Meeting the Twelve Apostels - Victorian style

G'day folks!

Once again I'd like to share a few pictures with you, this time around from the Great Ocean Road (GOR). The GOR is an over 200km long coast strip situated west of Melbourne, which has been listed as an Australian National Heritage. Many interesting rock formations adorn this continent border, including a group of limestone stacks known as The Twelve Apostels. These rocks were not always so popular amongst sightseers because they were originally known as Sow and Piglets. Soon after being renamed with a much more myth-enshrouded name involving the disciples of a certain god's son popularity of the sight grew drastically. Nowadays the twelve apostels represent one of the geological highlights of the state.

There is an interesting story about a three tourists who once were walking across a natural bridge which existed between two of these apostels. As luck would have it, just as the group crossed the bridge to the outlying limestone formation the bridge collapsed behind them leaving the tourists trapped. A driver who was passing by the place called for help. The only way to save the isolated married couple and the single man was to evacuate them via helicopter. The nearest available gyroplane belonged to a TV news crew who did not want this opportunity of action news slip by. So when they picked up the three stranded tourists naturally they wanted to interview them. Oddly enough the people behaved very camera shy and reluctant to allow interviews. The reason for this was revealed later. As it turned out, none of them were supposed to be out there that day. The single man was supposed to be at work but had taken the day off being reported as sick. As for the couple, although married, they were not married with each other. Naturally national publicity was the least thing these three people had hoped for that fateful day. Talk about karma!

Catch y'all later!

Jan

It's the Beer Olympics!

Hey folks,

once again the time has come for brave souls of the UNC geological science department to gather around and compete in a devastating tournament of struggle, emotions, fun, and a hell lot of beer! Yes, the annual Beer Olympics have come! The event started Saturday 3 pm and only god knows when it finally ended. ;)
According to tradition teams of two persons each, dressed up as representative figures of a certain country would battle against each other in American standard drinking games such as Beer Pong, Beer Ball, and Can fliping. Besides a long table, the key instrument for the first two sports is a table tennis ball which is thrown by hand to hit an object on the opponents side and if successful, trying to drink as much as possible in order to win the game. I was astouned how serious the players were about this: "It's not a game Jan, this is war!"


The following nations competed in the drinking contest: Australia, Iceland, France, Scotland, New Jersey and Africa, although technically speaking not all of them are actual countries! There were two more teams to compete for the dress award, namely Pangaea and Greece. A jury composed of 3 non participating individuals were deciding the winners for the dress contest, while the drinking pretty much was decided by the capabilites of the competing teams. The video enlosed shows you 2 teams fighting in the final game for a medal (medals turned out to be small liquor bottles).

Everyone was really into it and there was also a non drinking game where you tried to hit the opponents wooden board with little sacks. Very enjoyable! After the games we met in one of the organizors apartment nearby for some dinner and to relax a bit. ;)

So far about my weekend, have a good start into the upcoming workweek!

-Jan

Anadarko Symposium

Hey people,

sorry for the lack of news, but unfortunately my computer became infected with an annoying virus, messing up my Windows system files during the removal. Not very easy to re setup your system with neither a CD-Rom drive nor a Windows CD but somehow I managed to restore an old system status. ;) So thankfully everything is back to normal now, enabeling me to give you a brief summary over the last recent activities.
As the title already implies, this post has something to do with a symposium which was held last Friday, and some of you might now be thinking "What on earth is this Anadarko thingy?" To clarify things, the UNC geological sciences department is hosting a yearly symposium along with the Anadarko Petrolium Coorporation, which in fact is one of the world’s largest independent oil and gas exploration and production companies. Every year in April, students and future PhDs are presenting their findings in a short presentation each. The fruitful collaboration exists six years already and will continue to go on at least a few years longer.
Afterwards around 20 geologists went to have some drinks and chit chat in one of Carrboros (small town within walking distance from Chapel Hill) notorius bars built on an old railway track (it's called The Station). We talked and laughed quite a lot, it was fun.
It would be really nice to have some equivalent in Jena as well, even though everyone was really busy because of all the preparations going on.

I'll catch you later!

-Jan