First days in Auckland

Finally, we are in New Zealand!!!!!

Everything went well: the flight was good, the conference is interesting and the weather is nice. However, on Sunday I had to buy a fleece jacket and I already had many opportunities to use it (we have single degree temperatures (Celsius) at night but nice and sunny days).

One of those occassions for the warm jumper was the conference harbour cruise last night. Auckland as the 'City of Sails' has a wonderful harbour with hundreds of sailing boats. There is apparently a lot of America's Cup history in Auckland and the New Zealand team still has their boat shed on the harbour. (The skipper of the boat told us all about this.) But somehow one does not seem to speak that fondly of the America's cup any more... An incident involving a small country with with only mountain lakes to practise sailing on has apparently deminished a lot of enthusiasm....

Anyway, the boat cruise was a lot of fun - well, the thing you would expect from a bunch of engineers on a boat with alcohol...... (For the my fellow catalyticans: There are a few VERY GOOD supervisor photos to come!!!))

So, I'll head back to the conference venue to get ready for charing an exiting afternoon paper session (while everyone else, except the presenters, I suppose, is at their hotels to rest before the big dinner & drinks tonight)

Maybe I will get the chance to post some photos next time.