Even though we are living in Germany[1], I am employed by a Dutch organisation, FOM. For foreigners coming into the Netherlands, they invite you to a Dutch language and customs course. This is to help you assimilate and acclimatise and so even though I spend very little time in the Netherlands I was obliged to…

A news item that recently caught my eye involved the issue of exploding German toads. As the famed Dave Barry used to say, “I am not making this up”. Now, being a Queenslander — especially one who did some (physical) growing up in a rural environment — I am not unfamiliar with the ways in…

Since we’ve had such fun doing this blog, we thought it would be a good idea to write up a few significant events that happened prior to starting the blog. I’ve already posted a couple (PhD graduation and Karneval!) but others will also include happenings during our brief transit time in Brisbane (Christmas 04 to…

One of my favourite quotes regarding the internet is We’ve all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.— Robert Wilensky, 1996 (As a sideline, the “infinite monkey theorem” makes some interesting reading, though,…

After some long-winded discussions with one of my brothers (Jonathan. Well, OK, one email but he was enthusiastic — “I think blogging is a great idea!”), I thought it would be worthwhile to start a weblog. Since there are so many nice people who are interested in how myself and the family (hence the “et…

I thought that if George Lucas can do it, then I could write a couple of prequels too (you may recall this blog actually started on the 11 Mar 05). So here is a prequel post regarding my PhD graduation which I was a bit busy at the time to write up. In brief: Graudated…