David Gustafsson

Archive for the ‘Sydney’ Category

Here are some photos from the last days. I am finally finished with my exams; it has been a lot of studying. Today we have been to the Rocks and bought some souvenirs and had lunch.

Suddenly I am one year older; 23 feels however just like 22! I celebrated my birthdays at a Tapas restaurant together with Sofia. Tapas has been common practice at our birthdays down under; probably since it is so good!! Here are some pictures from yesterday!

I am having Sofia's cheese cake. So good!

Argyle at the Rocks, Sydney, is a very good place to go to if you have a night to spare in Sydney. You go there for the atmosphere since beers and drinks are rather expensive ($9 for a beer, $18 for a Mojito).

This picture is taken from the Rooftop Bar which has a great view over the Rocks and Sydney harbour. Unfortunately I have not got any picture of the interiors.

Walking to Argyle through the Rocks.

I have been playing tennis the previous weeks. Tennis is really not my best sport, however it is fun! I have been playing Norwegian law/accountant studying Axel Juul. I regard Axel Juul as a really good humble ambitious person and I appreciate his sportsmanship. He is a great opponent. Axel is one of the friends I have made this semester at UNSW where he is part of Brisk Information Systems.

Facing Norway in sport one thing is nevertheless the most important; to win. I have won 75% of our games against Axel Juul, which shows that Sweden still is the country to beet on the Northern European tennis stage. All these wins have been in tiebreak after three sets. I have never won the first set. My skill is in the second and third set where I somehow manage to keep it together.

This is a picture from the warm up of today’s game. The game ended 2-1 (5-7; 7-6; 7-6) in my favor.

Axel Juul playing tennis

The tennis Cort in Coogee

Today the sky in Sydney has been red, or at least the sun. This happened for about 4 months ago when there was a sandstorm in the outback. This time the rumour says that there has been a fire in Blue Mountains. Whenever you go out you can feel the smell of fire. I went for a run but aborted half way through due to the smell and a sticky feeling in my sensitive throat.

The following can be read from NSW Rural Fire Service web page:

Smoke in the Blue Mountains

Posted: 11/05/2010
National Parks and Wildlife Service are conducting a hazard reduction in the Massif Ridge (Blue Labyrinth) area of the Blue Mountains. NSW Rural Fire Service is providing assistance.

It seams like the fire/smoke is only due to a controlled exercise for reducing the fire risk. There is therefore nothing to worry about and hopefully the sun will be visible in Sydney tomorrow again! Currently the fire danger in the area is between very high and severe which has started the hazard reduction.

Recently I made an assignment in the course Management of Risk on the topic ”hazard reduction for fire”. The task involved looking at the best measure to decrease the probability of the whole forest burning down. A utility curve as constructed for different percentages of forest burning down. In the end it actually turned out that burning 5% of the forest to decrease the probability of the rest of the forest burning down was the best option. This is exactly what I think is done at the moment so the numbers where actually somewhat related to reality.

Another example that management of risk professors love to discuss is related to redundancy. A reason for having more than one engine on an air-plane is that if one fails there is still enough power in the other engines to land the plane. In some cases this way of thinking is OK if the assumption is made that the engines fail independent of each other. However this is not always the case.

In 1982, all four engines on a British Airways Plc Boeing Co. 747 flying to Perth, Australia, shut down as the aircraft encountered ash spewed from Mt. Galunggung in Indonesia. The plane fell for almost four miles before the pilot was able to restart three engines and make an emergency landing in Jakarta. (Business week, 2010-04-15).

The ash was a common failure mode causing all the engines to die. You should always be aware of common failure modes when you try to use redundancy to increase the reliability of your system…

On volcanic ash:

Why cant planes fly through volcanic ash?

Went down to Coogee beach today to get some rest. Had a nice warm swim and some sun. Estimated water/air temperature: 22ºC.

Had some sun at Coogee beach

In my last post I uploaded some photos from Blue Mountains. I did not mention who the photographer was. Due to the quality of the pictures it was obvious that I hadn’t taken them. Behind the camera was Karl, who has been visiting in Sydney for a week. It has been a great week with not much activity in school. We have been surfing, in Blue Mountains and had a great time.

Yesterday Alex had her birthday party. We had dinner at a Kika tapas bar in Kings Cross. Tapas is definitely one of my favourite forms of eating and Kika (kika.com.au) is a good option for supplier . $40 for a full stomach and Sangria is in fact also a very good price.

Here are some more pictures from Karl’s camera:

Tonight it is Easter Saturday, which probably is nothing to celebrate compared to good Friday or Easter day. However we are going to have Easter dinner. The following dishes is on our Swedish Easter table:

• Janson’s frestelse
• Sofia’s egg box
• Halved eggs with caviar and onion cream (for starter)
• David’s BBQ chicken
• Ham and cheese pies
• Meatballs
• Sausages
• And something more I forgot…

For dessert Sofia is making some kind of white chocolate fondant with raspberry sauce.

Happy Easter!

National parks are located both to the north and south of Sydney. We have just visited the Royal national park, south of Sydney. to travel through the park costs $11, which is good to know if you plan to visit. Our first stop in the park was Bundeena and the beach. Bundeena is very calm and located in Port Hacking bay, which reduces the swell for swimming.

Royal National Park, Australia

Also the world’s largest passenger ship visited Sydney Harbour.

The world's largest passenger ship

We have a new flat in Coogee with the nicest balcony and view. The days pass by with BBQ:s, beach and Australian Open tennis.

Sofia loves tennis!

I have got the "aussie BBQ style"