Amsterdam

It's been a week since I relocated to Amsterdam, to take up a position at the Universiteit van Amsterdam. The position is for three years in this beautiful city. I was last here in 1999 and fell in love with the people and the city then.

Things are of course pretty hectic as I go through the paperwork of relocation, together with tying up loose ends back in Australia (ahh, the joys of superannuation and taxation administration!), so these photos are very much some simple snaps, I hope to be posting a bit more frequently in the future.



Apologies for the mess...



Two views from my window


My apartment is behind the St. Nicholaaskerk


Of course...



Around my neighbourhood (near Nieuwemarkt)

Abodes and Parrots

Another hectic week.

I've now transferred from my initial landing spot in North Bondi to a permanent (hopefully) abode in Chippendale, quite close to Sydney's central business district. It's a terrace house, a popular style of two story building dating at least to the start of last century, although most buildings are probably mid-30s.



A view from the terrace.



I've done a couple of interviews, and revamped the resume substantially (tossing out about 5 jobs I did early as they were just too hard to explain and made it too long). Walking to an interview in the central business district, I happened across a florist selling several native flowers.



I met up with my cousins, uncle and aunt who are in Castleridge, a short drive beyond Parramatta, a major regional town outside of Sydney. They had a bird feeder which attracts the local wildlife:



A pair of galah's



A sulfur crested cockatoo (it's hard to communicate the scale, this guy/gal is about 18 inches tall!)

Touchdown.

Phew, a few days of flights, interrupted sleep, meeting people, beers, intermittent net connections, NYC work issues, Medicare cards, phone cards, resume updates and job applications conspired to keep me incognito. This blog is an attempt to plug that dark hole all my time seems to disappear down...

I arrived into Kingsford-Smith airport Thursday morning 8:30am Sydney time. NYC->LAX was 6 hours, followed by 1 hour in LAX, then another 14 hours LAX->SYD. Bill Bryson's "In a Sunburnt Country" was the perfect book for the flight - hilarious, and not too taxing, yet really captures the Australian condition. Noise cancelling headphones also substantially improve the comfort factor, and an iPod means not having to listen to piped music averaged down to the travel market demographic and prone to breakdown (such was the lot of several passengers on the flight). These together with food and interesting and talkative neighbouring passengers all make the 19 hours on the plane fair more manageable than may first be expected. Besides, doing the NYC->Perth flight is 27 hours, so this was nothing...

Some views of Bondi Beach






Beach front buildings



Squiggs House



Bondi Junction Townhouses



Local architecture