Oh my god! NEW UPDATES
Posted on 01 Jun 2008 by Cathrine
There are now several new updates in the travel log and in the photo album. There are some photos of our not-so-new-anymore apartment. And off course for all you who have waited so long to see BJØRN ANDREAS ON A SURFBOARD: the images have finally arrived!! Hurray! Though the photo of him is not of best quality, I must certainly add that he did much better than the photo suggests. Because of an injury he is responsible for taking the rest of the nice surfing photos. The story for that is also to be found in the travel log. For once it is I who have updated and uploaded, so I hope it all works smoothly. Cathrine
Jebus... What took you so long?
Posted on 04 May 2008 by Bjørn Andreas
Finally, something to update! In the picture gallery, 6 new galleries are now ready for viewing! These 6 galleries are all from our roadtrip and include pictures from Perth to Sydney. However, the pictures from new years eve in Sydney are not published yet, but they will be soon, I promise you. Tons of other pictures will also be available shortly, covering the entire journey back to Perth.
More good news: Now anyone can add comments to the pictures, without having to go through the hassle of registering, which no one bothered doing anyway. I figured out how to enable the comments thing, so start posting!
And believe it or not, Cathrine and I have been surfing! Along with Marcus, Anne, Debbie and Kirsten. Pictures from this will also be posted as soon as possible.
Also, be sure to check out my new portfolio website at www.designbjorn.com where I will publish the graphic stuff I am doing down here.
Hear, hear!
Posted on 20 Apr 2008 by Bjørn Andreas
It's been a very long time, but finally the site is being worked on again. I have fixed some problems with the coding, so now it should look perfect in Internet Explorer as well. Also, I have moved the site from dopapir.com/au back to just dopapir.com. The portfolio I had there has been redesigned and updated and moved to my new domain www.designbjorn.com. Be sure to check it out and see what I do down here.
Lack of updates
Posted on 13 Feb 2008 by Bjørn Andreas
Hello dear friends!
I am sorry for the lack of updates, but I blame Australian internet providers for that. For some rason, getting internet into our apartment has proven to be more difficult than it should be. However, we have ordered it, and hopefully everything should be up and running within a couple of weeks, but I can't promise anything. So until then, the travel log and pictures from our roadtrip will have to wait.
Back in Perth
Posted on 28 Jan 2008 by Bjørn Andreas
After almost two months and more than 10 000 km, we are back in Perth again. I'm sorry for the lack of updates after Sydney, but it's a bit difficult to update a website without internet. You might expect the updates to come more frequently now, but I'm afraid I have to disappoint you. I'm currently writing this from school, which means we don't have an internet connection at home just yet. We will try to get this fixed as soon as possible though, so stay tunes for a full cover of the road trip, and for a lot of pictures and videos. All in all, we have 16 GB of pictures and small video clips to sort out (!)
Greetings from Sydney
Posted on 30 Dec 2007 by Bjørn Andreas
Hello again! We hope everyone has had a great christmas so far. We have certainly had a great time in Melbourne. Bjørn Andreas are by the way proud to announce that he sat down at the $1/2 NL Hold'em table at Crown Casino with $80 (maximum buy-in for some reason) and left the table with $187.
We arrived in Sydney yesterday and spent the night at a Swedish "hotel". We have been smart enough to travel without making any bookings ahead, which caused us some problems when we got to Sydney this late, and just before new year's eve. But we have now managed to get a nice little hotel room in the city from tonight until next sunday. Not the cheapest of options, but we didn't have many choices when arriving this late, and seeing that we will get to spend new years eve down here, it is definetely worth it. We are really looking forward to tomorrow, and are anxious about how the celebrations will work out with 1,2 million people gathering down by the Sydney harbour alone. We will try to access one of the viewing points by the Royal Botanic Garden, which has room for 22 000 people. The gates open as early as 10 AM tomorrow morning, and are expected to be packed by early evening, so will have to prepare for a lot of waiting.
Anyway, more updates will come shortly! Happy new year to everybody back home! We will actually enter 2008 ten hours before Norway does.
Merry christmas from Melbourne
Posted on 24 Dec 2007 by Bjørn Andreas
Merry christmas everyone! We are now settled in Melbourne in a small furnished apartment where we spend christmas. We have driven more than 3000 km so far, and we're heading for Sydney in a couple of days. The Travel Log is now updated with the events of our almost two week long road trip. So plenty of reading available if you're interested! However, pictures will not be available until we are back in Perth in early February. We have internet here, but we only have 100 MB available for download and upload in a week, so there is no point, seeing we have taken hundreds of pictures so far. But for those of you who are too unpatient, there are some preview pictures under each of the road trip categories in the Travel Log. Hurrah!
Anyway, as we're writing this, it's christmas here in Australia. We hope everyone at home will have a great holiday, even though it might be hard to celebrate anything without us present! And special christmas greeting to Trond and Lene and their newborn Alva, making Bjørn Andreas a proud uncle of two!
Oh, and one more detail. For some reason I can not get the comment function in the picture gallery to work for guests, only for registered users. So for those of you who want to comment on the pictures, please REGISTER HERE.
Soon on our way to Sydney
Posted on 02 Dec 2007 by Bjørn Andreas
It's December already, and this might be the last update for a while. Tomorrow we are moving into our new house, without an internet connection. And we are planning to leave for our road trip as soon as we can, so that means we can't update the site until we find a wireless connection or an internet café on the way. But we will try to keep you informed about our trip as often as we can.
But enough about that. We bought a new car! A monster Toyota Tarago that hopefully will take us safely to Sydney and back!
Birthday pictures, car hunting, summer holiday, spiders and a new house
Posted on 24 Nov 2007 by Bjørn Andreas
It's saturday. It's sunny. It's 35 degrees. I don't want to go outside. The last days has made me realize that even I can get sunburned. On monday, we had our first and last exam, which was a stressful two hour event, but I think it went OK for both of us, even though we were thinking more about our summer holiday than the actual exam. But I can understand why they finish school this early, because the last few days has been too hot for study. I know I shouldn't complain about warm weather when my fellow Norwegians are freezing back home, so I'll just leave it with this.
The main news this time is that we got a new house! Finally! After numerous of unsuccessful viewings and applications, we finally got a positive reply. And this for the house we wanted the most. It's big and spacious, it's really close to both shops and the university, and it's close to transport. And it's fully furnished, which saves us heaps of money. We are moving in with the two Germans Marcus and Anne, next friday, so we are really looking forward to that. And we got the apartment just in the nick of time, as we had to decide if we wanted to stay in the student village or not this week. Pictures of our new home will be published as soon as we move in.
In addition to going house hunting, Cathrine and I are looking for a car as well, and we spent the whole thursday at an industrial area half an hour outside the city, going from car dealer to car dealer. We found a car we want, but unfortunately the sales man looked and seemed a bit dodgy. His open shirt, shaved chest, tattoos, gold watch and strange haircut made him the prime example of a hustler. So, before we do anything hasty we will have the car checked etc. We might even end up buying something completely different. We'll see! But we really need a car, and as soon as possible would be great. We want to get used to driving it before we head out on our 10 000 kilometer roadtrip to Sydney and back in December! And a car would also come in handy during the moving process next week.
Speaking of next week, on thursday the third year students in design will have a gradshow with a display of their work, with people from the industry coming to check it out. And although Cathrine and I are not graduates yet, our lecturer wants to display some of our work from this semester! So this is a great thing for us. This semester has gone really well, and I guess this is the first time – at least my first time – I'm looking at top grades. (Ikkje skryt!). However, I should really update my own web portfolio, but I think the whole website looks boring, so I won't do it until I redesign the whole thing.
Why are spiders mentioned in the headline? Well, we just figured it was about time. I mean, we live in Australia, and what would this country be without spiders, snakes and sharks? So this is number one. The little guy (or girl?) on the picture below has just got settled in our balcony roof.
Also, pictures from my birthday are out in the gallery. Enjoy!
My birthday cake (I decorated it myself. Notice the small bears!):
Mustaches, air race, birthday and Muse
Posted on 16 Nov 2007 by Bjørn Andreas
Congratulations to myself for finally pulling myself together and updating the site. Much has happened since last time, and for those interested, a more detailed description of the Muse concert can be found in the travel log, along with a couple of videos. Also, more pictures can be found in the gallery.
So, the title. Well, mustaches because Grethe for some reason wanted a mustache theme for her birthday party. So here goes. Underneath is the sad truth of my pathetic attempt to grow a mustach quickly. Anyway, this is the first and last time you will get the chance to see it. Enjoy! However, Cathrine did rather well in her mustach growing as you can see. This just took her 4 days to grow. Good for her!
Air race? The Red Bull Air Race travels around the world and has chosen Perth as their Australian destination, which is a big thing down here. Thousands of people showed up for this event in the middle of the city. We were only there for the first day, but it was very impressive, and some nice photos were taken too. Click on the picture below for a full view, and go to the gallery for more.
And congratulations to myself for turning 24 last wednesday! And big thanks to everyone who remembered it! This was the first time in my life my birthday had more than 20 degrees. It was past 30 in fact! The last week has been really hot with temperatures between 30 and 40 degrees. Poor us, huh? I heard rumours about snow in Haugesund. Always nice to hear. Anyway, back to my birthday. It was celebrated with good food, good friends, good drinks and good cake from 2 pm until we left for the Muse concert about 7:30. Cathrine bought me a guitar for my birthday! Even though I can't play, I still missed my old ones back in Norway, so this was fantastic (fantastig :)). Pictures from the birthday party is coming up shortly. I just have to get them off from Cathrines camera.
The Muse show was... OK. I have seen them twice before, and both times were fantastic. Muse is not to blame though. This was fully the Perth organizing's fault. Read more about what happened in the Travel Log.
This is it for now. We have barely had any sleep the past days due to assignment deadlines. On monday, we have our final exam, and after that, it is actually summer (!) holiday! By the way, we are now 8 hours ahead from Norway instead of six as it used to be, because it's summer time down here. Just so you know.
And for everyone at Bar Ampfield in Gjøvik: I hope you have fun at the christmas table thing (?). We wish we could be there. And for everyone in Haugesund: Congratulations 2nd place in the national soccer cup. I watched the final on web tv. Paying 100 kr for a low resolution lousy video stream. Internet connections in Australia are horrible. Oh, and another congratulation! For Robert, for finishing 6th place in Full Tilt Poker's FTOPS Event #3! I am impressed and jealous.
Red Bull Air Race: Click to enlarge (opens in a new window)
Bjørn Andreas and Cathrine with a mustache. No full view for this one!
Poker, skyline, drive-in liquor stores and Golden Gaytime
Posted on 31 Oct 2007 by Bjørn Andreas
Time for another update! I am pleased to let everyone know that I have turned Cathrine into a poker monster, and she even has her own account at Full Tilt Poker now where she picks the playmoney tables apart. Also, yesterday, she got a royal flush in a tournament where she finished 63rd out of 2700. She's been playing for a few weeks and then gets a royal. I have played for more than two years without getting one. That is unfair. And she got paid off. Jebus.
Also, we had our first live poker session in Australia with Marcus and Anne on saturday. Of course, Cathrine and I ended up heads-up, and Marcus ending up last after pushing all in with TJ against my AQ. We have yet to finish the heads-up match, but we are as good as even in chips. I will post the end result (if I win that is).
You might wonder why Golden Gaytime is written in the title? That is the name of an ice cream Nathan managed to find at a Shell station after an unsuccessful attempt of going to the Rosemount Hotel. For some reason, they (and every other nearby bars) throw people out of there at 1 Am, so they start closing around 12. On a saturday! So if you people at home complain about bars only being open until 2, try Australia! Well, try Perth! I guess it's a bit different in Melbourne and Sydney. And places are open a bit later at Northbridge in Perth too, but we have only been to crappy places there so far. I miss Ampfield.
However, for some reason, the only thing that is open during the night is the drive-in liquor store! Shops closes at 5, bars shut down early, but the place where you can fill your car up with alcohol is open. Strange.
By the way, we are looking for a new place to live. We have had enough of our student housing cells, and plan to find a house of some kind and move in with Marcus and Anne. I will keep you posted!
Speaking of Marcus and Anne: Cathrine and myself were dragged to Kings Park for another photoshoot for his photography class, and it was cold! And rainy! I know I have told many of you back home that spring/summer is here, and that the weather is nice and nothing else. Well, I lied. Summer comes late this year it seems. But who am I to complain. Anyway, Cathrine shot some nice pictures of the Perth skyline, with full moon and everything. Enjoy! (Click to enlarge)
Short update
Posted on 13 Oct 2007 by Bjørn Andreas
Hi everyone! Just a quick hello to tell you how we are doing. Spring is here, and today is the first time the temperature has gone past 30 degrees C. But we are still so busy with school work that we can't really enjoy the weather yet. However, summer holiday starts early here in Australia, so in about a months time school is over and me and Cathrine will start traveling by car from the west coast to the east coast. We just got our Australia drivers licence, so now we just need a car that won't break down in the middle of the desert.
But just because we spend most of our days working doesn't mean we never do anything else. Three new galleries can be found under pictures.
Oh, and here is some proof that we are in fact working!
Website up and running!
Posted on 24 Sep 2007 by Bjørn Andreas
It certainly took a while, but finally the site is online. The reason for the delay can be explained with enormeous amounts of school work. This might not work as a good enough excuse for some of you, but it is the truth.
Hopefully both myself and Cathrine will have enough time to update the site once in a while, to give you a little update on what is happening down here in Australia. We are also planning a road trip around christmas times, so that should give the travel log some feeding.
Truth is we haven't seen much of Australia yet. Our days go by packed with work to do. We can't wait until the summer break starts (which by the way lasts for three months starting in late November). We will however update the travel log with the few things we have done so far. As for the picture gallery, we'll start posting pictures as soon as possible. Be patient!
Anyway, this first post is just to tell everyone back home that we are enjoying our stay on the other side of the world, even though we spend the days working. The good thing is that most of the school work is fun, so we are not complaining. In fact, this is just what we wanted and needed. Also, it has been raining pretty much every day since we got here, so we have managed to stay away from the beach, and instead focus on school.
Hope everyone is doing well back home in Norway. We miss you all!
