the last days - rain

Aloha @ll,

Sorry, for not writing the last two days, but there was not too much to say. Oh, there was. But no fancy and cool pictures.
So, saturday evening we were invited for a winter "x-mas" dinner at Terry's house. It was super nice and the food was very good. We had a lot of fun.
On sunday it was raining the whole day. I spent most of the day in the office, quite frustrated because Nimrod didn't work at all and I had no idea, what was going on. Somewhen I gave up and went to the Cafe "Metropolis", a really nice place to eat and hang out. There I remembered that in Hawaii Nimrod had sometimes the problem that the power supply broke for ten minutes or so after switching on and came back after that. So, I planned to try to leave him running longer time the next day. In the evening I went to the cinema to see Transformers (yes, again, I want to have a Camaro! I would call it Bumblebee. He's so sweet.).
On monday it was raining again. But my plan worked out. Nimrod's power supply worked again and the day was saved. Unfortunately, it was a little late to go to Raglan and the weather forecast really looks as if I don't want to work from a jetski tomorrow. So, I wrote Jose, what he thinks about shifting the survey to next week.
Today (it's tuesday morning) I will go to campus first. I'll meet again with Wendy for planning the lake surveys. Then Bryna and I will pick up my rental car and then I'll go to Raglan to meet Jose and Shawn from ASR to plan the sandbar survey there.
Tomorrow I have to leave Hamilton at 5am (!) to be in Rotorua in time (7am).
So, more exciting news probably on wednesday.
CU,
Nina

Mt. Maunganui

Hi @ll,
I spent the last two days here in Mt. Maunganui. It was very easy to go to Tauranga with the Intercity bus and further to Mt.Maunganui with the bay hopper bus. I stayed at a very nice midrange (lonely planet recommendation) motel "the mission belle". Thursday was great sunny weather and I hung out at the beach the rest of the afternoon. In the evening I saw Transformers-Revenge of the Fallen in the cinema. Wow, a really nice movie. I absolutely enjoyed it. Yesterday, I had not too much luck with the weather. It was raining a lot. But I walked aroung the Mount Maunganui, what is a very nice walk and then hung out in the one or other cafe reading or writing. In the evening I went again to the cinema and saw Hangover. Very funny. It was a very relaxed day. Today I will check out soon and catch the bus back to Hamilton. Tomorrow I will run some test runs with Nimrod and check the pressure sensor cables, because the pressure sensor shows some strange values sometimes.
Read you tomorrow,
Nina

Pine Harbour Marina Survey

Aloha,
Today we measured at Bryna's site (the main project). We dropped Nimrod 23 times at the disposal site, 4 times at Alex' site, a natural reserve in the Coromandel area, and 7 times in the channel to Pine Harbour Marina. Furthermore, we lowered the underwater camera 7 times. Both instruments delivered their data. So, Bryna and I are super happy.
We arrived on tuesday evening at the marina and brought all our stuff on the boat. Then we went for dinner to our hotel the "Formosa Golf Club" at Pine Harbour Marina. Bryna and I shared a very luxerious villa. Unfortunately, we just arrived there at 10pm and left at 5am. We left the harbour at 5 am with the very fancy catamaran "Ten Sixty", a really supercool boat. Beside the successfull work, we saw the Great Barrier Island and the beautiful area from Coromandel up to Auckland. Some dolphins joined us for hundred meters. It was really cool.
We arrived back in Hamilton at 8pm, unloaded the car and picked up a pizza.

Read you tomorrow,
Nina

monday (II.week)

Hi @ll,

Yesterday as more or less an office day. I spent the morning at the Department for Biology and Ecology and the Department for Chemistry talking and organizing the surveys in the lakes next week. And in the afternoon I recharged Nimrod and started preparing the other surveys.
Today we will go to Pine Harbor to go out to Bryna's site tomorrow.
More about that as soon as we are back.

Yours,
Nina

Hamilton Gardens

Hey @ll,

Today (sunday) I spent a very relaxed day in Hamilton. After washing and making the dishes I walked to Hamilton Gardens. This is a very nice public park, where you can find amazing gardens designed after examples of different countries and epoches. I visited all parts and hung out on the one or other traditional seat. After that I walked along Hamilton River until I came to the City Center. There I ate at Burgerfuel, a recommendation of the Masterstudents from Bremen. It had a very good veggie burger and fries. Then I finally found a nice bikini in a surf shop (I forgot my one. And because we think about doing the survey in Raglan using a huge jetski. I think about wearing a bikini and my wet suit. Then I stopped at a cafe, where I started writing the summary for Korallensand. Some people might know what I am talking about. The others: Don't worry. Perhaps I'll tell you somewhen.
After hanging out in the cafe for more than one hour I went to the cinema and saw The Proposal with Sandra Bullock and Ryan Reynolds. It is a nice, funny and a little bit flat love story, but nice for a relaxed sunday afternoon.
Finally, I made it to catch the last bus to Hamilton East (5:57pm).
Tonight Bryna comes back from Australia and tomorrow we will be back at work.
Yours,
Nina

Raglan (II.)

< Raglan
< Ruapuke Beach




























Hi @ll,

Today I walked from Bryna's house to the Hamilton Transport Center to catch the bus the Raglan. And I made it to arrive 2 minutes before the bus left.
Alex picked me up at Tongue and Grooves at 11 am and then we found Shawn. I planned to meet with Shawn to discess the sand bar project in Raglan, but I forgot his cell phone number. So, I was pretty happy that we found him. He showed me bathymetries and maps about the area at his ASR office and then we made a tour around the area. We went to the Kitesurf Spot, Whale Beach and Manu Bay to have a nice view over the sand bar and the whole area. After that we went further south to Ruapuke Beach (Yeah, I made it to remember the name.). This is a spot we would like to include in our surveys, because Shawn expect that a lot of sediment remobilisation goes on there. The beaches and bay around Raglan is amazing. The sandbar makes a nice break in a bended shape in front of the harbour mouth and the calmer estuary. At Ruapuke Beach the water was rough with a high frequency of waves and a lot of white water. Nevertheless, some brave and very good kitesurfers went out there and ripped the waves. It was amazing. The beaches are dark and the sand sparkles like diamonds in the sun (I don't just like boys that sparkle, but beaches, too. ;) Insider for all Twilighters). It's really awesome. Shawn told me that if you are lucky you can see orcas, stingrays and dolphins in the bay. Isn't that great. I am totally stoked. Raglan itself is one of the world's cool small surfer towns with a lot of nice cafes (Check out Raglan Roast, the local coffe brand in Volcom Lane. Yes, you've read right. The small street is named after the skate and surf brand Volcom.), cool restaurants (visit Vinnie's, the pizza is great! and they show surfing videos via projector) and a lot of organic an dhippie like shops. It's small, local and supercool.
For lunch we met with Alex again and hung out in Raglan until my bus back to Hamilton came. There is just one bus for each direction in the morning and one for each direction in the afternoon.
Shawn and Alex, thank you guys sooo much for the great day!
Yours,
Nina

Tauranga Habour (Nimrod I)

Aloha @ll,

Tonight Bryna departed to Australia and I will do my best as a housesitter for the weekend.
This morning Terry picked me up at 8am to go to Tauranga Habour (East coast). We planned to deploy Nimrod in the harbour channel which is dredged from a water depth of 5 m down to 13m and shows a layer of fluid mud. Next year the channel should be deepened to 18 m.
The weather was perfect and we had nice small boat for the deployments. We deployed Nimrod at almost 20 positions and twice at each. After 80 minutes we had all the data. Everything went perfect.
During the rides from Hamilton to Tauranga and back Terry showed and told me a lot about Waikato district and Tauranga. The landscape is really beautiful. And Tauranga is a great coastal city with a nice estuary, mountain at the harbour, beach and barrier island. For sure, I will try to come here again at the one or other weekend. On the way back we drove through Matamata where you can find the town of the Hobbits of Lord of the Rings. Another thing I would like to do before I go home.
Back in Hamilton I checked the data. Everything was allright and took the bus to the city center. There I bought three DVDs in the sale (Batman-the dark knight, Into the wild, Camp Rock (Don't laugh! I like these Disney movies.). In the shop they had a New Moon poster (Wow, the first I've ever seen.), but I haven't bought it (until now).
Then I bought milk, cereals, grapes and bananas and took the bus home. Hey, I am almost a perfect NZ-bus-rider. Riding the bus is very cheap (less than 1€), but the stops have no names and there is just a fixed time for the start of the route, what makes it sometimes a little bit tricky to catch it without standing half an hour at the bus stop.
Today I have no picture. Terry took them, but he was too busy to copy them for me today. I will post them on monday.

Cheers,
Nina

more "Bremener"

< the river going through Hamilton


Hey guys,

Today I planned a very relaxed day, which became quite exciting.
At the office Prof. Terry Healy came up with a new interesting project. In Taurange Harbour they have a passage with increasing fluid mud appearance. He asked about a special device for fluid mud detection I have never heard something about, but I told him that I probably don't know it, because fluid mud is interesting for me, but not one of my main interests. On the other hand, the project he described is very comparable to the situation I am interested in in Emden harbour. They dredge, too, to keep the waterways deep enough.
So, he asked me what I think about going to Taurange tomorrow to measure in the port. Of course, I agreed. It sounded as a very interesting project.
For tomorrow I planned to meet Shawn in Raglan to talk to him about the Raglan sand bar project. Fortunately, he was in Hamilton today, so that I could reschedule for the weekend with him.
I spent the rest of the morning preparing Nimrod for its first survey in NZ (connected the ropes, etc.) and in the afternoon Bryna and I packed the car for tomorrow.
In between I met the master student course Shawn and Terry taught and surprise, surprise three of them are from Bremen. One of them is Yannis, who sat in the same office I was during the first months of my Phd. It was really funny to meet those guys.
In the afternoon another thing I did was walking to the city center to buy water proof pants for the field work and outdoor shoes. And I found a nice Burton snowboard pants for a very good deal.

auckland and pine harbour

1) pine harbour marina
2) Bryna at Pine Harbour
3 and 4) on the way from Auckland to Pine harbour




























Aloha @ll,
I hope I'll posted my post yesterday. When I opended up the homepage it seems as I didn't. If so, sorry for that, I had been really tired.
Today we went to the office until ten and then went up to Auckland to pick up the underwater camera at a company for ocean technology. When we arrived, the batteries of the camera was totally flat, so that we couldn't check it. So, we decided to pick up Alex from teh airport and then come back. One and a half hours later we were able to run the camera and everything seems to be okay. After that we went to Pine Harbour Marina (where we will start the dredging and dumping survey of Brynas project). The marina and the environment there is really beautiful (see the pics). The guys from the marina, who will provide the boat, suggested to go out in tuesday instead of monday, because the forecast for monday shows a swell of 2 meters and 20 knots of wind. Both at the same time would be just too much.
We will see.
We were back from Auckland at about 6pm. Alex sleeps on Brynas couch tonight, because he couldn't find a ride home to Raglan.
The weather during the day was great today, but as soon as the sun goes down it is f(rea)king cold. Condensed water was at the windows and the window of the car was frozen. I am pretty happy that I bought a pair of warm gloves yesterday. For tomorrow I don't have big plans. I would like to prepare Nimrod for the survey, just in case we gonna go out on monday, and I will go to the city center to buy a water proof snowboard pants for the work on the boat.
More about that tomorrow.

Cheers,
Nina

NIWA and shopping center

< Brynas house and below: Galloway Str














< Hamilton City

Hi @ll,

Today I met Giovanni and Rod from NIWA. We talked about the surveys in Tairua and figured out that we will try to go out 29-30/6. We figured out a very nice plan what to do and at which spots. Currently, the weather forecast makes hope that we can go out to Brynas sites on monday. That would be perfect, because it is the main project of the four and I would be happy if we get it done before the weather gets worse.
Tomorrow we will go to Auckland and pick up Alex from the airport and have a look on Pine Harbor, where we hopefully will measure on monday, too.
In the afternoon I Dirk gave me a ride to the city center, where I went shopping. I still needed gloves and shower gel. Unfortunately, there are not many cool shops in Hamilton, but I made it to get my stuff and found the right bus home. That was very helpful to orientate better in town. By the way, the bus is very cheap: less than NZ$2!
In the evening Bryna and I were invented for dinner by Denise. She made a very good vegetarian pie and salad. After that Bryna and I went to the theatre for the weekly Movie Society Movie. They showed a german movie from the late sixties in black and white. Bryna and I agreed that it was a little bit boring, but not that bad to go out.

Now, I am very tired.

Read u tomorrow,
Nina

first day at the university

Dear readers,

Today was my first day at the University. Bryna arranged that I got a desk and introduced me to several people, who are working in their group. Prof. Terry Healy welcomed me and I ran several tests with Nimrod. All tests showed very nice results, so that I recharged Nimrod and put it back in its suitcase. Dirk Immenga offered to leave it in his instrument storage the days we won't go out for measurements.

For now our working schedule looks like this:

• hopefully tomorrow the guys from NIWA will have time to figure out when I can go out with them to deploy Nimrod in the ripple field in Tairua and perhaps go there at the end of the week
• depending on that I think about meeting the guys from ASR perhaps on wednesday for planning the surveys in Raglan
• then we want to get Brynas spot (out of Great Barrier Island) done as soon as there is a weather window to do it. it is the most weather dependent spot of all and it seems like there could come up a possibility on monday (that would be super, super! so keep your fingers crossed)
• we would like to combine the measurements at Great Barrier Island with deployments in pine harbor the corresponding harbor sites to the dumping site at GBI and some deployments in areas where Alex Schimel worked with Multi-Beam
• next week we also plan to meet with David Hamilton to talk about the surveys on the lakes, which are currently planned for beginning of July

No pictures today, because we spent most of the day in the office and managing things like a New Zealand SIM card for me and a bus card, etc. But tomorrow!

So, for everyone, who would like to call me. My german cell phone number does not work currently, because I took out my SIM card and put in one with a (+64 country code NZ) number. If you would like to call me, send me an e-mail or ask my parents for the number and then you can call me on that number.

Aloha,
Nina

arrived

Kia ora (that means hello! in Maori),

After about 30 hours of travelling I finally arrived in Hamilton, NZ. But the journey was not that hard as I had expected. Both flights were quite good with some good movies, not too much turbulences and nice people (on both flights students from the USA) sitting next to me. I slept on both flights a few hours. But when you are flying 11h and then 13h after each other, somewhen you just slept enough. However, it was okay, so that I was exhausted but not totally down when I arrived.
Security and customs control was no problem with Nimrod because of the Carnet (a customs document for traveling with business equipement). The driver of the Roadcat (a shuttle service, Bryna set it up for me) found me easily and we arrived after a about 1 and a half hour ride in Hamilton.
Bryna was waiting for me, showed me her house and my room (Bryna, thank you again. It is really super nice that I can stay at your place.). I took a shower and we had breakfast. After that we went to the Farmer's Market and Bryna gave me a tour about Hamilton und the campus. Hamilton has a nice more small town charactere with cool old houses. Everything is very green. The campus is very nice, too, with a lot of green spots and small ponds. More about that the next days when I will have some pictures. My camera batteries were not recharged today. After showing me her office and at home introducing me to her landlords (a very nice couple of old people) we went tio Raglan (New Zealand's no.1 surf town at the west coast). Raglan is a very nice small town at an amazing bay with sweet surf and kitesurf spots. The wind was good, so there were quite a loot kitesurfers out there.
The landscape is very beautiful. It is very green with this small hills and lava rocks at the beaches. It's great. Today just a few pictures (made with my cell phone). But I promise, I will take more.
When we went home, Bryna cooked pasta and I tried to fall asleep just for an hour, but I didn't made it get up before 9.30pm. I am very sorry for that. But Bryna was still awake.

Enough for that long day. :)

Cheers,
Nina

Entertainment List

Hi guys,

Here my iPod Playlist for the journey (interpret, album):

• Placebo - Meds
• Placebo - Battle for the Sun
• Placebo - Black Market Music
• Placebo - Placebo
• Placebo - Sleeping with ghosts
  
• Original Soundtrack - Twilight
• Empty Trash - Confessions
• The Hives - The Black and White Album
• Kings of Leon - Only by the night
• Muse - Absolution
• Muse - Black Holes and Revelations
• Muse - Hullabaloo
• Nine Inch Nails - With Teeth
• Paramore - Riot!
• Polarkreis 18 - The colour of snow
• The Prodigy - Invaders must die
• Razorlight - Slipway Fires
• Blind - Elect the Dead
• Starsailor - Love is here
• Sweatheads - the great disruptors
• Original Soundtrack - Twilight, the score

My book for the journey will be Sergei Lukjanenko's "Schlangenschwert" (snakesword?).

And of course, I hope for exciting movies during the flight.

Yours,
Nina

Intro

Aloha @ll,

This is my new internet blog describing my research travel to New Zealand. For those of you, who don't know me, yet, some brief information about me and what I will do in NZ:
I am 29-year old PhD student in the working group Marine Geotechnics at MARUM (Center of marine and environmental sciences) at the University of Bremen, Germany. My research interests are processes of sediment remobilization offshore. Therefore, I am working with so called dynamic penetrometers and will bring with me to NZ our self-developed device Nimrod (check out: Stark et al., Sea Technology, April 2009). Together with my collaboration partners we will apply Nimrod in the following projects:

• Dredging mud in Auckland's harbours and introducing of a dumping site offshore (Bryna K. Flaim, Terry Healy (both University of Waikato))
• Small-Scale ripple field in the Bay of Plenty (Karin Bryan, Alexandre Schimel, Dirk Immenga (all University of Waikato), Giovanni Coco (NIWA))
• Moving sand bar in front of Raglan (Shawn Harrison and Colleagues (ASR))
• Lakes: Rotorua, Rotoiti and Tarawera (David Hamilton, Wendy Paul (both University of Waikato))

Thanks to all my collaboration partners and my supervisor (Achim Kopf, MARUM) for the support and DAAD for the funding. Special thanks to Bryna who offered to me, that I can stay at her place during the following four weeks.

This blog should give you (my friends and everyone who is interested) the possibility to follow how the research surveys work out and what other exciting things I will experience in NZ.

The journey will begin on Friday 12th in the morning and my first flight is from Frankfurt to San Francisco and the second from San Francisco to Auckland.

I'll keep you posted.

Yours,
Nina