Since I haven't written for a few weeks, this update is fairly large. (And, indeed, I never completed this entry when I started it at the end of 2003; most of it was written in January 2005, slightly more than a year later). Basically, I finished my degree, and had some great holidays. First, I stayed at a beach house in Victoria, and then I returned to Melbourne where I finally got to do some sightseeing. I then spent some days in Canberra, and finally I got some sun in Sydney.
Right after university was over, I went to a house close to the beach with a few friends. The beach house was in Point Londsdale which is east of Melbourne. The weather wasn't terribly good on the first day, but then I spent a nice day at the beach. It was really hot, and it was absolutely wonderful because we had the whole beach for ourselves. Unfortunately the weather was fairly cold, but after I while I finally got used to it and got in… that was fun... It must have been a few years since I last went swimming in the sea. The weather wasn't all too overwhelming for the next days, but I still had a nice, relaxing time, basically doing nothing and for once not even reading e-mail for a full day.
After spending some time in Point Londsdale, I went back to Melbourne. I finally got around to doing some sightseeing. Aurelio Turco, whom I met at the LUV meeting where I gave a talk, kindly offered to show me around the botanic gardens and that's what we did on Saturday. On Sunday, I went to the zoo, which was really nice. I saw all my little friends, and I especially liked the giraffe. They were feeding it right at the time I was there, and I found it amazing what a long tongue the giraffe had. I also saw some kangaroos for the first time, but they were really boring and were just lying around. Melbourne zoo is really nice.
I went to Canberra for a few days, partly to meet the people at IBM OzLabs and also to do some sightseeing. Andrew Pollock kindly took me around and we went to some space exploration center and the zoo. This is the famous Canberra zoo where Linus was bitten by a penguin. They had a sign up there telling the story of Linus and Tux. There was a reservoir close to Andrew's place and we saw some wild kangaroos. Unfortunately, they went away as we approached them. I spent a day at IBM OzLabs and met all the cool guys like Tridge, Rusty and Chris Yeoh, and on one evening we also had a Debian get together.
When I arrived in Sydney, it was raining but the weather improved a lot over the next few days. On Saturday, I went to Herbert Xu's place so he could take a look at my laptop and fix a few issues with it. It was really amazing watching him going through the kernel sources. On Sunday, I went to Manly Beach. The weather wasn't great when I left so I thought I'd just go for a walk but then it was pretty warm and I regretted not bringing a towel along. However, the following three days I spent at Coogee beach and it was simply amazing. The water was warm, the beach was nice; it simply rocked!
Unfortunately, I only had a few days at the beach. I had to return to Melbourne, pack all my stuff, and then catch my flight back to Europe. I really enjoyed Australia. It's a great place, and the only downside really is that it's just too damn far away.