Back at work

83 emails, 5 voice messages and a lot of paperwork.
I love comming back after a few days aff site.
B.T.W. Harry Potter ATHBP whilst ok, was not up to standard :-)
Well, at least it kept me up on the plane trip so I slipped back into australian time easily.

I'll have the lobster thanks.

Dinner at the St Francis Yacht Club is, I must say, the absolute climax of my stay in San Fran so far and unlikely to be exceeded. An enormous thank you Mike for organising it and sharing such a special place with us.
I like to collect little cultural observations. Observation 436b is that in the U.S. they call the main an entrée. That’s so dumb. Gee am I glad I went with the onion soup.
Back to the room now, packing my bags. I have to be on a plane tomorrow for the 15+ hr flight back to Sydney. I miss my girls, my bed and the sleep I’m not getting here. If the plane continued going east around the world would I get two days back again?

more nothing

Day.. what is it?, three I think - perhaps 4, but who is counting. Nothing earth shattering, but that’s just fine when you are standing atop the San Andreas . Today was the first day of the conference proper. Nothing much to report from the conference but we did have a wonderful dinner at city hall (how Gothem is that) a lovely old building except that it was full of over a thousand delegates, mostly from around the states. I got stuck talking to a couple from South Dakota (not the hip younf couple standing next to them). SD has about the same population of Golburn. The Uni has about 500 students? That’s not even a small school. Hick, Hick, Hick-svill. I did however manage to sell Australian beer to an infedel non beliver - who would have thought that you could get a squires in San Fran???

Back to city hall. This is what 2000 people look like stuffed into a national monument:

Se ya all tomorrow

Poverty, Steep Streets, China Town and Batman

Tuesday, Day three in San Francisco.
After a swim and quick gym session this mourning I snuck into a workshop early but there were no empty workshops worth going to in the afternoon so I went for another stroll. I struck out south-west, more or less the direction that I can see from my room. Pretty quickly the scene turned nasty, lots of very poor, mostly black sick people lying on the pavement, yelling, drunk or high. Those with legs walked with crutches and anybody who could keep up with me had a sorry tail to tell. After three blocks I took a right, turning more or less north- striking towards a restaurant that was suggested before I left Sydney- Asia de Cuba. I’ve looked it up on Google earth and kind of knew where to aim for however the building was a construction sight and the lass out the front with a clip board and entourage of body builder types didn’t have the time to answer my questions. Plenty of time to stand there and do nothing tho’. So I continued up the hill, and in a rounda abouts way found myself circumambulating china town. Then I orbited back around the hotel and up to a largish food hall where I attempted to have lunch. Now I don’t think that I have a particularly broad Australian accent but the Latino serving wench had no idea what I was saying no-mater which way I tried to say it. Falling back on spanglish she understood me, kind of a taxi-lingua I guess. “Yo querio el numero uno, ci, the beef sandwich, con carne sin mayonnaise, ci, gracious ”. I have heard much much more Spanish on the streets than I have English, the same for the airport, taxi, hotel staff and any place that I purchase food. TV is half in spanglish or Spanish and even bus adverts are in Spanish (click on the image to zoom in)!
After the stroll I headed back to the hotel and took some photos from the sky lounge and then did the meet and greet in the conference drinks. I managed to catch up with all the providers that I had agreed to meet with before I left Sydney so that was good. Then up to drinks in the very batman like lounge before coming back down to write up this blog and then head to bed for a 6:30 gym session.
More tomorrow

Steve

The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco. ~Author unknown, commonly misattributed to Mark Twain


Just a short post today. I didn't do much, what, with sitting in on some long introduction to WebCT. I snuck out and walked around San Fran for lunch and again after the end of proceedings for the day. There is plenty to see but the fog and cold and mist don’t lend themselves for good photos of the city.

The hotel has a nice restaurant with palm trees growing inside and a Gothem-City esque cocktail lounge. I’ll try and get some good picks of the city when it is:
1 – Not covered in fog and;
2- Not full of geeks.

That’s all for now

18 July 2005
Flying from Sydney to sanfrancisco for the web ct conference.

I Arrived in San Fran today after a very long day. On Sunday in Sydney before I left Alex, Annalise and I went for brunch down at Brazura in Coodgee. Very nice - Annalise was playing it up for the waitress, all smiles and giggles. Then off to the airport by 11:45 for a 13:45 flight that thankfully, left on time. 14 hours in a flying coke can surrounded by Americans packed into cattle class on united, arriving sf on Sunday around 9am. I caught a shuttle to the hotel then walked around sf for a few hours, grabbed some lunch and did a spot of shopping before finally passing out from exhaustion at 3. 30 hours without sleep.
I hope that Annalise and Daniel like the nemo and pooh bear stuff.




BTW: are signs that your hotel is poisonous common elsewhere in the world or is it only the Marriott that is killing us?

Again, just testing. I took this photo of some ivy climbing a wall on campus because the autumnal reds looked warm in the afternoon sun. Unfortunately the HP iPAQ device bleaches the colour out :-(

A big hola to one and all. The first few posts here will simply be testing the waters - how to post, playing with the interface etc. I created the blog for two reasons:
- I work with the internet and my supposed skills with it are what feeds me. Part of my job is to evaluate technologies like blogs and wikies, and,
- I read quite a few blogs (I’ll sort out how to put up a blogroll sooner or later) and occasionally leave comments here and there. I think is more or less polite of me to give you a way to find out who I am.
I’m basically lazy, busy and lacking in creativity so don’t expect too much. I’ll probably just use it to post pictures to friends and family and legitimise my turning up at a Grogblog someday. But then again I’m a rabid green / red so I might get fired up about IR, liberals or right wing doings from time to time.

Naught else to say for now, drop by later.

Nuf Sed
Av Phun

Emunctory: Any organ or part of the body (as the kidneys, skin, etc.,) which serves to carry off excrementitious or waste matter.