Last Tuesday I went with Lynn, Mhairi, Rob and Martin to the cinema. You should know that I am not so into movies, but why not? The movie is called 'Corpse Bride' and is an animated movie from Tim Burton.

The story has of course a happy end, but I am not enthusiastic about it. I cannot recommand this movie. The graphic is a bit special, quite different to IceAge and Shrek. Maybe it is worth to go for the graphic. But who likes the voice of Jonny Depp should go as well. Victor, the main figure, looks a bit like him anyway, on purpose? We went for a beer afterwards, so it was still a nice evening!!

Since one week I live now in 66 Warren Street (4067 Brisbane - St. Lucia). I live together with 2 cats, two birds and some fish and two australien girls. I think both of them study veterinary medicine. But during the summer holidays one goes working and the other one I don't know. We don't see each other quite often. My rhythm of life changed a bit, like getting up at 5 am!! (I am surprised as well, don't worry!!) Here are some impressions from my new home:

One of the cats - of course in my bed!

My room, quite empty, but what do I need for 8 weeks?

The living room

Kitchen - with all things I need! I like it! Espresso machine!

A real traditional Queenslander - this is how they call such houses here. (I know the bin is full!)

This weekend I spent at the Gold Coast again. Currently there are summer holidays here in Australia, and all kiddies come to Gold Coast for two weeks to celebrate something, I don't know what. But you can imagine what kind of fun they had. I was unfortunately a bit sick, so we couldn't do what we had planned. Stephane and me went out for a drink and spent some time at the beach, surrounded by screaming and pissed kids, quite romantic! At home we watched Ice Age (don't laugh!) and had a nice dinner. At least I could relax a bit and enjoyed the weekend.

I have some bad news > my laptop is sick as well!! The monitor doesn't want to work anymore, so I have to use an external monitor. I don't know how to solve this problem in the next weeks, but we will see. Where there's a will, there's a way. So I went today (on a Sunday!) in the office to do some administration work. I couldn't resist and did some SQL-statements for my database! Sorry! I took a pic of my desk and another one with the view out of the window. So you get the impression how it looks like from inside when we have a storm in Brisbane.

It doesn't look too busy, does it?

It was a quite severe storm with lot of thunder and lightnings

With the summer the rainy season starts as well. I don't mind the rain, because it doesn't cool down afterwards and I still can live with this high humidity. The storms normally don't take long, maybe 15 minutes and then the sun is shining again!

The time has come that I move places now. I will spend the last night here in this flat. The chinese girls are moving as well. Life goes on. Most of them will go back to China. Wen Wen wants to finish her studies. We try to keep in touch, but as you know it is easier said than actually done. We took a pic tonight.

Ella, Me
Tricia , Wen Wen, Gina (Qu Hua)

This afternoon we had our christmas party within the Teasdale-group. We went to a restaurant called Jazzy Cat Cafe in West End. It was quite nice and the food was good, but too much as usual. After one bottle of tasmanian beer and one glass of champagne I was quite tipsy, especially with the temperature of more than 25 degrees around you. We had a nice time. Sorry, no pics, I forgot my camera :(

After a couple of days I find time now to update the blog, actually more at Henning's urging ;). Nothing really exciting happend. My work makes a good progress. The database get filled. You know, there is always the battle with redundancy. But I will win!
Last Friday I was invited for a BBQ at Mhairi's place. So, I got to know her boyfriend Rob, a real english guy! The third person on this pic is my supervisor, Dr. Lynn Fink. She hates to be called like this!!! :)

We had a nice evening! Especially because I survived a chilli attack from my colleagues. I had to put out the fire in my mouth with cold milk. I felt better after one litre. The beer is of course only decoration!! (german Schöfferhofer!!!)
After a sleep of 4(!) hours I went to Gold Coast to visit Stéphane. Gold Coast is located around 70km south of Brisbane and includes the famous Surfer Paradies!! Stéphane moved excactly to this place. On this pic you can see how touristical this place is. Not really much nature, which is a disadvantage to sunshine coast in the north of Brisbane. This pic was taken from the 25th(!) level of the tower block, where Stéphane lives in. Ähm, sorry, for the rest of the day I had no time and possibility to take pics. :)

At the end just a nice impressions I got in Brisbane. Like at least 3 or 4 times a week we get warning for storm, and this looked like a real one, but it passed by!