Sometimes, my job isn't so bad

I got to spend the past week in Banff in the Canadian Rockies for a workshop.



Our talks took place in the building behind the huge elk, and during the afternoon, we were free for a couple of hours to go hiking or enjoy the swimming pool.

And finally, the evenings were free for a game or foosball or pool.





It turns out Johan Hastad is good at more than just complexity...

Al Fresco Lifestyle

Fall is here, which means more reasonable temperatures and discounted outdoor furniture! We're taking advantage of both, and are fully committed to the al fresco lifestyle. In the morning, we have our coffee on the porch.



Weather permitting (which means, if it is not too warm), we have dinner on the porch as well.

And, we may even choose to venture off the porch now that we have a fire pit to keep the bugs away.

I love the fall!

Hard Work

We've finished giving our final exams, and there are huge piles of paper waiting for us to grade them. A also has a (part of a) grant proposal to write. But we are expecting guests! Time to get the house in order.

Last weekend, we bought a leaf blower and sucker, since it turns out our street is named after a very leafy  tree for a reason. This week, we bought a lawnmower as well.

F is really taking to working in the garden. This morning, he worked his hands to a pulp chopping wood for the fire place, reporting that "It is like golf, but more fun!"

 In the mean time, A assembled the dining room furniture, and our guest room is ready too! (It is most unfortunate that we did not buy our own bed yet, so our guests will be more comfortable than we are).

We don't have time or energy to cook, but fortunately Costco sells really good frozen pizza, hummus, mini quiches etc.

The last serious cooking we did was last weekend, when we made this:

 

Onwards and Upwards

The next day we awoke to a perfect blue sky, and hiked on to the Franz-Senn-Hütte.

It was a long, and a bit monotonous walk, but enjoyable none the less.

A herd of sheep made for a perfect photo op.



Ladies and gentlemen, THIS is Stubaital.

Arequipa

On Sunday morning, I got up at 2:30 and took a cab to the airport, through streets full of people on their way home from a night out in Lima. Taking a ridiculously early flight turned out to have its advantages, and the view from the plane as we were about to land was amazing.

I spent a full Sunday walking around town and taking tons of photos. That made me so exhausted that since then, all I have been able to do is sleep and attend the conference I am here for. I am hoping today will be better, and more posts will follow.

Balloons

We drove back from Belgium, after buying some Belgian beers and mayonnaise. When we got closer to Saarbrücken, we saw that Adrie's birthday was also celebrated here. With no less than 99 Luftballons.

Almost gone

Bye bye China!

Last visit to 798

The pollution has been so bad lately, that we were planning to stay home today with the curtains closed. But then suddenly the air quality index dropped enormously:



Everything looked crisp and wonderful, so we had to get out of our apartment. We decided to pay a last visit to 798.







Please leave a comment to help us understand how these art works are symbolic for our stay in China.

Ikea is cool

The weather is hot. The air is ridiculously polluted. But, fortunately, Ikea offers free air conditioned living rooms and bed rooms to suffering Beijingers.

Food for Flight

Again again?

Again again.

Time off...

...from feeling angry, stressed and powerless.

We are going to climb the great wall today with Amanda. Look what a wonderful day we chose for doing physical exercise outside!





By the way, we have received no reply yet to the surprised and shell-shocked email that we sent on Tuesday night to our fearless leader, who we now think is perhaps not so fearless. (And we can come up with hundreds of nasty expressions about things he does seem to lack). Damn, now I am thinking about him again!

Dirty Rotten Scoundrels

Sometimes China makes us angry. Very angry. Because people lie and change the rules all the time. And this can be really annoying, as we have explained in previous posts. It is annoying us right now because we are trying to get money to go to a conference, and new rules appear all the time. We suspect we know the reason.

You all should be annoyed too, because we are not the only ones being lied to.

Yeah yeah, Beijing does all it can do to fight pollution. But can we really deny Chinese people the right to have cars when all Westerners do have them? No, we cannot. And hence Beijing is a polluted city. It is not the government's fault, it is just because there are so many people in Beijing...

Yeah, right! Behold this photo.



It has not been this clean in months. Maybe not since Obama was in town. We are not aware of special regulations taking cars of the road.

However, we are aware of this upcoming visit of Sarkozy.

Rural Weekend II

We were aiming to go to Jiankou Great Wall, which is supposedly very rugged and wild (just like we are, says F). This turned out to be a bit hard to find. The directions in our book mentioned a trout farm (they are everywhere!) of a certain name, which we could not find.

In the end, we just took a random narrow dust road which surely wasn't the right one, drove through a little village, some more dust road, and finally, we hit a trout farm and a cute outdoor restaurant next to a couple of trout ponds. We thought it would do.

So, we got a bed in one of the two hotels (and not just a bed! A western toilet and hot shower too! We did not know they had those in the rural lands outside Beijing. The hotel also featured some night lamps which started billowing out black smoke a little while after we turned them on. Very exciting stuff.) We spent a wonderful, albeit very cold, night with an open window, listening to the waterfall that supplied the trout pond outside with fresh water.







Early the next morning, we looked for some hiking opportunity. Way up above the hotel, we could see a very steep mountain with some watchtower on top. We did not expect to be able to go there, but started out on a little stroll through the terraced farmland. Shortly after, the trail became insanely steep. We kept huffing and puffing our way up. Not much of a view to reward us for our efforts, because, even though the sky above was bright blue, the pollution was pretty bad.



We kept going however, and actually made it up to the wall. It was beautiful! By far the best part of the wall we have seen so far!



It looked plenty rugged and wild to us. We looked it up later, and it was indeed Jiankou Great Wall.









The last photo features A pointing out in typical Chinese girl-y fashion how high and steep the climb was up to the wall (which you can see on the top of the ridge if you look very carefully). By the way, isn't the story that the wall was built to keep out invaders? With the idea that they would not be able to get their supplies and horses and such across the wall??? So, ehhh, you think the wall is what kept them from crossing this ridge here?

Getting off our lazy behinds

We finally went hiking with BJhikers again. We went to a part of the Great Wall which was quite undeserving of the name -- more like a long and messy pile of stones.