Tag Archives: postdocinleuven

Sydney at night

I am just between my talk (went well, I gave a review talk on B-type pulsators on the main sequence), and the conference dinner which will take place on a cruise ship in the harbour, so I have a little bit of time to post. Yesterday the rain finally stopped (we had around 150 mm precipitation over the past few days, and also the coldest day in Sydney – with a maximum around 13°C – of the last 6 years on Saturday), so I managed to go for a nearly 12 kilometre run during the talk-free afternoon. Then on the evening we visited to the Sydney Observatory, where we had pizza, and saw ω Centauri and η Carinae (awesome) through the telescope. Afterwards I still went for a walk to see the city with the lights on, and take a few pictures (thanks for the tripod, Enrico!). A bit more cliche exposures than the last time, but I do not think you will mind. Enjoy!

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First impressions of Sydney

So yesterday after checking in, despite being very tired, I still managed to leave the hotel around noon for a completely unplanned (meaning that I had no specific goal or route in mind, except for seeing the Opera House at one point) walk through the city. The weather was quite nice, around 15°C, scattered clouds at the beginning, then perfectly sunny later on. I really like the architecture, with a mix of older small houses and modern skyscrapers, which reminded me a bit to Rotterdam.

I headed towards the Sun, to the North (yeah, crazy Southern Hemisphere). After crossing the Hide Park, I looked into and walked around the St Mary’s Cathedral (very pretty, especially the wooden structure of the ceiling).

Then I continued through the Domain towards the Royal Botanic Gardens. These are great parks, blooming and green even in the middle of winter (since this day was the day of the Winter Solstice here – crazy Southern Hemisphere again)! Also, I have seen many birds walking and flying around these places (and more later around the harbour), e.g., I am sure I have seen Noisy Miners, Australian White Ibises, and a Little Black Cormorant drying its wings at Walsh Bay.

After making it through the Botanic gardens, I walked along the path on the banks of Farm Cove towards the Opera House. This is (again) a really nice path to take, with views over the harbour and the skyline of the city. The Opera House is very nice, I liked especially the roof structures, or shells, and their patterns. I tried to take less cliche photos, I let you decide if I succeeded with that or not.

From here I walked around the Circular Quay, up to Dawes point, to have a better look at the Harbour Bridge, and also to look back at the skyline from there. The bridge was a – literally – huge surprise for me, since its size is much more impressive in real life than it is on the pictures.

Unluckily the battery in my camera died here (and I still need to buy a replacement battery for these cases, when I go on a longer than planned walk without charging my only battery), so I have no images from the way back to the hotel.

Still, I walked through the small streets of The Rocks (I will have to go back there), and then followed the Pitt street back home. This ended my 5 hour walk. An hour later I was so tired, that I fell asleep in the middle of writing an email, so after noticing that, I decided that it was time to go to bed. Since I managed to sleep till 7 this morning, I suppose my switch to this timezone is now complete! Today is very rainy, so I will try to work on my talk/presentation a bit… Oh, and the breakfast at the hotel is pretty good, so I think I will not really need lunch today :)

Flying to the opposite side of the globe

Ok, now I know how does it feel to fly overseas… I spent more than 20 hours in the air in a slightly more than 24 hour period, flying first from Brussels to Abu Dhabi (easy 6h 40m flight), then from Abu Dhabi to Sydney (14h 10m). The economy class of Etihad Airways was very nice, with personal in-flight entertainment system, huge leg-space (especially after the tightness of the ThomasCook chairs less than a week earlier), and rich meals (with even a menu card for each flight). Unluckily I did not really manage to sleep more than a few hours in total, so writing these lines at noon in Australia feels pretty much like midnight at home… There is one moment which was really memorable for me from the flights: entering the airspace above Australia, I peeked outside and saw the Southern Cross (Crux) constellation over the wingtip of the plane :) I will try to go and walk around a bit now, since I do not want to go to bed and completely destroy my day/night rhythm (as if there was anything left to destroy). Stay tuned for more!

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Massive Stars in Rhodes

Last week I have been to the Massive Stars: From α to Ω conference in Rhodes, Greece. I did not go alone, Clio also came along, but while I was sitting in the cold conference room (seriously, it was freezing in there), she was enjoying the summer temperatures and her books next to the pool :) This conference itself is a very important event for the massive star community, held only every five years (and always somewhere near a beach). I have to say for me it was a bit of a disappointment. I went there to broaden my view on massive stars, but I was hoping to hear a few talks on the pulsational aspects too. Unluckily, at the end, there was only one slide mentioning asteroseismology at all, since the only talk which would have been about pulsations was cancelled :( (In the summary talk the speaker also mentioned that he expected to hear more on this topic…) Of course, on the other hand, it was very interesting to attend talks about something else than asteroseismology, but if I can choose, I would like to stick to my field in the future ;) By the way, I did not go there empty handed, I presented a poster showing the results of my last paper on the Kepler binaries.

The conference venue (Rodos Palace) was a (nominally) five star hotel five kilometres outside of Rhodes on the West side of the island. It was perfect in terms of the conference infrastructure, except for the crappy internet connection, which was really below my worst expectations. In terms of holiday resort, I have mixed feelings. Parts of the hotel are nicely renewed, but some other areas (like our room) felt a bit old and worn. Luckily, the view really made up for it (see first pic below). But since it was payed by work, I am not going to complain any further.

Outside the conference hours (9-18:30) I planned to do some running to keep in shape, which failed miserably, since I only managed to do one 5k. It was way too hot already on the mornings, and it was really difficult to get up early and go running before breakfast… So I did gain some weight with all the conference food and the nice dinners on the evenings in Rhodes… Speaking of Rhodes, we did not get to see too much of the Island (only the Hill of Filerimos and the Springs of Kallithea outside of the city), but Rhodes itself was very nice. I liked especially the Avenue of the Knights in the old city (see many-many pictures below), and the windmills of the old port. I am still very happy with my FUJIFILM X100S, it is really nice to take pictures with it, and – I hope you agree – the results are also really pleasing.

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