Sorry for the un-announced hiatus

Sorry everyone, I've kinda been absent from the blogosphere for a while. The main reason is that the real world has actually been consuming all of my time.

It's funny that I seem to differentiate between blogging and the real world isn't it? It's not as if blogging is something that happens outside of reality. Hmmm, that's definitely something to think about for a later post.

Anyway, for all of you who read this blog to find out about me and my adventures, I should probably write a bit about what I've been up to for the last month or so...

Well, about a month ago I touched down in Bris-Vegas. I was going home to do some work, graduate, and spend Christmas with my mum. Well, my graduation ceremony was on a ridiculously hot day, so of course I had to wear the full-on academic gowns and all that.

Here's a photo of me with my mum and some of my friends who could make it to the ceremony. From the left: Georges, Karen, me, my mum, and Mohan (they are all going to hate that I put this photo up, but I think they'll deal with it because I look a lot more stupid than any of them in those robes...):



It was great to catch up with some of my old friends over December. I've really missed some of them since I moved to Europe. It was really hard to move away from them the first time and was hard to fly away on Boxing Day not knowing when I'll see any of them again. Being a jet-setting sciencish-type definitely has its drawbacks when it comes to personal relationships. Again, a topic for another post.

Oh, and it was great to finally make it back to the beach:



Anyway, as I just mentioned, I flew back to Europe on Boxing Day. I spent New Years Eve in Leipzig. I had a lot of fun, the fireworks were totally insane. By "insane", I mean completely nuts, not necessarily cool. They had no organized fireworks in Leipzig, just a lot of drunk-off-their-ass people with a lot of their own fireworks letting the rip whenever they felt the need. I gather that a lot of people get injured on New Years eve. Well, it might have been dumb, but we ventured into the center of town to gather in an area where a lot of these drunken-pyros were doing their thing to check it out. Come midnight, it was pretty damned impressive:







So finally, I'm now back here working in Innsbruck. I'm freezing my ass off, the forecast minimum temperatures for the next week all look to be around -10 C. At least the sun is out and I did get to go snowboarding last weekend...