Happy New Year!

Hello All!

I haven't posted for a while so this is a quick update to conclude 2006, and what a fantastic and eventual year it was!

I went to see Elton John a few weeks ago and he was fantastic - 2.5 hours of non-stop hits, and seeing him live makes you realise what a good musician he is - for a guy with fat stumpy fingers he can really play the piano well! Rather than relying on a show full of amazing spectacle like Robbie Williams he just used his music, and did it well. I'm glad I got to see the old queen before he dies :-)

My big bit of news is that I have been accepted for a phd scholarship and candidature at my local uni - UWA - and Melbourne uni. Although Melbourne is more recognised internationally - it's in the top 25 in the world uni's list - I've decided to go to UWA. This is partly because I'd rather stary where I am (Melbourne is a 4 hour flight away!) and move back into my apartment, especially with Aurore arriving during the year, and also because neither uni really has anyone that is a Viking specialist so the supervision won't be much different. This means that I want Alex on board as the Viking expert and external supervisor and UWA seem to be alot more positive about making this happen. Plus they have more money and will pay me whenever i have an article published in a refereed journal, and as I have submitted one, am editing another, and have a third planned, this could be quite lucrative! This is just as well as the scholarship pays just under $20 000 per annum, or $750 a fortnight (tax free), about half of my current income! Of course the real bonus is that there are no tuition fees. And of course Aurore will be sent off to work and expected to take me out for dinner :-)

I hope you all had a great Christmas, and have a celebratory but safe New Years Eve. Good luck in 2007, in your academic pursuits and endeavours of the heart!

Douce France...

Hi everyone!

I'm making the most of the Christmas holidays to publish a post. Nothing usually happens to me so I take advantage of holidays at my mother's to publish and make you discover how France can be. I've been first to Lyon (East of France) for two days with my sister. This is a great city where old and modern things meet and with an old part on the other side of a stream called Le Rhône. A big yellow wheel had been risen for Christmas in the main square.

While I was there I had a look at the store windows of the huge store called Le Printemps. You might know it; it's one of the most famous (and expensive) stores in Paris. They always do something special for Christmas, with puppets moving. Unfortunately, I can only show you a motionless picture as I don't know how to add a video to the post. Hélio? Would you help me?

Me and my sister went to the Christmas market that we only found 15 minutes before when we had to leave to go to my mother's.

So off we went, to spend Christmas in her house in the middle of nowhere, somewhere in the Jura (department also in the eastern part of France). 2 kilometers through a forest to get to the house! And it's not tarmaced! The house is on a hill, overlooking fields and lots of other hills.

During most of our time there, there was only fog and frost on the trees and on the ground. It was wonderful!

I enjoyed wandering around although I've been scared once when I was walking on the way at twilight: I heared step noises in the forest, maybe it was a boar! I'm glad I didn't meet it, as my face is better now! (I won't put a photo here, you saw me enough!)

So unless something very interesting happens to me before Shane comes (about 5 weeks to go!!!), I won't put any new photo on this blog. But I'm looking forward to seeing yours!

I hope you've had a very good Christmas time with plenty of food! And on sunday again...send me photos of you with 5 kilos more!

Ciao amici!

p.s.: I've done several analysis to know the reason why I fainted. Nothing important appeared so there's nothing to worry about!

Happy Holidays!

Sunset from Mardin near the Syrian border-looking towards Syria, dry and arid!

First off- Happy Holidays! 2007

Man a year has past!!! I can't believe it! So a toast to all of us! For Shane and I it will be a nice glass of cold sauvignon blanc (s.eastern australian of course!) Helio and Aurore, we can toast you with a cold glass of mimosa! Good luck to all of us in our academic (and social)endeavors! I've been lucky enough to travel around eastern Turkey with Jerome..(another open ended situation, which will have to wait and see what happens) But it was an amazing experience (traveling)(smiling) and I'm so glad I did it. Though I do wish I had kept notes, its funny I thought about it but never got around to doing it! So here's a few pictures there are too many to post here, will post more on my blog later..

5000 year old ruins in Harran, still very near Syria, Helio most of the places I've been date back to Biblical times, some of the churches are listed in the Bible!




Just to give you a scale people carved houses into these rocks-a valley in Cappadocia,(central turkey)we climbed into a few of them. It was amazing(sorry shane, lack of better word,at least its not 'nice') esp.when you remember we are talking about the time of Christ.






These buildings went on for miles it was a whole civilization, we truly felt like explorers since there was no one around.

Me in the middle of nowhere, these are lava formations! The people who lived here just literally scooped out their houses it was very soft and crumbly..wished I studied geology..

Another ruin, and lava formations-I can't help it love sunsets...

Helio-any idea of what the script is?? These were early churches, did we see that replica of Christ in Scandinavia?

Okay have to go for now, busy with my mother trying to get her settled in, as well as looking into doing a phd, which is looking a bit impossible but haven't given up hope. Might have to settle into somewhere in New Mexico, which sounds interesting but you never know what the day might bring..as the old saying goes. So for those of you who thought I was lost (smiling) I'm back...Hejdo!

Gone beta

Hello everyone.

Sorry for the long absence and for the changes in the blog, but Blogger has a new version and there was no way I could updated just some of the blogs. The final result is that Gotlanders is now on Blogger Beta. Your profiles have all been updated and you should be able to access your accounts by loging on the Blogger homepage with your gmail address and password. Let me know if you're having any trouble.

As for the changes in the blog itself, well Beta doesn't add much that we use very often. It basically makes the configuration of the blog page much easier and adds a tag system to every post, thus listing them by keywords. It's very useful if you have a big blog with hundreds of posts, but not so much if it's a small one like ours. Still, you'll notice that at the bottom of the screen where you write the posts there should be room for the label, so use it if you wish to.

As for me, things are going slowly and a bit offline, with more time spent reading and writing. The phd project seems to be moving on, though very very slowly. A Literature professor suggested the inclusion of an analysis of all the written sources and translations of the Norse ones so that at least some of them can then be published in Portuguese. This means the phd will probably include a several months long Old Norse course in Uppsala, adding to the already likely trips and field work in Galicia and Northern Portugal.

The rest of my time off I've been spending getting things ready for Christmas and the New Year celebration or, if the weather allows it, riding my bike, alone or with my father. He took me on a three hours and a half ride last Sunday morning! Gods know how tired I arrived home that day...

Robbie Williams

Yes, I went to see the arrogant english sod. Why? Well, it was mainly due to a friend imploring me to go with her while I was still in Sweden - it turns out that her husband didn't want to go and she wasn't keen on going alone! I also quite like some of the music and do have 1 cd, and I failed to convince my friend to sell the tickets at a massive profit on Ebay :-) However the show was FANTASTIC - I'm still not convinced that he has a particularly good voice, but what a showman! It was an outdoor concert in an oval with 45000 people. The stage rig was as high as the 3-tier grandstand, so probably 20-25 metres, and it began with fireworks being fired from the top of the stage rig, and also bursts of flame coming both from the top and along the stage - and it was real as you could feel the heat! He played all of the expected big hits, interacted well with the crowd, and manage to combine being amusing, charming and offensive. I'd always wanted to see a really BIG show in the Madonna/U2 way of doing things, and this was certainly that so I'm very glad the Ebay idea was rejected.

Watch this space for an Elton John review soon :-)