ouups!

ooh, yep, it has been quite a wile now since i posted my last blog!

i hope i was keeping everyone a bit up to date through other means of communication... thanks to skype and facebook... :-)

a few things happend over here since the last time i blogged.

first of all, i went travelling with my parents and my brother, which was really nice. we saw a lot, really a lot in that little time. that was our route of travel:

http://maps.google.co.nz/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=de&msa=0&msid=115749315246284607671.00047d40fc9c758cbbd99&ll=-41.934977,173.562012&spn=13.299324,22.390137&z=6

...starting from christchurch, then kaikoura (seals), abel tasman (nice beaches, kayak tours), with the ferry over to wellington, tongariro national park (very nice volcanos, where we did a 7h walk which was just awesome!), rotorua (lots of pools smelling of rotten eggs, maori culture experience...), back to wellington, ferry over to picton, then to the westcoast (pancacke rocks, glaciers), lindis pass (very strange but nice landscape), catlins (pinguins ), otago peninsula off dunedin (albatross, seals), then lake pukaki, lake tekapo (both lakes have a really strange, milky color) ... and back to christchurch.

here some photos:

 moeraki bolders, north of dunedin

find the star fotographer stalking ;-)

     my mother and our van at lindis pass                                                  

family with kayaks at abel tasman 

                                                                  

tongariro crossing 

my brother at the very front... whats that girl doing? ;-)

The time after my parents and my brother left nz was quite strange. Being together so closely with a bunch of people for every day over three weeks, and then suddenly be on your own... Of course i had tobias and joseph, the guys i work with, but not too many other people... so that time was a bit hard. Although i was quite busy finding a flat, which was good... meeting new people, talking about the trip...thats always pretty exciting...and finally i found a really cool flat. It is very close to the city, a bit further away from my work place, but its alright. It takes me about 20 minutes to cycle to work, but no hills or the like, everythings flat in christchurch (except the port hills by the peninsula), which makes it an easy ride. A big part of the trip goes through hagley park, which is really nice.
http://maps.google.co.nz/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&hl=de&msa=0&msid=115749315246284607671.00047e81609e25a8eb313&ll=-43.532558,172.614355&spn=0.050652,0.087461&t=h&z=14

So i live together with 6 other people, one english girl, one english guy, one japanese girl, a korean cuple and a local kiwi girl from christchurch. all of them are really cool, some of them a bit more talkative as others, some a bit more outgoing as others... its a very good mixture! :-)

At work, it took a change today. We finally found a bug in the code that was hiding quite well and fooling with us since before christmas... In the meantime the machine i am working with got fixed too. It has been broken for a couple of weeks now because the gear box was completely fucked... it sounded really bad when we were running the machine and it even looked worse when we saw what was broken... uiiii.

So the last few weeks at work were a bit hard. I had to do stuff like updating the documentation, which is not always a lot of fun, but it had to be done too of course... But on the other hand i spent some time digging in the code looking for the bug and doing some coding for independent tests of just a few parts of our code, so that was quite interesting.

In my free time I was hopping around on my slakline quite often in the nearby park, was cooking some new dishes, went to a music festival (which was more like a family festival, but fun), went surfing....

In the evening i was following the blog of the brave and young aussi girl jessica watson, sailing around the world... im quite fascinated by her:

http://jessicawatson.com.au/_blog/Official_Jessica_Watson_Blog

hope you are all doing well!

cheers

It was a really busy day today. First, at about 3am I said goodbye to the canadians. They left nz and who knows when we see each other the next time...
We had a good time and its kinda sad that they left. But there are some 3 other canadians arriving in january who will work at Trimble too, which is good.
Then in the early morning I picked up the campervan, that will hopefully help my family and me getting around well in nz for the next 3 weeks. In the afternoon I picked up my parents and my brother at the airport in Christchurch. Apart from the fact that they arrived 2 hours late, it was good seeing them again. The funny thing was, that they saw me first, and guess how? Emirates has got a feature in their entertainment program (=every passenger has got its own screen, on which they can watch movies and stuff...), that shows the live picture, filmed by a camera that sits right at the front leg of the plane. So i was bored waiting for them and went outside to watch the arriving planes... and in fact, the plane i was watching while docking to the finger, was the plane my family was sitting in, and they were watching that live picture... so they could see me on the screen... they were quite excited :-)
Tomorrow we are gonna leave Christchurch and we will head north to Abel Tasman, then the north island (rotorua), then coming back to the south island, heading west to the westcoast, cruising over the southern alps, seeing some nice lakes, and then finally cruise back to christchurch by driving along the eastcoast.

I whish everybody a nice christmas time! - enjoy!
...and "en guete rutsch is neue johrzent!"

3 weekends of intensive travelling

Finally i managed to write another blog. I kinda new right from the beginning, when I started the blog, that its gonna be hard for me to update it regularly. But at least i managed to upload some pictures from the intense travelling on the last few weekends: http://picasaweb.google.com/chbischo.

Even before I came to New Zealand the human resources manager of Trimble wrote me in a mail that there will be some canadian interns at Trimble. So Tobias and me arranged to meet these four canadian guys after a few weeks at Trimble. They are really cool and they were very keen to explore New Zealand on weekends, so Tobias and me joined their weekend travels. It turned out to be quite expensive, but it was really good fun and we saw quite a few exciting things, like wild animals you normally just see in the zoo (penguins, seals, sealions, albatros, tuis).

In the meantime I moved out of the old flat because the girl who rented the house had to move out and nobody of the other flatties wanted to rent the house on its own. Fortunately the kiwis aren't really complicated and a mate of my manager from work agreed to rent out one of his spare rooms to me. The house is a typical one story kiwi house. The style of the house is completely different from the 'old' house, in fact the style is much more kiwi like, not too modern, but really nice in its own way.

Tomorrow I will do a skydive with Usman and Tobias. I am really excited about that and I am sure its gonna be awesome! :-) ...although it was quite expensive. But I think that you need to do either bungee jumping or skydiving once you are in New Zealand because bungee jumping apparently was invented over here, hence these extreme sports are kinda traditional over here.

next blog will feature some information about my work over here!

take care

Trip to Akaroa and Lyttelton

The last weekend was a long weekend, because Monday was Labor Day which is a public holiday. So Tobias, the german internship guy working for Trimble as well, asked me if I want to join him discovering Banks Peninsula, just off Christchurch. I didn't have to think long, whether I should join him or not, because it is a great opportunity to see some beautiful places. So we left on Saturday afternoon and drove straight to Akaroa, where we walked along the beach, to the nice little light house. Before we went to a little bar we had some fish and chips from the really famous local fish and chips store (a lot of different people told us to go there and eat fish and chips)... and it was really nice.
Then in the bar we met some european people, some swiss, some german... jep, they're everywhere... but we had a nice evening together, talking about the experiences we made so far in New Zealand.
On the next day we drove to Okains Bay, a nice little bay on the north side of the peninsula. After that we definitely wanted to see Lyttelton, so we drove to Lyttelton and we weren't disappointed. Lyttelton is the one and only harbor of Christchurch, so all the goods coming and leaving Christchurch by ship will pass Lyttelton. But it isn't as busy as one would expect... the 'old' town (the first settlers who came to Christchurch, first settled down in Lyttelton and that was in 1849, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Port_of_lyttelton.jpg) is quite small, but really nice. Our next, but last stop was probably our highest stop. We went to the Port Hills, which is kind of Üetliberg of Zurich, or Säntis for eastern Switerland :-). It is the nearest, most exciting nature of Christchurch, where a lot of bikers, cyclists, climbers, hikers,... have a lot of fun. The view is awesome, you can see the wide sea, Lyttelton, Christchurch, the Southern Alps,... which means that you have a good view in any direction.

Then I have something else to be happy about. I went sailing on the Estuary (the little very shallow bay east of Christchurch, http://maps.google.co.nz/?ie=UTF8&ll=-43.54606,172.721214&spn=0.05064,0.087461&t=h&z=14) on Saturday morning. The weather was perfect for sailing, quite strong, constant wind and sunshine!! :-) Unfortunately I haven't made any pictures, but the guy, I borrowed the boat from, told me that I'll be welcome to borrow one of his boats another time again. So that was just awesome!

Last but not least, I have got a new bike... yes, an old nice PEUGEOT... although it needed a bit of care and cleaning, so that's what I did on Monday, the public holiday: I cleaned my new bike and had to change the tube and tire (!!! the puncture was quite severe... the tire had a 2cm tear) the first time already. That wasn't a good start, I had a puncture on Friday, the 2nd day i had my bike...
But now it looks nice again and it is nice to ride again... :-)

Hope you are all well!
ps. see photos...!

new home and some impressions from work and christchurch itself

It took me a while to save some time to write another blog. Lots of different things are happening over here...

First of all, I managed to decide on a flat or more accurate, on a house. The house itself is quite special and really nice equipped regarding furniture and stuff. Unfortunately its not a typical kiwi townhouse, because it has got a second floor and it might be a bit too tidy :-). Although it is typical kiwi in terms of statics... these bl*** kiwi houses are just build like paper houses. You can feel the cold coming through the wall and through the (one glassed, nod double or triple glassed like in Europe) windows. And my room sits just on top of two posts made out of steel. Just one side of the room is connected to the house and therefore it is quite unstable... 'luckily' the house is located 100m beside the railways... every time when the train passes, it feels like an earthquake! everything is shaking... :-)
Anyway, the flatmates are really nice and easygoing. Although they are just a 'bit' older than me (range from approx 30 to 45). So for one more time (as when I was in London) I am  the young chicken. But until now I really cant complain - its great living in that house.

At work, everything came a bit different than I expected it to come. I knew, my field of work will be something with machine control, but I did not expect that I will be integrated into testing that much. I was driving a scary big machine in my first week at work already. It is a machine which makes curbs (Randsteine) and gutters (Abflussrinnen) out of concrete while it is driving along the street. (see: http://www.gomaco.com/Resources/gt3600c_g.html  and  http://www.gomaco.com/Resources/photos/gt3600_01_06/graphic4.gif)
On the other hand I am 'just' involved in testing and not developing. But of course I can't really expect being involved in developing in my first internship. And I really need to say, that I feel comfortable being a tester at the first step. And not least, I still have to take full responsibility of the hole testing and reporting all the bugs.
So I really enjoy the diversified work, running a big machine, reporting bugs, learning new things about CAN-buses, see how such guidance systems are being developed, ...
And the people I work with are great, very helpful and focused, but not too serious and jocking as well.

Last weekend I was in the city and went to the botanic garden (its spring over here http://picasaweb.google.ch/chbischo/BotanicGarden) and to Sumner (a part of the city which is right at the beach http://picasaweb.google.ch/chbischo/Sumner ). It was really nice.

On Saturday night I went out with a german guy. He is doing an internship at Trimble as well. Fortunately the kiwis are not lazy folks at all... there was really something going on in the city, people everywhere on the street, and the bars and clubs were quite full. The very center of Christchurch is quite small, but the outgoing does't seems to be too bad, jipi :-)
One of my flatmates will take me to a club/bar next weekend to meet some of her friends...therefore I am really looking forward to meet some local kiwis... :-)

arrival and flat-hunting

Hi everybody
After a very long flight (30 hours) with stops in dubai, bangkok and sydney i was pretty smashed the day i arrived and the following day too. But Jason (the guy i will work with and the guy i can live with at the moment) organised an awesome dinner which his wife Mary was cooking for us. Gusgus, nice prepared, barbeque grilled salmon and some nice salad. That was a nice welcome dinner! :-)
But the flight wasnt just exhausting, it was sometimes exciting as well... see photos!

^^dubai airport

^^dusty sydney

^^sydney down town (white point in the middle of the picture: opera house!)

^^southern alps near christchruch

^^beach near christchurch

The day after I arrived  (sunday) I went room-hunting. I visited 5 flats where i chatted with the people and had a look a the room'n' stuff...
The first flat i saw was kind of a party cave... they had a party garage! Ive never seen something like that... ! But the flatties there were a bit young, so i wont take the room in that flat.
So what i am up to at the moment can be described as flat-hopping. It is quite tough and exhausting, cycling from flat to flat, especially when its raining... (and it is pretty rainy at the moment).

Yesterday, Jason took me to work the first time and that first impression was great. It looked like a normal huge office room with all the separating little walls, but when i looked closer it looked like a little building site. you could see wires, little cases, total stations, gps, reflectors, 'toy excavators', 'toy pavers', ...
i am really looking forward to work there... :-)

ready for take off!

Last week I went to the dentist just to make a control before I leave Switzerland. I told him about my trip. Then at the end of the control he told me that there is a hole in one of my teeth, so I had to come around once again before I take off. So I went there a few days later and after he fixed the problem with my teeth he said: "Now your ready for take off!". I had to laugh.
Well, but then I was far away from being ready. I hadn't even packed one thing and all that had still to be done.
Now, the day I finally will take off, I luckily am ready. Everything is packed, although I had too much weight and  my loved slackline will be alone for the following seven month.
I hope my flight will go well and I am looking forward to tell you some stories about my flight and the first impressions of chch (Christchurch).
stay tuned ;-)