is also how the presentation felt: Not well prepared at all. A video of that shameful event can be found online, if you can find it.

Food at the Triple-I in Graz was plentyful and of nice quality, not so at the GMW in Hamburg :(

Naturally PetPet and I had a huge piece of wonderful Sacher Cake in Graz! Strangly however I ate some at the GMW as well, since our booth neighbours from Austria distributed them quite liberally. That was the only real food we got at the conference (of course excluding the one nice evening gala).

Needless to say: We didn't win the price, we didn't have a nice hotel and we didn't get any food between sessions. Only the evening gala dinner in Hagenbeck's Tierpark (the oldest and most famous zoo in Hamburg) was quite good, though that might be related to the bottle of wine, each of us must have emptied ;)

The view from my hotel room in the Hilton Quebec. The view was nice the service not as much. No wireless internet and the standard DSL costs extra. Breakfast isn't included in the room proce either.
(Again: I can only recommend "Hotel Feichtinger" in Graz. They had a nice breakfast, very good location, free wireless internet, a very good overall service and everything at one very moderate room rate)

Now I am at the E-Learn 2007 in Quebec-City, Canada and am enjoying the nice weather. I will write a little more on the conference tomorrow or Thursday, but so far it has been a nice experience (although we are again not provided with any food *grin*). The presentation went quite well in my opinion and what makes me even more sure of it, is that a lot of people told me so. The speaker after me however was a little bit lost, which is a nice way of saying that his presentation sucked big time. He had won a best paper award, but aparently was only firm at writing english not speaking it and to make matters worse had apparently pasted his whole paper onto the power point slides with a general font size of 12-14, I guess you can imagine ;)

A very nice fountain, depicting ladies (and a few kids and a bearded guy) bathing, in front of the houses of parliament, her in the nightime overview...

...and for all of you who like more detail a daytime close-up shot.

Edit: Quebec was very nice, we enjoyed beautiful weather and I had the special pleasure of a nice French/Canadian Dinner for 100$. That was really a Lucullan pleasure and totally worth it. Let me note however, that a lot of that amount went into tips and wine (which cost almost as much as the menu at 50$ a bottle for a 2004 Côte Du Rhone). Most of my readers probably know that food is my special hobby and thus, I think one sometimes has to spend (a little) more money to get a special meal. I really hope other people think the same way :)

Btw.: The pictures in Quebec were taken with my brand-new Canon Powershot G9 camera. This thing really makes beautiful pictures, but I still have to learn using its features properly.

The third course of the five course French/Canadian Dinner: Tartar de Caribou (a sort of North-American Deer), with poached quail's egg.

Quebec's trademark - Château Frontenac, which was being restorated at the time of my stay in Canada. I tried to catch a perspective without the massive scaffolding and I think I succeeded. Also notice the blue sky: The weather was pretty nice with about 15°C.

Another trademark of the city, a mural depicting the same view you would get from turning around on the plaza.

Hope you like the update. I know it's been a long time, but I tend to keep my promises (*grin*). Next (recent) post will be up, in a minute too.

Oh Canada we're leaving thee...

...well not today but in 3-4 days. Ahhhh it was definately nice here, though we might have seen more stuff with a more thorough planning, which for good reasons neither my girlfriend nor I am known for when it comes to holidays. We just dig food, that's really what we look for in other countries. Okay what crazy stuff did we do since my last post?

Well let's start with the PNE Fair, where we went on the first or second weekend. Fair's are always epensive but especially so over here in Canada. You can buy a day pass, allowing you to go on most of the normal rides, but the really good ones cost extra (8-10$). Plus the normal games where you can win plush bunnies and so on, cost at least 2$ and even if you win you only get a small to medium prize. You have to trade in several medium ones to get a large one and so on until you get a free choice. So you'll be spending at least 12$... Anyways here's a picture:


Then we went to play Beach Volleyball and have a BBQ with some friends of one of Binh's cousins over here. That was fun! I love the American/Canadian relish, it just makes anything taste great >;o)


We also went to watch the Salmons migrating on Grouse Mountain. The picture shows one of the fabulous sights Canada and especially British Columbia have to offer:


Later we headed up to whistler where the Olympic Winter Games of 2010 will be held and met some Inukshuks (which have also become the symbol for the Vancouver Olympic Games) at the mountain top:


We had a four day trip to Vancouver Island, where we stayed in Victoria and explored the small city and also went wale watching, spotting some live orcas though from a distance.


As mentioned as a possibility in the last post we drove down to Seattle and spent a nice weekend there. However we only did that last week:


While Seattle was actually quite nice, the border guard wasn't. His voice was more like a dog growling and barking than I have heard ever before. It was good fun though. Another thing we did was go to the Vancouver Aquarium where we had fun watching the Beluga wales, one of which splashed a wave of salty water on my girlfriend who filmed the whole thing (video link may follow later)...


Well that's the most interesting stuff anyways. I don't have much time now, so maybe I'll post more later when I come back from Crete, where I'll be heading with my university's chair for 'research' from the 30th September to the 6th of October...

Show you how Indiana Jones 'Knossos' looks, Steve >;o)

Staroc out.

Mighty Vancouver...

Well after discovering why most Americans apparently hate the Canadian's favourite beverage, namely 'root beer', I am again in a state that makes it possible for me to blog... So as a very short report of what we've done already, I want to start with the food here in Vancouver and since we are visiting my Chinese girlfriend's aunt that means pretty much all the Chinese food possible.

Allmost everything you eat over here is first of all authentic (going as far as celebrities from Hong Kong coming over here to have original Cantonese food that tastes better than at home... -we'll get to that later - As for the reason I guess Chefs earn a lot more here than over in China, which makes coming to Canada to cook an easy choice...) and second of all DELICIOUS. I ate the best sticky rice and congee I've eaten in my life over here and I won't even start to talk about the cakes you can get.

We already went all around the city. Pretty much meaning that we went to Downtown Vancouver and the Metrotown Mall quite often, which are some of the best shopping areas over here, which - do I even have to say that - naturally my girlfriend enjoys a lot (my wallet doesn't though *grin*).

Other than that we went to the biggest fair in all of British Columbia, the so called 'PNE', visited the Richmond Night Market and went to play Beach Volleyball at the beach close to one of Vancouvers Unis (the weather over here really treats us nicely with sunny 25-30°C). We also went to a nice Chinese style garden or park close to Chinatown, which even looks really pretty on the pictures I took. Here's one for you guys:

Alright, now to todays special event. My girlfriend's aunt works in a quite famous Cantonese restaurant here in Vancouver and she had heard that 4 Hong Kong movie stars were coming there tonight after a show they were doing for the biggest Cantonese TV station here in Canada. So we both dressed up and went there, to see if we could catch a chance of seeing them. That's how nice we looked:

Then when the celebrities were leaving we got a chance to take a picture with the actress my girlfriend likes the most, namely 'Ada Choi' or in Chinese '蔡少芬'. What?!? You don't believe me? Well here's the proof (and if you do not believe that that is a Hong Kong movie star -> look here):

Well that was quite exciting. We'll see who else we meet. Maybe next weekend we will drive down to America and if I meet everyone's favourite George W. Bush, I'll be sure to wear my favourite T-Shirt - you know which one I mean... Best wishes from Canada.

Staroc out...

A trip to Paris...

Whew, if you have been wondering why there haven't been any posts in 4 days, well this was due to a little vacation my girlfriend and I made to Paris. Friday to Monday we escaped the sullen weather that seems to dominate the summer in Germany and experienced genuine sunshine.

So what happened on our adventures? I will spare you the details of what we ate, because this would by itself be enough for 3 blog-posts:

Friday:
We arrived in Paris at about 18°° and after a bit of search found our hotel, close to the Avenue de Wagram. It was a calm 'area', but the hotel itself was nice, though the room was a little small. After dropping all our belongings we made our way to 'cartier 13', the Cantonese-Vietnamese quater of Paris and had the 'buffet' of our lives. I was soooo stuffed afterwards, I had to sit down every few steps...

Then we went to the 'Tour Eifel' which was brightly lit at around 22°° but when we arrived at it's foot, the special light show had already ended. We then decided to do something romatically funny, like having some crazy asian guy draw a portrait of both of us. He still wanted 30€ for it after tense haggling and I said 'why not - if its good'. After one wasted hour we had to pay the crazy dude 15 bucks for something that did not even closely resemble any one of us. Mind you it was no caricature but a failed attempt at a real portrait. What a waste, but we still had a good laugh.

Saturday:
My girlfriend went to La gallery Lafayette in the morning which as every guy who has ever been to Paris with a chick knows is bad... even evil... well I went to the Lafayette 'Homme'-Store which had a delicatessen shop spreading the whole first floor. I could have eaten ALL of the stuff there if it hadn't been expensive as hell. The French sure know how to annoy foreigners by refusing to speak English and putting up price tags that millionaires would refuse to pay (them greedy buggers). For lunch and further shopping we went back to the 13th quarter and had Vietnamese soup (oh my god - FUCKING great).

We went to big Asia markets bought a whole lot of stuff and then went to an Asian gallery to buy even more stuff. My girlfriend bought herself a vietnamese style dress that looks absolutely fucking beautiful and was compared to the prices at Lafayette (185€ for a bloody shirt...no thanks) quite cheap. Then we had vietnamese baguettes for dinner and then went down to the Seine where quite a lot of people were playing 'Boules', singing, dancing, strolling along and having picknic. We wanted to play 'Boules' aswell and have picknic at the Seine but it was just not possible on Saturday. So we walked over to the second Seine-Isle had some great Italian Icecream before we went to Notre-Dame and from there to a nice little quarter where a lot of small cafés attracted a whole lot of people.

We then had our second dinner with snails, mussles and cheese and had our names painted in deco-fashion. It was great fun with all these people around there and with all the wine we drank...*hicks*

Sunday:
After sleeping a little longer...now might that be connected to the wine?!?...we went to the 19th quarter (where islamic and some asians reside), bought a new suitcase and had vietnamese lunch (self-rolled rice rolls). Then we went to the 13th quarter again, where my girlfriend bought even more stuff (like shoes fitting her new dress), while I had to wait...I guess it was then that my back began to hurt. Then we bought duck, baguettes, some desserts and left for the Seine to have our picknic dinner finally, after which we played some 'Boules' (you rent the balls but its free, you only have to leave a security).

Then since Saturday was so great with people everywhere and Sunday being so boring because no one was partying we went to the heart of town, to see if at least there, somethings going on... Nope! Nothing... so we had an expensive coffee and ate (YES ATE even more) some Sushi...

Monday:
I felt sick in the morning (basically still do a little). My first guess was that I had eaten something foul, but now I guess it was just my back hurting so bad, that my ribs started to hurt out of compassion as well, which then caused the strange feeling of sickness in my stomach. My girlfriend went to Lafayette again, while I got 15 vietnamese style baguettes for her family. Then we took the bus to Carles-de-Gaule and flew back to Germany. The sun from France still in our minds, we left the plane in Dortmund and wanted to go back immediatly. It was a bit like the 3-weather-hairspray commercial:

"Paris - blazing sunlight - the hairdo keeps its form perfectly. Dormund - rain and fog - the hair still looks magnificient..."

--> Only our expressions must have changed to >:o(

On our way back with the train, we stopped some time before our final destination because of a 'human-accident' - meaning that someone had killed himself on our route by jumping on the rails in front of a train. So my girlfriend's father had to fetch us with the car... At their place I was greeted by the horde of kids (yeah the same kids I went bowling with...) and then had a hairdo by my girlfriend before I fell into bed.

Today:
WORK! ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH >;o)