February 2008

Oh wow, have I been lazy... September to February! I guess life is getting too normal? Maybe I have to move to a new place!? Actually, I don't think it is that bad.

I've been taking quite a few photos in Fall, for example of SFU - the beautiful pile of concrete. Hard to believe, but you can take some interesting photos there.

A nice place is also Cates Park in North Vancouver. The maple trees are really nice there, I guess that's how they picked the symbol for the Canadian flag ;-) People say that the Indian Summer in Canada's eastern provinces is incredible.

Our house is somewhere above and left of that oil tank.

Vintage Photos

I also tried to make 'safe' jpg-copies of some very nice photos of a very nice girl. I think they turned out quite good and because they made me think how awfully spoiled we all were in our childhood you'll get to see them here (nevertheless I think has always been a little princess ;). The other girl is mostly 's little sister. Not to be unfair - I also scanned a few photos of myself back in 2006, and here they are!

Childhood photos from India	Michael's Childhood

Nilam

has been lucky - after Akanksha's visit in the Summer another good friend of her's came to meet us. met Nilam when she did her internship with RIM in Waterloo, now she is working in Ottawa. On her way to India she had a short stopover in Vancouver to meet us. We had a great time, though it was too short. Too bad Ottawa is so far away!

Skiing

As usual, after a six month break Whistler is open again for skiing we had a great and sunny start into the season, followed by a lot of snow in December. January has seen quite a few sunny days and low temperatures - a nice change to the usual snow, snow, snow, snow weather :) I also did an avalanche class in Whistler together with David. It was a stressful weekend with many hours coursework and two full days play in the snow. We had a lot of fun and I think we also learned something - you can never be careful enough!

Eagles

There are always new things to learn: This year I found out that there is a large Bald Head Eagle population during the winter months in southern BC. They all come for one thing - mild temperatures and spawning salmon! In November we drove to Harrison River, that's where the first set of photos is taken. We came just a little bit too late and there was dead salmon everywhere. The eagles were pretty shy, coming really close to them was impossible. In the end of December I had a chance to take really great photos in Squamish. I could go right underneath the tree where the eagle was sitting and that's how I got the second set of eagle photos.

Eagles and Salmon	Eagles in Squamish

I can't repeat it often enough, I am now taking donations for a 'decent' camera and a 'decent' lens ;-)

India

For those of you who don't know it - has been in India for 3 weeks in January. She was warmly welcome by her famliy there and had a great time with her sister, mom, dad and grandparents. She hasn't been there in 3 years, so there were a lot of new things to explore and many stories to listen to.

Food at the top, the latest fashion at the bottom. Proud girl in the middle.

She brought an amazing amount of amazing food with her, mostly home-made stuff from her mom and grandma. Things that I've never seen before... and every single one is 2die4. also brought a whole bunch of new Indian dresses with her, so she gave a little fashion show for me!

also took a lot of photos in India, unfortunately the CD she brought broke in transport (in between all the food). So they are now slowly trickling in via email and I have to be patient before I can see them all. Here is a selection of them, look at those street scenes - I said I'll take all my mountain bike safety gear with me before riding on those scooters!

Garima in India

Global Warming?

Well, not here... It has been snowing 10+ cm here in Burnaby a couple times throughout the Winter, and now again, especially on Burnaby Mountain. I think SFU has had a continuous snow coverage and classes were cancelled on three days and this week about 1500 students stayed overnight in the gym because buses stopped running after 4pm because of heavy snowfall. This is definitely the coldest out of the last four Winters here - against all predictions no global warming is happening ;-)

Well, I don't complain, I like snow! In only one week Björn and his little brother are going to visit us after their skiing trip to the Rockies and Max will come in March!

Did I ever mention that we made a little web page for our lab? There you go: http://www.sfu.ca/physics/thewaltlab/ I guess it would be fun to add some photos of the lab, too. In case I'll ever do that I'll let you know!