Wednesday, December 21, 2016

All I want for Christmas...

...are these Japanese glow in the dark mushroom fridge magnets. I think they are super cool but I guess a science geek would think that.

Sunday, December 18, 2016

Christmas party

Nathan, Truffles and I went to a Christmas party last night. It was hosted by the lady we met at the dog park (the one who threw a birthday party for her dog at Daylesford several weeks ago).

The party was amazing. She put on a lavish feast and there was so much food. The party was all the more impressive considering that she had only arrived back in Australia from a work trip at 7.30am yesterday morning.

Our lady friend has a lot of gay friends. In fact, the gays greatly outnumbered the straights at last night's party. Might explain why she is still single!

It turns out our friend lives next door to a Western Bulldogs player so Nathan was especially excited when our friend said he might drop by. And sure enough, the neighbour came by briefly for a drink with his attractive blonde (they often are) girlfriend.

The player is of course a good looking guy and was quickly set upon by some of the gays at the party. I urged Nathan to go up for a chat (and selfie), which he did. Nathan sent the photo to his cousins and made them very jealous. When the player and his girlfriend left, our friend said that this was a different girlfriend to the last one she had met. Oh well...I guess attractive sports players have a lot of options.




Sunday, December 4, 2016

Compared to a Mongol

Lady in elevator: How tall are you?
Me: Almost 2 meters.
Lady in elevator: Yes. Of course, the Mongols were rather tall too, weren't they?

Out West

I've been in Western Australia for the past week for work.

The excitement began at Melbourne airport when I spotted a Qantas plane in the new livery, with the kangaroo sans arms. In the evolution of the company's logo, it seems that the roo is getting more and more minimalist.

Once I got to WA, I made my way to Fremantle by taxi. The driver was a south Korean dude who works as a taxi driver part time and spends the rest of his life working as a fly-in-fly-out miner up near Newman. Taxi drivers have such interesting back stories.

I was in Fremantle for a conference. Somehow I managed to stuff up my dates so I had an extra day in WA before my flight home so I decided to visit the University of Western Australia.

Wow...what a beautiful campus. They even have a resident peacock!


A highlight of my visit to UWA was catching up with a friend I hadn't seen in 12 years. We first met when I was living and working in the USA in 2004. She was a PhD student from Sweden. My friend has since married a Welsh guy, had a baby and settled in Australia.

After my UWA visit, I decided to walk into the city along the river, which took about 40 minutes (I think I got a little bit sunburnt). I then spent the next three hours visiting the Art Gallery of WA. God I love that place. AGWA has a really nice collection (not as large or as comprehensive as the NGV but they do a really good job of putting together their displays and exhibits).

All in all, I had a really nice visit to WA, capped off by the taxi ride back to Perth airport where I had a lovely conversation with the Hong Kong born driver, who used to be a chef.