Party and real bread!

Yesterday was Bo's goingaway party. It was good fun. Lot's of people came and there was a really good atmosphere. When we decided to go out dancing things got a little more difficult. It is just too difficult to go out with a group of more than 10 people IMO. There is just no way of pleasing everyone. I didn't really have any expectations and was willing to go to almost any club, if people were happy with it. Well, we finally ended up in a club nobody was really happy with. They played really shity house music, and we were almost the only people inside (that should have already tipped us off, that this wouldn' t be a great place. Soon quite a few people started leaving, we eventually was a good thing, cause it allowed the remaining 5 of us to just find a better club. We found the Cuja Lounge (I don't know if it spelled that way) and we had a really good time. I got home at around 4, and finally slept at 5. Today started off, quite slow. Megan(my flatmate) went to a german bakery and brought some bread for me. It is really good german bread, I can't believe it! I didn't expect to get any decent bread until I came to germany the next time. It is not really expensive either, the only thing is that it is quite a bid away. But I definatly will get more bread there. The rest of the day I have been hanging out with Bo and Casey, we didn't do much except for spending our time in cafes and playing pinball and backgammon. I can't believe how lucky Bo is when rolling the dice though. It happened several times when he was playing Casey or me that he just got what he needed at excectly the right time.

Slow day

Today was a really slow day. I don't know, just didn't get anything done. I'm really looking forward to going to the lab on monday. I can't atm because somebody else is using the laser that I'll be using for my experiments, and they have a conference deadline on monday, so hopefully I'll be finally doing some labwork. Otherwise there's not much happening. I went to see the hitchhickers guide to the galaxy with Bo yesterday. It is surprisingly good. I expected that they would've made an aweful Hollywood movie out of it, overladden with special effects and dumbed the story down, but they didn't it is really close to the book and really funny. Tonight is Bo's goingaway party, as he will be going back to Norway on tuesday. So we'll be having some fun before he leaves.

Why can't things just be easy for once

nora had her exams yesterday. it was going all really well, the one she was really afraid of the oral exam in bodenkunde went quite well, she did a 3.0 and would've probably done a lot better if it wasn't for the blackouts because of her being do nervous. Unfortunatly thethe second exam in hydrologie, did not go good at all, she thinks that she failed it, now that would really suck!!! Without that exam she will probably not be able to start as a postgrad over here, and the next time she can take it is maybe in september. I still hope that she passed the exam. If not we have to figure something out, I'm sure we will come up with something. It just reallly sucks, Nora doesn't seem to have any luck when it comes to exams, if she has gaps in what she knows, you know questions hitting exactly the gaps will come up. Well nothing we can do about it now, hopefully she will get the results fairly soon, so we'll at least know what's up. Otherwise not much happened here, today was really a slow day, I could not really motivate myself to do any productive work. I sent the adress of the blog to some friends, accidentally I sent Nils a wrong one. The funny thing is, the blog his link pointed to was also from a guy in Auckland. The picture in the profile shows a guy vomiting and the page is a lot about alcohol drugs and sex. you could even think the guy in the picture was me, it is a really bad pic and his haircolour, the only thing you really see is similar to mine. Well Nils was a bid disturbed what was happening to me down here, it is quite funny actually. if you wanna have a look the other blog is here. Ok that's it for today.

My first post

Hi everybody I chose to create a blog to update people at home in germany in what's happening in my life down here in New Zealand, and maybe other people might get interested in my thoughts about living in the southern hemisphere. To start of I should probably tell a bid about myself. I am Jochen a 29 year old german, who started a PhD in Physics at the University of Auckland in february this year. For those of you, who are interested I am doing my PhD in the field of nonlinear fibre optics, I might post some more details later, but I can't be bothered ATM. The last couple of days have been quite nice, I went down to Turangi with a couple of friends, which is close to Tongariro national park and also the selfproclaimed troutfishing capital of the world. I was introduced into the concept of flyfishing by my friend Bo. He is from Norway and has been flyfishing for quite a while. After a couple of hours I kinda got the hang of it and at least managed to cast roughly into the direction I wanted to. The first day was really slow, none of us even had a take, but it was still fun, the weather was great and it was just nice to be out of the city for once. Casey another friend of mine(he's from Texas), took a nonvoluntary swim when trying to cross the river at some rapids, and loosing his footings, with the waders on the slippery rocks. It was quite hilarious. The next day was a bid better fishingwise, I had at least a take, although it just took of my hook, and we also saw some trout alng the river, so we knew they where there. On sunday we went out fishing for a last time as we planned to leave that day. I caught a 1.6kg rainbow trout. It was a pretty amazing feeling suddenly having the fish pulling at the line. My heartrate went up quite a bid. It was quite a fight getting the fish in as well, as it put in quite a fight. As Bo didn't catch a fish and he will be leaving on tuesday next week, he decided to stay longer, which eventually let to all of us staying another day. The dinner that night was awesome, nothing quite as good as fresh fish. Bo did a great job cooking it. Bo was struck with really bad luck that afternoon, breaking one of his rods and Casey loosing half of his other one. The next day I had another fish on the hook, but it got away just when I was reeling it in. The trip back was awesome, we did a short detour, to the westcoast, with some great beaches. It's all black sent, which really looks kinda weird, but has a strange beauty to it. On monday we went out to celebrate my birthday with friends, very good thai food, if you guys ever come to Auckland, try out Mai thai. Yesterday it was back too work. Went to see Ong-bak with Casey and Bo, pretty cool martial arts movie, amazing fighting scences. Nora my girlfriend has two important exams today, so I really keep my fingers crossed. OK that was it for my first post, I try to write more regularly from now on, so posts don't get that long.