Blog Archives: March, 2009
Moving to Australia
I mentioned in a previous post that I was moving to Brisbane, Australia, for a postdoc position. The short of it is: I’ve arrived in Brisbane and have started work. The long of it is the rest of this post.
Sunset on the flight from Toronto to Los Angeles It’s a long way to Australia. I left my parents’ Windsor on March 19 at noon (Windsor time) and arrived at my hotel in Brisbane on Saturday March 21 at 9am (Brisbane time), or equivalently Friday March 20 at 7pm (Windsor time), for a grand total of 31 hours of travel. I flew from Windsor to Toronto, had a 4-hour layover in Toronto, then flew to Los Angeles and then on to Brisbane. The flight over the Pacific ocean was the longest, obviously — 14 hours — but did not trouble me greatly. As soon as the plane took off Thursday night from Los Angeles, I took a couple of sleeping pills and went straight to sleep and stayed asleep for probably about 7 hours, with another couple hours of being half awake and half asleep. Then it was time for some in-flight entertainment — I finally ended up seeing The DaVinci Code (the movie was entertaining if unlikely; I have not nor do not plan to read the book) — and food. By the time we arrived in Brisbane, I was glad to get off the plane and a bit tired, but ready enough to face the day.
Since I arrived early Saturday morning in Brisbane, I had the whole day ahead of me. I made my way to my hotel, took a shower, unpacked a little, and then was off into town to run some errands. First things first: get some money. Then I proceeded to get a SIM card for my mobile phone, sign up for a bank account, buy a bicycle, and buy groceries. The rest of the weekend I relaxed and watched Battlestar Galactica.
Information Security Institute (126 Margaret St) Monday morning was my first day of work at the Information Security Institute at the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). I’ll write more about my job and QUT later. For now I’ll just say that work has gone as expected: I’ve met the people in my research group, am learning about the projects going on here, and putting together plans for my research projects.
Rock climbers on Kangaroo Point Cliffs Wednesday evening I made my first try at rock climbing. QUT doesn’t have a bouldering room like the Outers Club at UW, but the QUT Cliffhangers is a group on campus that runs climbing sessions at the Kangaroo Point Cliffs across the river from the campus. I had never climbed outdoors or on real rock before. By the time we got around to climbing, it was also well after dark, although the area was well-lit. Still, I was pretty nervous and didn’t make it too far up. Climbing on real rock is much harder and much different than climbing indoors. The main thing you’re doing when climbing indoors is trying to convince your body to match the handholds on the wall. When climbing outdoors, there are no predefined routes: it’s just you and the rock. I spent a long time fumbling around trying to find handholds. I expect it gets easier with time as you learn to read the rock better, but for now, it’s hard!
Also this week I’ve been running. Both my runs this week were pretty hard on me. Sunday’s run was horrible; I believe it was the worst time ever recorded for a 10km run, but that’s probably due to the fact that it was 26°C by the time I was finished. I will soon be setting up a detailed training plan that I will write more about later.
Later this week I’ll take you on a guided tour of Brisbane, or at least the parts of Brisbane I’ve taken a camera to so far. Check back soon!
Waterloo in winter
Davis Centre in winter Before l left Waterloo this winter, I took some pictures along the walk to school. I guess the snow has probably melted by now in Waterloo (though Environment Canada has snowflakes on the forecast for Monday). Winter will be coming in Brisbane, but I don’t think we’ll see snow like in Waterloo.
Thesis, summarized
Words in my thesis by frequency In case you haven’t finished reading my thesis yet, here’s a summary. (Word size denotes frequency of use in the thesis. Generated by Wordle.)
All my bags are packed…
Luggage to check and boxes to ship to Brisbane … I’m ready to go.
PhD and Postdoc
It’s been a busy few months, and I haven’t been writing a lot on here, but times, they are-a-changing.
Ste09 In January I submitted my thesis, entitled Classical Authenticated Key Exchange and Quantum Cryptography, to my examiners. After that was 6 long weeks of waiting, most of which consisted of working on other things and travelling to Calgary to visit Donny (for research) and Marika, and then frantically preparing my slides for my defense. On March 5, I successfully defended my thesis and have thus completed all the requirements of my PhD. My final revisions have been now been accepted and the thesis is off to the printers! You can read the abstract and full thesis online.
Not one to sit still I left Waterloo one week later — after an awesome party at the Grad House and lots and lots of packing — to move all of my stuff to my parents’ place in Windsor, where I am now. And one week after that — this Thursday — I will leave Windsor to fly to a 2-year postdoctoral research position at the Information Security Institute at the Queensland University of Technology in Brisbane, Australia.
This will be quite an adventure. I don’t know anyone in Australia at the moment, though I’m sure I’ll meet people. I don’t have a place to live yet. But all of these things will work out. I’ll be updating my blog much more frequently once I move to Australia, so hopefully I’ll attract some readers back. You can follow me on my website or on my notes on Facebook (blog entries appear in both locations).
And for those of you concerned that, sadly, I’ll be going from winter in Canada to winter in Australia, let me just say this: the average high in Brisbane in July is 21 degrees Celsius.
