Australia Rocks !

G'day mates! Sorry I haven't been keeping you up to par more than I promised. As you can immagine, I have been quite busy in the past few weeks. Settling in, starting the PhD, visiting Brisbane, making new friends... it's quite exhausting! Also, I'm still pirating some neighbours wireless, which makes for short web sessions and crappy uploads. Broadband is quite expensive here, but I'm working on it! Got a new mountain bike (thx dad), and will be buying a decent car from a labmate soon so I can go to the coast and woods on week-ends :)

Bon, suite à la demande, je vais correspondre en francais quelque peu! Je porte présentement mon costume d'Halloween (chandail du canadien!). Je suis entrain de manquer une saison de fou de hockey et ça me manque! Malheureusement, je n'ai pas trouvé de sattellite dans cet hémisphère qui redistribue les matchs du canadien (du moins, pas régulièrement). Je crois que je serai obligé de m'abonner a NHL center ice (120$!!!).

Bon, j'ai croisé 2 iguanes a date (dont ce petit qui se sentait plutot aventureux a sortir la tête sur une piste cyclable!). Il y des geckos partout qui croassent la nuit. Des scinques aussi. J'ai hate de m'aventurer un peu plus dans le coin, c'est vraiment un climat formidable! Par contre, au risque de perdre quelques amis (mes condoléances pour la neige), il fait vraiment chaud ici! A 9h30, le soleil et haut dans le ciel et on cherche deja l'ombre. On sue profondement en marchant! Mais ca rafraichit vite, vers 18h le soleil est couché et il vente un peu, ca mets sur les 'pines' meme pour un canadien.

Le labo est vraiment fomidable. Enfin je suis vraiment stimulé, et pas juste parce que mes voisins de cublicule m'offrent de la bière au labo régulièrement! En fait, j'ai meme bcp de misère a suivre ce que les post-docs et autres etudiants font. C'est un méchant changement d'environement passer de la génomique de parasites uncellulaires a la génomique de métazoaires évolués. Il y a beaucoup plus de données et bcp plus d'outils informatiques. Je crois que je vais vraiment m'éclater a tous les niveaux.

En passant, félicitations David pour ton entrevue. Man, tu es du même calibre médiatique que mon ancienne superviseure de recherche (ou presque! voir section quebec scientifique, c.f. Barbara Papadoupoulou).

Bon, je dois y aller, ya un party d'halloween chez une canadienne et mes amis de couch-surfing viennent me chercher.

En passant, ya vraiment des criss de bibittes fuckées (pardonnez mon francais). Ya tellement de nouveaux bruits c'est comme être téléporté dans un autre monde. Ah oui! A l'aube ici, la premiere étoile qu'on voit c'est Jupiter (techniquement un planete). C'est aussi clair que la lune !

Cheers mates !

Some news from Oz

Howdy folks ! Sorry I haven't been feeding you much news recently, the fact is I don't have internet at home yet (and I am not too keen on spending much personal internet time at the lab).
So I am pretty much settled in my new appartment. It is in Toowong, which is between the city center and the University. It's a pretty cool place, I am next to a shopping center, giant liquor store, and other shops. The citycat ferry is about a 4 minute walk from my appartment and there is a large park and rugby field in front. Our place is quite small but clean and recent (plus we have a dishwasher!). We have a small yard with a garden and a garage. There is a mom and baby brushtail possum camping in our garage, but they aren't fussy roomates :)

Last week I was awarded the best australian scholarship for overseas students, the University of Queensland Research Scholarship and the International Postgraduate Research Scholarship. Basically, its the same amount for the living stipend as the Institute for Molecular Bioscience's scholarship but paid by the University instead of the Institute. Also, the government is paying my tuition fees instead of my boss, who has had all his grants approved last week (Bling!).

With the risk of hypocrisy, I am wary to inform you that I will most likely be the owner of a Mac book pro. Although I still strongly disapprove of Mac's capitalistic perversion, their most recent lineup of macbooks are quite impressive from technical, functional, and design viewpoints. Also, the fact that 80% of people in the lab use one in conjunction with their UNIX-based operating system is quite appealing (especially since it runs many PC-based programs and even games now). The 2.8 GHz Macbook Pro retails aroung 4500$ here.

Cocerning life in Brisbane, it freaking rocks. It's going to be hard leaving this city. I went on a "hike" up the second tallest Glass House mountain this week-end; it was more of a mild rock climbing trip than hiking. Some bits would have been safer with a rope, but it was an aweosme workout.
The Aussie dollar is really low these days, which was fun for my arrival as I was using Canadian funds. However things will get tricky once I get paid in Aussie funds :S

Cheers mates, hope to hear from you soon!
(I will try and post the best pictures from each month on Picasa or something, to be continued...)

Week 1

Oh yea, the El Camino! Or YEUTS as they call em here... It appears that this type of car is quite popular in Brisbane. Anyhow, I've been staying at a labmate's house for the pat few days, its a really cool place. The housemates are somewhat younger Uni students, but everyone is super friendly. I've found a small place to stay between the city and the Uni. The appartment is a 2 bdrm unit shared with a pharmacy student named Andrew. He seems like a cool kid, and the appartment is modest yet clean and modern.

Yesterday was my first day at the lab. The institute is HUGE ! Everything is top-notch and modern. I had a 2.5 hour induction, it appears that Australian labs are much more regulated, organized, and meticulous than canadian ones. Got to meet 90% of my colleagues (although my supervisor is in Europe for 3 months) and they seem very cool (at least WAY cooler than my previous lab colleagues.... BUUUURN!!! ).

The city-cat (i.e. the river ferry) freaking rocks ! two 600 hp engines that run at 450 hp power the boats so they are quite fast. Gets you pretty much everywhere.

I have to get going, but I will try to post some pictures taken with my new camera shortly.
I also have a cell phone (finally). Feel free to call me with skype or YAK :
011 61 411 068 339 (corrected)

Cheers !

Finally in Brisbane !

G'day from down-under mates! I finally made it to Brisbane, and what a beautiful city it is. The craziest birds just went loco right next to me (magpies I think). The weather is amazing, nice and warm in the day, coll in the night. Plenty of beautiful trees with all sorts of colorful flowers. Parrots, geckos, ravens the size of cats, truly a wonderful city (at least, where I am now).

As you can imagine, I am quite sick of flying. After a 2 hour delay in Sydney, I got off at the wrong train station but finally made it to my lab partner Selene's house. 6 people live here plus the occasional couch-surfers. I bought the most expensive 6-pack of my life yesterday, 20$ !!!

Today I shop for a cell-phone carrier, a camera, and an apartment and hopefully get lost only a few times :)

cheers!

Vancouver

Here I am in Vancouver waiting for my 15 hour flight to Sydney at midnight, local time. The Montreal-Vancouver flight was delightful, as they promoted me to first-class (even though 3 seats were still open!). The Vancouver Whitecaps pro soccer team was on the flight (they lost 0-1 to the Impact on Friday!).

I will be leaving Canada at 3am Eastern, arriving in Sydney arround 7pm Eastern (9 am local). I guess I should shop for a Sydney-Brisbane ticket now :)

Cheers !