Scotland!

Whew.
Just spent 5 days in Edinbrugh/St. Andrews for the blessing of the wedding between Graham and Erin. It was a great weekend. I've put up a bunch of photos on KodakGallery because there were too many to post here. You've gotta sign up for it but it's free and it seems a lot of people use it.
The wedding was great, fantastic weather all day and night. The reception was in a club overlooking the 1st/18th fairways of the Old Course, just beautiful views from there of the beach and ocean.

So to answer your questions before they are asked, yes, I drank lots of Scotch, ate haggis, wore a kilt (for real this time), and played golf at St. Andrews. Poorly. Everything you'd want in a Scottish holiday, really.

I'm awaiting more photos to filter in from the rest of the attendees so I will post more when I get them.

Sept 17

Hi all

Yesterday I finally made it to the velodrome over in Brixton (South-east London). The track is the only venue from the '48 Olympics that is still in active use, and is in surprisingly good shape. On Saturday mornings they have open time for anyone who wants to take a couple laps. I spent about 3 hours there - it was a blast. My friend Seb (from work) came along to take a few pictures...







You'll notice these bikes have a) one gear and b) no brakes. And let me tell ya you can get some serious speed up around that track. At the end of the session they put on a 10 lap race (~5km) for whoever wanted to, and in my inexperience I led the entire race until the last 1/4 lap when I was overtaken (twice?) in a final sprint to the line. Good fun though.

Prague

Glorious!

Hey all. This past Monday was a bank holiday here in England, so I decided to burn a couple days of holiday to spend 4 days in Prague. Taking advantage of cheap flights and cheap everything in the Czech Republic is good!
I went with a group of 5 Scots to celebrate the marriage of my good friend Graham, a Scotsman whom I met in Kingston while he was doing his Master's at Queen's. Long story, but he's already technically married and his wife allowed him to have a posthumous (not the right word, I know, but perhaps it applies in this case?? ;)) stag do. Anyway, kilts and undershirts were the order of the weekend and I was made an honorary Scot for the weekend. Better than being classed as American all the time as is the usual.

Prague is a beautiful city often called the Capital of Central Europe. It was one of the few that was spared from destruction through the wars, and as a result, lots of the old architecture is still around.
Here are some more pictures:


Charles bridge in the foreground, and a very large castle in the back.


One of the main attractions is an astronomical clock that is housed in an old church in the main square. Loads of tourists turn up to watch the show on the hour and get their pockets picked by the locals, if they're not careful. Luckily, kilts don't have pockets.

Of course, it wasn't all sightseeing. Had to take advantage of the 20 pence pints of pilsner.

Czech beer is delicious.


Me and Graham in the square.

That's it for now. I highly recommend visiting Czech.

-Dan

Some pictures

Hello,
Thought I'd update you all with some pictures. This goes way back so bear with me.

The first one is of Court No. 1 at Wimbledon. It was taken from my bedroom window - for a couple weeks we could hear smatterings of applause, crowd roars and the occaisional grunt from across the way. For the 2 weeks our sleepy village of Southfields was transformed into a sea of tourists. They even spruced up our normally drab tube station with luxuroius 'carpet' and regal 'benches'! Don't worry, it was all taken down soon after the event. I was going to attempt heading over to take in a game or so, but it would have meant arising at an ungodly hour and queuing for the majority of the day, and missing said day of work. There were loads of people camping out on the sidewalk for _days_ before the event started. They must really like their tennis. Perhaps next year I'll try to make it in.



About a month ago my landlord/flatmate Rachel and I went down to Farnborough for 'The Largest Airshow in the British Isles!'. It was a pretty miserable day weatherwise but the show itself was good fun. Highlights included the new Airbus A380 (Featuring the Rolls Royce Trent 900 jet engines, which our group did some work on). It's massive, and, apparently, quite maneouverable.


The A380 performing a steep banked turn at extremely low altitude


The A380 relaxing after it's air demonstration.

Apart from that the airshow featured your normal range of military jets and helicopters doing insane stunts. The Red Arrows, Britain's answer to our Snowbirds, were quite impressive and ended the day with a team parachute jump. Complete with smoke!



Enough about that. Also as I've mentioned I've gotten my new bike and had it for a couple weeks now. I figure I put about 200km on it per week (160km commuting plus weekends) and it's treated me well so far. It's nice and light and fast - really fun to ride. One of these days I'm going to go down to the local Velodrome (only about 4km away!) and get absolutely embarrased by the actual atheletes - should be a good time. ;)


My new steed


Also new: I'm now an Uncle! Last week my sister-in-law Margot bore a beautiful baby boy, Joshua. He's Ultra-Cute! Best wishes to the new family there - I can't wait until Christmastime to see the little (and I use the term 'little' loosely) guy!



Yesterday was Sean and Jodi's wedding. I was hoping to make it back for that, but a combination of flight times/costs and deadlines at work made it impossible. SO sorry I could be there guys, I hope you had a great day and CONGRATULATIONS! I presume that the party is still going on at this hour - Cheers!

That's it for now. Talk to you all soon,
Love
Dan in London

Quickly

Hi all.

Having been without internet access at home for coming up on 2 weeks I've decided to post a quick update from work. Don't tell the boss.

1) Abu Dhabi has been delayed until September-ish.
2) I got a new bike. It is fast. I will post a head-to-head comparison with my old bike at some point.
3) Unfortunately I can't make it back to Canada this month. This means I'm going to miss Sean and Jodi's wedding, which I'm (to use a extremely British term) gutted about. Also going to miss a newborn niece or nephew until Christmas - again, very upsetting. Margot, good luck with the delivery.
4) I have been putting my home improvement experience to good use at my flat. We are renovating the bathroom and one bedroom. Good times.
5) Work, as always, is busy and I'm constantly learning how to do things in a commercial setting. Different than academia. night and day, but getting adjusted to it.
6) It feels like autumn already, and has for a couple of weeks. This is not good.
7) Went to an airshow a couple weeks ago. they had an airbus 380. it's enormous and can fly like a stunt plane. pictures to come. also, helicopters can fly upside down, apparently.

talk to you soon, provided british telecom can get their act together.


-dan

Dublin, Abu Dhabi and tennis

Hello all,

I know I've been doing a pretty poor job of this lately, and for that I apologize. I'm not going to make any excuses for it... I just hope that most of you haven't lost interest, although of late I certainly wouldn't blame you.

The past couple weeks have been very busy. I'll get work stuff out of the way first - finished my first project a little while back and got some good feedback for it. The object was to determine the best sensor layout for a leak detection system onboard an offshore oil platform. Basically the most probable leak sites are determined, and we model those leaks. The results show the size and relative hazard of the resulting gas clouds, based on prevailing wind conditions. Then we analyze the proposed leak detector layout, to see if they accurately detect the most hazardous leaks. If so, the layout is fine, if not, we recommend the addition of more (or more efficient) detection in the problematic locations. It's all very interesting. Now that that's finished, I'm moving onto another oil platform which is having difficulty with equipment overheating - we're trying to get to the bottom of that.
Just found out yesterday that I'll most likely be heading to Abu Dhabi (UAE) for a site visit in about a month. From what I gather, it's quite warm there this time of year, say 50C on a hot day? Luckily we will most likely be working through the nights to stay a) more or less out of the way and b) raw (as opposed to, say, medium-well). This is something that I'm really looking forward to. Opportunities to travel for this type of work are quite numerous it seems - this is not something I'd be able to do with a smaller company, that's for sure. The company has done LOTS of work in the middle east, some of the more high-profile being the burj and the Bahrain World Trade Centre. Neither of these are actually in Abu Dhabi but hopefully we can swing a visit since we'll be relatively close. Now don't worry about me, the UAE is a very stable place and besides Atkins won't send any employees to even moderately risky places. The only danger will be a wicked sunburn.

In my free time I've had quite a busy couple of weeks as well. Two weekends ago was the Queen's official birthday, which included an airshow. I tell ya, there's always something going on in the City. This I had no idea about until I thought to myself 'Gee, those planes sound awful low...'




Last Wednesday (a week ago already?) I took off to Dublin to meet up with Jon, my Master's supervisor. He was in Ireland for a conference, and was going to fly out of Dublin so we were able to meet up for a couple of days. I was able to take advantage of a cheapo fare (a whopping 1.49 pounds, one way) to go so it was pretty difficult to pass up.



Dublin was a ton of fun. Lots of friendly people, interesting sights... aw, who am I kidding... we went for the Guinness. And the Guinness did not disappoint. The brewery has a very well done self-guided tour which takes you through the process, history, and basically everything else to do with Guinness. You wind your way up through the building until, ultimately, you reach the 'SkyBar'... a glass-walled tasting room 7 or 8 stories up overlooking the city and the Irish Sea. Really nice views, as you can see.





Well after a LONG night Thursday



I had to catch an obscenely early flight back home on Friday morning. Of note: There are a bunch of wind turbines in the middle of the Irish Sea. You can see them from the plane. I hear a similar effort is underway in Lake Ontario... anyone heard of this?
On Saturday I went to Brighton, on the south coast of England, with a couple of other Canadians - Andrea, a friend from Queen's who now lives in North London, and Jo - who had been vacationing in London for a couple weeks. We were blessed with beautiful weather and it was all in all a fantastic day. The city is quite picturesque, complete with a very large pebble beach, a carnival pier, and you can see the White Cliffs (of Dover?) off in the distance, even though Dover is many miles away.



This week the tennis at Wimbledon started up. As a result, my normally serene neighbourhood has transformed into a bustling metropolis. We can see the stadium and hear the crowds from our balcony - if you watch the coverage you can likely see my flat when they do a wide overhead shot of the grounds. One night this week I'll have to queue for tickets. It'll probably be easier to get in this week than next.

Ok, that's it for tonight. I promise it won't be so long until my next update.

You guys have to keep me up on Leafs news. I hear we have a new goaltender. Thoughts on that?

Cheers all
Dan

By popular demand...

Here are a couple pictures of my street/neighbourhood. Also there is a shot of the so-called 'gherkin' which is located in the financial district.





It's Saturday and the World Cup has begun. Imagine the Stanley Cup Finals, the Super Bowl, World Series, and the Calgary Stampede all rolled into one and spread out over a month and you might get an idea of how many people are excited about this. Of course everyone is very optimisitic about England's chances, however I haven't decided what country I will support. Perhaps Argentina. For no particular reason, of course.

Anyhow, England's first game is this afternoon so I think I'll head down to the pub and see what all the hoo-haw is about. It's another gorgeous day here (that's 8 in a row!) so a large patio is a prerequisite. I'll let you know how it goes.

Cheers all
dan