Easter Brunch

Well, it's Easter here in Canada, and what nice day it is. I'm recording upwards of 11 degress on my thermometer, so what better day to enjoy a nice outdoor breakfast.

Ahh, but planning for this began yesterday. Thomas and I needed to clear all the snow off our patio area out the back of our house. What seemed like a small job, was a little larger than first thought. But with the combined might of a Aussie and a Swiss, the job was completed in no time.

Easter morning, I woke up to chattering outside my window. Only to see my two housemates outside in the morning sun. Happy Easter.

International Fugitive of the US

Well, the other day after much consideration, I decided that we probably should not be an international fugitive. Unfortunetly the United States of America, or in the very least the New York City Government, has given me little choice. I made an attempt to pay the ticket, and after 4 attempts, all shot down, I have decided to take my chances. Firstly being the tech savy kind of guy that I am, I tried to pay over the internet. Alas, my card was rejected, no specific reason. But hey, you can still pay in person at one of our many places across NY. Secondly, with Ur's credit card, same thing, no joy. Oh.. look there is a phone number, good, here I get the message, we only take credit cards with billing addresses in the US. Hrmm, give it a go anyway... after getting to the place to enter the number, it didn't want to listen to my dialling... Second time please enter your US post code... (apparently random 5 digits isn't suitable... So in the end, all of us in the car are international fugitives... If anyone asks, it's not by choice... It's not my fault the place was a 24hr bus stop, but the least they could let me do is pay the god damn fine. I will be leaving the continent in less than 40 days anywho...

Party at 99

Well, this party was one that began interestingly, there were not alot of people at first, and there was a strange abduction. But Fabio soon returned and the party went on!

Above Left: Fabio, being abducted, Right: Urs, & Jutta (U-TAH :P )

Above: Sabine and Sven, Sven agreed to having only one beer tonight, so he made a stand by having a tallie. Right: Sven, Amelie, Sabine and Urs. The kitchen was blocked off on one side with Garbage bags, I think they tried to create a somewhat different atmosphere in all of these identical Units. It kinda worked, at least until Sven and I made a small hole - later a much larger one.

Above: What a happy lot! Right: Myself and Lawrence.

It was an interesting night, I even had control of the cocktail mixer, at one point, I added everything available together, expecting something potent and terrible... SHOCK:It was good!

The only letdown of the evening was the previous agreement for all unit 20 people to wear Canadian Shirts. It turns out I am the only true member of Unit 20. Shame Shame Shame.

I also wrote away and got my hands on the Pan Galactic Gargle Blaster ingredients. If anyone wants them, give me a hoot.

HyperCooled Laptop 2005

Well the other night, I was doing something on my computer that had the CPU fan on it running all the time, and for those of you who have ever experienced it, laptop fans aren't generally the quietest when their actually running. So with the temperature outside plummeting to around -15, i fugured, if I could tap some of that cool and put it under my laptop it won't need to run the fan as much. 15 minutes later the HyperCooled Laptop 2005 was born. It was great, but alas not perfect, due to the efficiency of the heat piping, (a beach towel - don't ask why I have a beach towel in this climate, it's a long story) I only had 10 degree air reaching my laptop, but it was enough. The fan stop whirring, and my room wasn't starting to freeze (too quickly). Check out the design, it's pretty fancy. It used such materials as, a CD case, two travel Books, a Beach Towel, Curtains, Pens, a Muesli Bar and even my desk chair.

Above Left: The entire Contraption, Right: The cool air rolls down the towel straight under the laptop - Bonza! (Note: the temperature monitor on the towel!)

Above: Very cold outside and straight to laptop!

Note: For budding copycats, this may only work in the sub zeroness of Canada.

CLV Curling Victory

For something different, I have decided to update, this actually happened 2 weeks ago, but for the first time all season, team were the victors! We smashed the opposition, and pulled through with a great victory for exchange students everywhere!

The final score was an amazing 5-4, with us taking the first, third, fifth and sixth rounds!

I think after the full season, we finally found our edges, and our favourite positions, and even Sven with his crazy last second spin, managed to do impressive things!

The International team at work!

As you can see brushing can be the difference between everything and nothing.

For those of you who aren't sure how the whole thing works, you go from end to end hurling Granite "things" hopefully getting it as close as possible to the center of the circles, but since you can easily knock other teams rocks out of the way and leave your own behind, (like newtons balls) there is a large degree of tactics behind the thing.

See a movie of us here:

After a partially disappointing season, we're glad that we finally pulled off a victory!
Well done guys! Look forward to the Reunion in a few years!

The team: Me, Sven, William, and Urs!

Unit 20 70's 80's Party of the Year!

Saturday night marked the first and maybe the last party in Unit 20 for the year, (Sven, you will have to carry the torch in our absence). It was themed around the 70's and the 80's, with a playlist to match, featuring Michael Jackson, Bryan Adams, Beach Boys and Van Halen. For all involved I think it turned out to be a pretty good night! I even managed to get a good photo of Martina and Lutz - with Al. On the right, we have Sascha and Rasmus before it all began...

William was there, looking relaxed: "I have soooo much work to do, I shouldn't even be here" (interpreted quote). And the CLV curling team met up for a pregame discussion, going into our final match of the season and perhaps our lives on the following day. (See above post (soon))

By all accounts all vistors had a good time, several glass breakages occured though, and due to my wearing of the QLD uniform, wasn't able to help clean up the glass (bare footed). Sven, Allison and Eric, are below left. Right: the party in summary. Note: the aluminium foil covered balloon hanging from the light in the center, courtesy of Aziz. (I didn't have the heart to tell him he had used the wrong side of the alfoil - less shiny size.) For those at home, although sound in theory, it doesn't really work all that well.

Fabio was out with all the girls, all in a days work for the "most beautiful man in the cosmos" whatever the hell the cosmos really is. Sascha was going for the Cleopatra look for some of the evening...

After a long night, the party drew to a close, around 4am - One hour after the final photo of the evening.

Brick Brewery Tour

On Tuesday the 8th, I organised a trip to the brewery tour, for 22 CLVians.
The Brick Brewery is what's known as a "Craft" brewery. So it's fairly small. The Tour consisted of mainly all you can drink for the two hour period, with a short interlude into the workings of the brewery.

The guy who started the Brewery apparently researched many breweries before beginning this one here in Waterloo. At each one he picked up a bottle or two of beer to display around the bar. It has a great effect and can keep anyone busy for ages looking at each of the bottles.

The Brewery itself.

I think many would agree that most of the Canadian beers are virtually tasteless, there was one variety, Red Cap that you could consider tap water.

Above Left: Hey I think I have found a good one! Above Right: Ahh the Germans and their beers.

Above Left: There are sooo many Beers, and Jutta... Above Right: Amelie and Fred with many a beer on the bar.

Above Left: Allison and Isabelle, the only non-international student there, Above Right: The whole mob minus me.

Below: The bartender & Sven, who managed to keep up with the demands of 22 international students at an open bar. And many of whom who were German.

Afterwards, we made our way to Fed Hall for the "Beach Party", unfortunetly it was a little cool and lacking in sand & surf. But we managed. For the first 2 hours, it only us in the hall, but we weren't going to complain.

At about 2am the night was over and we made the voyage home through the now fairly heavy snow. Besides the cold that comes with it, snow can be fairly cool! (no pun intended)

New York City - Where the Cops never sleep

Well on our Reading week at the end of February, (Not really a week but a long weekend), a group of 11 of us made the trek to New York City. A fairly long drive of about 700 miles. (I have to use miles since that's what they use in the States.) As far as cities go, it's fairly clean and not overly scary. Admittedly I didn't step foot in the Bronx or any of the other "scary" suburbs. Our arrival into NY was fair from forgettable. We drove for a while trying to find a car park at about 6AM having driven all night. We found one near the hostel and went in to ask them for perhaps a better location and any hints regarding parking your car on the street. The reception bloke was far from polite and in less then a minute, we had decided we would try to find a better spot ourselves.

As we returned to the car, we were greeted by our first (and last) run in with the NYC traffic police. Apparently we had parked in a All hours Bus Stop for all of the 3-5 minutes we had been in the hostel. And as a result earnt a US$115.00 parking fine! Woo Hoo! Not a bad response time for 6AM.

The NYPD car was not actually the one above... But you get the jist...
Moving on, we decided to make a trip up the Empire state building after a breakfast at Donut king. (Traditional American style)

The view from the top was pretty impressive, but it did take me a while to spot the Statue of Liberty, if you look in the picture above, it's the little spec on the water on the right... (Left Picture) Central park is larger than I thought, if you look in the picture below you can see the dark area, (being winter all the tree's had no leaves).

There were also two Statues of liberty inside the viewing area on the Empire State Building.

We then visited the most famous Sports Arena in the world, the Madison Square Garden, (Apparently) and had some pictures with the NY Knicks.

From there, we visited the New York Library, where the was a display for the Olympic IOC's visit to NYC for the 2012 bid. They were giving out flags, pins, Beanies and posters... And there was a Fencing match to attract some attention.

Turning around a corner we stepped into Times Square... OMG there are SO many lights, billboards and other extremly unecessary stuff...

The first night we were there, we saw a show on Broadway, "Chicago" as in the movie. It was virtually identical, but Very good. We ordered the tickets in advance off the internet and managed to get a good price. Delphine joined us since no one else wanted to go to a show.

I was reading an article about NY before I came, and it mentioned that the NYC subway is the safest it's been in ages with only 9 major incidents a day... Someone care to tell me what "major" is? Above Right: Ground Zero, and the construction of the new Freedom tower. In the place of the Twin towers their building another huge building that is going to be empty above the 70th floor... Google it for more info.

The following day, we visited the New York finacial district, and was very surprised at the size of Wall street, basically it's a tiny side street off Broadway. Sorry America, a little disappointing.

Above left is city Hall (I think) and on the right is on of the NYC court's.

Left: China Town, Right: Self explanatory.

Above: New York Stock Exchange

Central park was a little disappointing, it's very large but in winter it has much less charm that in Summer I'm sure. All the tree's had no leaves. Some artist though believes these big orange thing's are arty, and for the measly price of 31 Million US, there are 7000 of these buggers across the park. Above Left: Jutta and another NYPD cart, Above Right: Casually jogging in Central park.

Central Park is literally right down the middle of Manhattan Island and it's surrounded by skyscrapers, so it's a nice view. While we were there, we also met Mr Jackson, very friendly, but strangely quiet.

On our walk to the USS intrepid Air & Space mueseum we found an NYPD precinct, and a nice picture oppurtunity was had.

There was many a plane to be seen on the deck of the Aircraft carrier and if the weather wasn't so cold we may have stayed here longer. They also have one of the few remaining Concordes on display. Below Right: Allison and the cramped Concorde Cockpit.

On the last evening in NY, we saw one of the larger Hummer varieties, this one had turned a corner a little too sharply and squashed a parked car just beside it. After the traffic backed up on Broadway behind it, and more than one irate taxi guy. It began a long series of reversing 1-2m and trying again. As I am sure you can imagine, reversing 1-2m in a car this size has no effect what so ever. "Only in NY"

Urs the photographer took about 20 shots of us in the car until he had the perfect shot... There were so many, I hope this is it...

But that ended our trip to New York all in all, pretty good. Further more, Duty Free across the border is pretty good. You can get 24 beers for only US$14.00!