Wine at Work

Hehe, I told you I have the best roomies ever. Today Jen came to visit me at my night shift in the consultants office with a bottle of wine. We (Jen, Flo(who was working late), and I) drank the whole bottle. Well Flo only had two little glasses, since he still wanted to work... So Jen and I almost drank the bottle alone. Hehe, yes I am quite happily drunk right now... Jen and I had the best bike ride home, we did had to watch out for fighting chickens. Coming home we did advice some girls that wanted to see Paul to go and visit our downstairs neighbours (hehe, there is no Paul living in our basement). So we are home just about mixing more fancy drinks and Russ called he is in the pub down the street and guess where Jen and I are going now... Told ya love my roomies....

Vancouver here I come

Since a long time I am thinking about moving to Vancouver. You know Victoria is nice, but I have been here since almost 3 years now and somehow I need a change. And since I am almost done with my thesis, or let's rephrase that since I have to be done writing my thesis by end of August, it's now time to make the move. So I send my resume to a friend who is working in Vancouver and he was able to get me an interview with his boss and guess what I got the job. YEAH sometimes I impress myself. It's a 4-month co-op job, but if I do well, which I am sure I will, they are likely to hire me full-time afterwards :-) So as of September I will be working for Business Objects in downtown Vancouver.

There is only one problem, I really love my roomies here in Victoria and I am sure I won't be able to find other roomies that are as awesome as the ones I have right now. Well Vancouver is not that far away and they as well as all my other dear friends that I have here in Victoria can come and visit me as often as possible.

Important things that I really need

I am just looking at a German online store for some world cup stuff. You know I like to procrastinate. And see what I found.

You can buy an original piece of the lawn on which the soccer world cup final will take place. For sure you will have to wait till the final is done and the professional gardener can take the lawn into pieces in order to ship it to you. You could also get this wonderful piece preserved in acrylic, so you could keep it forever in your living room. Your piece will have a size of 30 x 20 cm and come with a freshness warranty. For only 75Euro (approx. 105$).

I tell you that's what I always needed and wanted.

Left-handed hockey player

I just played my first hockey game, in our living room, with Russ and a squash ball. The game lasted about 2min till the girls from downstairs took their broom and hit the ceiling with it to let us know that we are making too much noise. Anyways, Russ told me I am a left-handed hockey player according to how I hold the hockey stick. And I always thought I am right-handed. But he didn't have a hockey stick for left-handed hockey players otherwise I am sure I would have whooped his butt big time :-)

Isn't it ironic ... don't you think

Do you know the right meaning of irony and sarcasm? Well I do, but my dear Canadian friends don't and so I had a good, lively and funny discussion this morning about irony and sarcasm. Canadians, think irony is sarcasm and not that sarcasm is only a sub-form of irony used to hurt people. So here the definition from dictionary.com

Irony:
The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning.

Sarcasm:
A cutting, often ironic remark intended to wound.

I have had this discussion with several Canadians and I actually learned just to skip this topic :-)

Germans in Victoria

Last Saturday my friends Claudi and Micha came to visit me. Yep they came all the way from Germany just to see me (and maybe a little bit of Vancouver Island). Unfortunately they were super tired on Saturday night, which is understandable after such a long flight, and so I couldn't take them out to Victoria's night live. However they insisted on me going out with my friends.

So while they were sleeping Bea, Jen, Russ, Raj, Rachel and me went to Sticky Wicket. Sticky Wicket is a local pub that has a little dance floor and plays cheesy 80^th music at the weekend. It is a nice pub offering a great blue drinks (you should try it, not sure what the name is, but it's blue and goooooood). The only think I don't really like is that the crowd there is actually way older than we are and so Russ and I almost got eaten by “Cougars”. We still had a great time there, but this weekend we need to go some place else since I don't necessarily want to be “Cougar Food”, I mean who wants to be “Cougar Food”? Since I was planning on going sightseeing with Claudi and Micha on Sunday morning, I went home a little earlier than my roomies, who once they came home thought it was a great idea to snuggle up with me on the couch. So they were all on the hide-bed-couch lying in top of me, while I was trying to sleep. Actually that was a quite funny scenario...

The next morning Claudi, Micha and I went first for Bubble Tea and then for a long walk through downtown Victoria, passing the fishermen's waft with all it's cute little house boats and a little seal that got feted from all the tourists, further to the breakwater and to Dallas Road, where we took a nap in the sun at the beach. After the nap we went back home, but not without stopping at the Beacon Hill Park Drive-In for some super yummy and huge ice cream. Yumm Yumm. We made it just in time to the car before it started to rain. Oh nooooo rain and we wanted to have another BBQ. Well nothing stops a real BBQ fan and so we still BBQed and Claudi and I were able to show off our new rain jackets, which btw are identically, just that she got hers in Germany and I got mine here. Well no need to say that we both have excellent taste :-) Also the red jacket matched perfectly my red face, that was not sun burned from the day, but that was all covered with cancer, since and that's what Lionel taught me, the UV-B, which gives you cancer, goes though the clouds and UV-A, which gives you a nice smooth tan, does not get trough the clouds. So being outside on a cloudy day without sun block will only give you cancer and no tan at all...

On Monday we had less luck with the weather and it was raining almost all day, which was the reason why our hiking trip was cancelled. But instead of hiking we had a super yummy breakfast and a nice relaxed day, visiting Uvic, walking up Mt. Doug, going for dinner and a movie. Tuesday morning I drop both off at the car rental and now they are on the way to discover the island.

Claudi and Micha enjoying the "view" from Mt. Doug

It was great having them both here in Victoria, showing them where and how I live here and also introducing them to my friends. They will come back for another night to Victoria next week and if time allows I will go over to Vancouver with them as well.

Using Crutches

It seems to become a tradition that the Nyumba Rafiki is holding a BBQ on a regular almost weekly basis. Last Friday we had a Farewell BBQ for Elena and Dmitri, who moved to the other side of Canada on Sunday. Blessed with good weather we were able to enjoy the good company, food and also the Nyumba Rafiki playground facilities (Friday's specialty the volleyball net). After playing for about 1min with Wilson, he flew over the fence into the neighbours yard. Good job! So how to get the ball back. Hmmm, we could just walk over... Oh wait o ur neighbours have a huge hungry dog... Bad idea to walk over... Since all of us were super keen on continue playing, we (or let's say Johannes) soon found a solution and a way to use Jen's old crutches in a proper way. But see yourself.

The BBQ was lots of fun, though I wished that the reason for the BBQ would have been a different. It is too bad if friends are leaving and I will sure miss these two.

Fresh Breeze

As mentioned before I can now open the window of my office, which I am taking advantage of on days like today when the sun is shining. However, there is a little disadvantage. If somebody opens the door to the main lab it causes a fresh breeze that makes the papers on my desk just fly around and now I am spending half of the day picking up the papers from the floor :-) Great procrastination!

Wilson's first time at the beach

Victoria was blessed with sun last weekend and so I finally go the chance to take Wilson and the volleyball net to the beach or let's say to the lawn in front of the beach, since there were way to many people at the beach sun tanning. It was such a nice sunny day out that there were many people that wanted to meet Wilson and the high quality net. We built up the net quite fast, first I was a little suspicious whether it will survive first breeze of the wind or even if it gets hit by the ball, but I have to say for 20$ the net wasn't too bad. Wilson himself is a little too light and therewith got blown away by the wind quite often, but maybe I will be able to get another beach volleyball that is a little heavier and made out of leather. Just so Wilson has a friend and I have a volleyball that does not fly away.

All together it was a fun afternoon with lots of friends that I haven't seen for a wile and I am already looking forward to be at the beach again. Maybe next Saturday.

New Building

After one week of trying hard to focus in the hot library, we finally got the keys to our new offices. I am sharing one office with Adeniyi and I offered him to assign a desk to him, if he gets to the new office after me, but somehow he didn't like that idea and decided to meet me beforehand. So we went to the new office. I have to admit the office is not too bad. The view is okay, we see the roof of the neighbour building but also some trees, actually I mostly see trees. Still the first thing we did is rearranging the desks :-) While rearranging the desks, I noticed that we actually can open the window in our office. This deserved a happy dance. Yeah we actually get some fresh air in here, (yes I am not a real computer science student, I actually like fresh air and light...) By the time we unpacked our stuff and set up the PC's our office neighbours Glen and Andrew showed up and were super jealous of our desk arrangement that they right away wanted to steal it.

One thing I noticed is that the water here is super disgusting. I took one big sip, but boy so bad... Hopefully that will improve soon.

All together I think I like the new office, even though I am not seeing the hippy yard anymore, but finally we are back on campus, which makes it easier to meet friends on campus, which we right away did in our lunch break :-)

Consulting

This term I am TAing as a consultant in the CSC consultants office. I have to work 12 hours a week, divided into 3 shift. You do the math!

My first shift on Tuesday was alright. The first 1,5 hours I spent with getting to know the system and chit-catting with Derek, who works 2 doors beside the consultants office and showed me how the cat is jumping here. The rest of the my shift I spent with writing emails and chatting on MSN, since nobody needed to be consulted. Except of maybe 2 people that needed to add pages to their printing account.

The next shift on Wednesday was a little more fun, since a friend of mine, who also works in the consultants office and had the morning shift, showed me how to play hacky sack with a Gender Bender (well actually called Gender Changer, but Gender Bender sounds way better and no it's nothing kinky, it's only a geeky CSC thingy, see picture). BTW that is what he did during the first 3 hours of his shift. So we practised a little bit and chatted until his shift was over and I went back to writing emails, searching the web, talking to other friends that stopped by and yes helped the one or two students that again needed printing pages.

My last shift for this week is almost over (another 7min) and you see I am working hard(ly). Score of today's shift 2 students needed to get printing pages, 1 student wanted to know how to access his files from home and 1 question was about java applets. All together that makes 4 people in 4 hours, but 3 of them came at the same time. Excitement of my shift was filling up the paper in the printers and of course some more Gender-Bender-Hacky-Sack practise, so I can show off next Wednesday. But I was clever this time and got some reading for my thesis :-) So I didn't waste all of the 4 hours. And yes it sounds like a super easy job, but I am sure next week, when assignments are due, I will be working hard(er).

Wine 'N Cheese

Jen's lab had some beer leftover from a party and so they invented the Beer Wednesday, where they would drink a beer on Wednesdays. Since I am now quasi their neighbour I got invited to one of the Beer Wednesday events, but I don't like beer :-( Well, we are all quite smart and just invented a Wine 'N Cheese Thursday. So guess what I am having for lunch today. Right! Wine 'N Cheese :-)

I am not sure whether that will turn into a tradition. We will see how our first event will be. I am looking forward to it.

My New Friend Wilson

I have a new friend, called Wilson. Wilson, is the volleyball out of my 20$ Tournament Volleyball Set. You must know Wilson is different than all other volleyballs I have seen so far. Wilson is not made of leather no he is made of fabric and feels a little weird. But Russ and I pumped him up and played with him in the back yard and I have to admit, he is not that bad. At least he didn't hurt that much on my skin. But Wilson got quite dirty and now his while fabric is all green from the grass :-)

I am looking forward to many more games with Wilson.

Bye Bye TEF, Bye Bye Hippy Yard

I knew the day was coming, but for some reason I didn't expect it sooooo soon. The new ECS building is ready and we (the CSC grad students) are leaving our prison TEF. I call TEF the prison, because it is far away from everything else on campus, because you can't open the windows and because you need an access card to open it's doors. But still I got to love this building and my awesome view to the hippy yard. Every time I didn't feel like working I could just watch out of my window and see the hippies working in their yard and chances are that they are able to entertain me for hours. I will miss all that, and I don't even know what the new building will be like. We will see, as for next week I won't have an office and I will be forced to use my laptop outside in the backyard :-)

The Tournament

Finally we managed mount the tetherball to the pole. Well I should be honest it was Glen, the tetherball guru, who climbed on a shopping cart in order to put the ball up. I really appreciate this brave exploit, because if I would have tried it I probably would have fall of the cart and break at least one bone or two...

The ball was up. A quick warm up, consisting of one or two happy jump(s), and the games could begin. I (super excited) got quite scared of the ball. I tell you Glen is a real Pro and hits the ball real' hart, which results in the fact that I was more hiding from the ball than actually playing the game... But I am not afraid and soon I figured out how to hit the ball, if it didn't fly so high that I couldn't reach it... First and second game were over and guess who won! Right, not me. Hmmm whom could I challenge next? Maybe a

Me hiding from the ball.

Non-Canadian, so I would have a slight chance. So I picked Wenbo, since Wenbo never played the game before, he right away threw the ball in my face, well I could have moved beside, but somehow I didn't realize that the ball was flying into my face till it actually hit my lip and my nose... Since I am not a wimp I still played the game, what did you expect from a real tetherball wannabe-pro. And surprisingly I won. Yeah Yeah. Shortly after the game, I bent down and my nose started bleeding. I knew that hit in the face was going to have consequences, but it's all good I won a game, that's all that matters for now :-)

Me doing a happy dance after a won my first tetherball game :-)

The rest of the night we spent with BBQing, eating, talking and yes for sure more tetherball... I have to admit that the game is more fun and more exhausting than I thought, I was laughing all the time and so were all the people that saw me trying to hit the ball.

More picture of the Big Event are posted on my webpage.

Heart Attacks

Since Monday I am back in TEF and I have to say I enjoy it a lot, except of the fact that I got a cold from the AC in this building and the fact that my lovely co-workers here think it's the best idea to scare the hell out of me.

I am sitting innocently at my desk trying to work and they just sneak up on me and scare me so that I am almost falling of my chair. First Flo this morning and just now Glen did the same to me. I think I have to cry now :-(

Hmmm, maybe I should get a big mirror, so I can see who is behind me...