Quantum Forest

Ten days ago we had a quick trip to Quail Island. The island, also known as Otamahua, is a 20 minutes boat trip from Lyttelton, which in turn is half an hour from Christchurch.

Quay Island/Otamahua

There is a nice walk around the island, that can be done in less than two hours at a leisurely pace. Just be careful with the seagulls, some times they are a tad too aggressive. There is also a small ‘beach’, no much sand but still a nice place for kids.

Depending on the time of the year there is one (10:20 am) or there are two (10:20am, 12:20pm) boats to the island. Currently the fare is $15 return for adults and $7 for children. Check more details in Black Cat’s web site.

It pays to check the weather too. There is no specific forescast for Quail Island, but Christchurch’s forecast should do.

One of the shipwrecks in the island.

A pebble is not a pebble is not a pebble. There is a special one some where in this beach (see map). I just need time and my trusty orange bucket.

Drink cover in McDonald’s Papanui, Christchurch.

Less than a month ago I bought a Panasonic DMC-TZ1 digital camera. Basically, it is a small ‘point and shoot’, but with a very nice 10x optical zoom. Not really a substitute for the Nikon D70 (our main camera these days), but with the advantage of having it with me most of the time.

It has quite a decent image quality, nice image stabilizer (really needed when using as a telephoto) and good screen. The flash is a bit flaky but, hey, it is tiny. Battery life is quite good and I really like the small charger.

The photo below belongs to the ‘first roll’, taken in the carpark at work (30 metres from my office).

• Late 80s, riding an old bus late at night feeling loved.
• Going in a bus full of forestry students on the road to Constitución. It is autumn, the Nothofagus forest is exploding with colour and the music is Mercado Testaccio.
• A few days before leaving Valdivia in 1996, riding my old bicycle and the seagulls are flying around me. Everything looks still for a few seconds and we are part of the same flock.
• Orlando comes running towards me for a hug, he can not stop and pushes me. Anybody would think that he has not seen me for weeks, but it has been only a few hours.
• Marcela, Orlando and I are working in the garden. We are weeding and cleaning and that is it: simple.

There is something therapeautical about working with plants in the garden. There is the sense of achievement that is absent when working with intangible problems: I can see a small plant at the end of a day’s work.

I have slightly changed the focus of my attention during the last month or so. My current obsessions are:

• Optimisation of breeding programs, for which I am learning to use AMPL, with Fritz’s help. I will need to create and format some data to include in some simulations analysed by AMPL and I think I will use Python to prototype them. If I run in to speed bottlenecks I will reimplement numerically intensive processes in either C++ or Fortran 95.
• Genetics of wood properties. After some early forages on wood properties—which finished when Carolyn changed jobs—I am back at it. John has been very welcoming and we are trying to put a couple of projects together. We should have some early results by mid next year.

There are a few bits and pieces that do not fall in these two broad areas, but they will converge pretty soon.

Family-wise

Working with Marcela and Orlando in the veggie patch. I have never had much of a green thumb, but I am really trying. We sowed coriander, parsley and chervil, and planted bok choi, onions, dill, lemon balm and capsicum. Apart from the capsicum seedlings that are struggling (a drainage problem is my guess) everything is doing fine.

Marcela’s worm farm is the old-new addition. We used to have a worm farm in Australia, but due to quarantine issues, we decided to leave it there. So we needed to get a new one plus order the first batch of worms by mail.

This has been the longest break in the last two years without posting in this blog: one month. Life has been busy, looking for a place to live, childcare, a car, and a few other things necessary to settle in.

People were extraordinarily nice on arrival; wishing us well on immigration and customs officers helping us to carry our over hundred kilograms of luggage. The good thing is that they only took our bags through the X-ray machine, without the need for opening any bag. Considering the amount of luggage, it saved us a lot of pain.

Orlando behaved really well during the trip, falling asleep just before landing, and going through customs without waking up. He is happy now at childcare.

We are still staying at a temporary university house (only until next week I hope). The condition of the house is… dodgy but survivable. The university facilities manager will certainly receive a letter describing things that need to be fixed or change.

Christchurch’s climate seems to be similar—at least during summer—to Hobart’s. Some days hot and sunny (but under 30C), some days cold and cloudy (around 15C), some days overcast but not that cold (around 19C).

And how are the removalists performing?

We received the first part of our unaccompanied luggage on the 9^th of January. We sent around 100kg of luggage using the services of Jetta Express. They promised to have the luggage in 7 business days and it took them 8. However, they screwed up and lost all my paperwork so I neded to contact them a couple of times to arrange payment and delivery. Score from 1 to 10: 6.

We are also sending a container full of household items using Allied-Pickfords. They were supposed to have organised the packing, transportation, customs, quarantine and delivery of the container. We should get our container by next week, but I can say that service is pretty average. Packing took forever and was quite undiscriminate, processing of the paperwork in New Zealand has been extremely slow and it would have taken even longer if I have not been calling all the time. The customs processed is already approved and now customs wants to have a look at the vaccuum cleaner, bicycles, hiking boots (which were fumigated before packing) and other items. Next week I will put a final score on the service.

Part of my two weeks away included a meeting with old friends in Noosa, Queensland. Noosa is a very civilised place where to discuss breeding strategies: warm even in winter time, with a lay back, holiday atmosphere. After each day of discussions there were plenty of chances for having long walks followed by dinner. We stayed at the Noosa Lakes Resort for the third time (location map).

The picture shows Mark Dieters, Colin Matheson, Heidi Dungey, myself, Tim White, Jeremy Browner, Fred Burger and Mike Carson. In addition to people in the picture, we had Paul Jefferson, Michael Henson and Steve Verryn (next to me in the picture below) in the meeting. Colin—our resident wine buff—made some interesting choices so we tried a wide range of whites and reds.

It was great to see Tim again, after all these years. I met him for the first time in 1993, when I thought ‘this is a very clever guy’: pretty good at navigating the politics of meetings. He did not disappoint me and this time he was even better, helping us to come up with a good strategy.

I am looking forward to participate in other strategy meetings. With some luck Steve may be able to organise a conference in South Africa (country that I have never visited) and we could have a go there.

No, I was not abducted by aliens but just went off travelling for a couple of weeks. This trip included Noosa (Queensland), Sydney (New South Wales) and Christchurch (New Zealand). I will write only about Sydney this time.

Accommodation

Once one starts checking prices for hotels in Sydney one realises that is a bloody expensive place to stay, particularly if one wants to be in or near the CBD. I prefer to walk or take public transportation over renting a car, and staying in the CBD provides an opportunity to walk to most touristic places. As Marcela says, ‘when one does not have a car all places are at a walking distance’.

After looking at a few internet sites and brochures, we settled for a one bedroom apartment at Sydney Metro Apartments. At around AUD180 per day it was not a bargain, although I used some credit card reward points reducing the price substantially. We arrived at the place and… surprise! It was a two levels unit, completely unsuitable for staying with a small child. In addition, the lift and corridors had a sort of seedy air, which I did not like. I had a chat with the manager and we moved just across the street to ‘Kingsleigh Apartments’ to a one-level one bedroom apartment. The place was much better. Still, King Street was really noisy, particularly for people used to sleep in an extremely quiet environment. In all, I would not stay again there and I would not recommend it to someone else either (map location).

Touristy

We did most of the touristy things, visiting the Aquarium, Taronga Zoo, Sydney Tower, Paddy’s Market, the Opera House, Royal Botanic Gardens, travelled by ferry, taxi (with Vietnamese and Tongan cabbies), monorail and walk, walk, walk.

We had great weather when visiting the Sydney Tower and the view was spectacular. The Aquarium was OK, but I am not a big fan of fish. The Taronga Zoo was sort of disappointing: there were many signs of ‘animal X will be here soon’. What sort of zoo does not have elephants, my sempiternal favourites? The zoo has brand new facilities for elephants, but its five new elephants are still under quarantine. Other animals, like the giraffes, were a bit far away to really enjoy them. Orlando liked the tiger, who was at the other side of a glass. One could feel Orlando’s heart beating really fast when the tiger came close.

Multicultural

I liked very much walking in a city full of people from every part of the planet. While Hobart is cosmopolitan next to Santiago, Sydney is the real McCoy. Full of Asians, Arabs, Greeks, and Spanish speakers. The down side was that people are clueless for giving directions. I stopped many times to ask some one for a given street name and they were hopeless without any exceptions. After a week here I was better acquainted with the street names than many locals.

I like to visit China towns (before was Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok) and this time was no exception. Nice places where to walk and buy cheap plasticky things. Easy to make Orlando happy for fifty cents. Lots of shops with signs only or mostly in Chinese, places were to look for strange looking products hanging from the ceilings.

Could I live here? Mm, not sure. Too many people, too much traffic, a lot of noise. Good shopping, lots of different food, lots of music and book shops. Strange feeling: first time that I have seen people begging in the streets in many years. I think I need to visit the city again to make up my mind.

Last Friday night we arrived back from the land of the long white cloud (Aotearoa / New Zealand). It was a good trip and Orlando behaved really well in the planes, making Marcela’s and my life a lot easier. The first week was to participate in the biannual Research Working Group 2 (Forest Measurement and Information) meeting, while the second was travelling around the Northern part of the South Island.

Workwise David and I were quite happy with the meeting, and we were able to see that the work we are doing in inventory and growth modelling is of good standard and has nothing to envy to things done in the rest of Australia and New Zealand.

One of the best parts of the trip was the chance to see Jo and Peter in Wakefield (map, a few kilometers from the birthplace of Lord Rutherford). They are the closest thing to family that we have in this part of the world and it is always good to see them. They are restoring a 1875 farm house, which is turning to be beautiful. From a culinary viewpoint, the highlight was Strawberry Fare — a restaurant in 114 Peterborough Street, Christchurch (map) — where the list of desserts is longer than the list of mains and entrees. A delight for people with a sweet tooth (I mean people like me).

The low point of the trip was going through multiple security checks and related idiocy. On my way to New Zealand I was swabbed in Hobart by a security guard looking for gunpowder residue. It was supposed to be a random check, but it was clearly targeted to bearded males (doh!). On my way back I forgot to put my ten year old Swiss army knife in my check-in luggage, so it was detected by some Kiwi low life that wanted to confiscate it. I managed to buy an envelope and ten dollars on stamps to post it to Australia. I have my fingers crossed hoping to get it back.

We arrived at home late at night and our cat, being a genuine representative of the species, did not show any interest in our presence. Anyway, it is nice to be back home and blogging again.