Australia Week 3: Carlton, Dandenong, Moomba

Things change quickly in the game industry. One day you're midway through a six-week training trip to Melbourne, and the next, you're told the trip is over and you've got a week to get back to home office. So I write today's blog post with the bittersweet knowledge that this week will be my last in Australia and it's back to Utah - so it goes.

Before the disappointing news of my shortened trip, I had a very busy weekend touring around Melbourne and its surrounds. Friday was the beginning of the Moomba Festival, which is held over the Labour Day weekend. The Moomba festival is a pre-Lent carnival celebrating...well it's really just an excuse to have a big carnival downtown with water-based competitions including a birdman contest and wakeboarding, as well as a big parade, fireworks, rides and all that fracas. Friday night a bunch of us went down the banks of the Yarra river to watch some wakeboarding and experience the carnival atmosphere. The crowds were not nearly as dense as on White Night, but our team can make anything into a party. We spent the evening feigning enthusiasm about watersports and then retired.

Int. Melbourne Gaol

The next day I did one of the walking tours suggested in my Melbourne: Step by Step guide, and walked the length of the neighborhood of Carlton. The trip started with a tour of the Old Melbourne Gaol, where prisoners were held and sometimes hung from 1845 to 1924. It's a suitable dour looking building with stained walls, heavy iron doors and very informative plaques and displays all over the place talking about the most noteworthy of Melbourne's criminals. Most notable of which is the inimitable Ned Kelly.

I won't go into detail as to Ned's infamy. If you'd like to read more about him, you can go to the wikipedia article about him (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ned_Kelly). Suffice to say, in his final shootout with the Melbourne police, Ned donned a homemade suit of iron armor and was only taken out because the cops used a makeshift claymore made of buckshot to damage his unprotected shins...oh such hubris, Ned.

Ridiculous Benvenuta Manor

After the Gaol, I headed north past Melbourne's monument to the 8 hour work day, which Victoria had before most other places courtesy of their strong labour movement. A fitting photographic tribute to their Labour Day I suppose. Past the monument and into Carlton proper, is the ostentatious Benvenuta mansion, which has in it's time been a residence, a brothel, a court, an Italian Club, a brothel, and most recently a college residence for the University of Melbourne.

Veering a bit to the west, I wandered through Carlton's main thoroughfare, Lygon street, which is known for being Melbourne's 'Little Italy.' I had a excellent Italian cappuccino paired with some authentically bad Italian table service, then returned east to Carlton Gardens and the Melbourne Museum.

Whale skeleton would like to remind you that it is enormous

Melbourne museum has some interesting exhibits including some very nice dinosaur skeletons, a section in which one walks through a replica Victorian rainforest, and an interesting permanent exhibit about the native and quite diverse Aboriginal people from the Melbourne area. I only managed to see the first floor of the museum before I had to meet up with my tour guide for a limited-access tour of the Royal Exhibition Building, just across the square from the museum itself.

Int. Royal Exhibition Building

The Royal Exhibition Building has seen its share of history. It was created to house the World's Fair of 1880, and played host again to the World's Fair of 1888. It was also the spot where the first Federal Parliament of Australia was held, marking Australia as a commonwealth. The Australian flag was first flown from its dome in 1901. It's been a temporary home for the RAAF and a venue for the Summer Olympics (1956). The beautiful interior was painted over white at some point, but restored to its full 1901 splendor in 1992.

After touring the building, I was going to go back to the museum, but it turns out I had managed to lose my ticket. So I made a pivot and headed over to the campus of Melbourne University. For the most part, the University feels sort of closed off. I took some pictures of the interesting Newman Chapel and, as suggested by my travel guide, took a walk through the outrageously full Melbourne General Cemetery, which houses dead people of every major faith. It was hot, I had walked about six miles, and I was ready to be done with the walk...then I got to walk all the way back to the hotel! All in all it was a 10 mile day...great practice for the next day.

The morning of Day 22 I ate a big breakfast and then hopped the tram to Flinder's Street Station, one of three major train stations in downtown Melbourne. I was taking a train out to the pleasantly named Upper Fern Tree Gully where I would hike the 2.8 km, 90-ish story climb to the One Tree Hill picnic grounds, have lunch, then walk back down. That was the plan.

When I arrived at UFTGS, I was greeted with a small information center. Slightly unsure of how to begin my journey, I inquired within. "Fancy a 4 hour hike?" the small lady at the counter exclaimed by way of greeting. Sure, I thought. I didn't really have anything else planned for the day, and I was feeling pretty energetic. The lady scribbled some notes on a map for me..."first you walk walk walk until you get to 1000 steps, hike that, then take One Tree Hill Road across to...well actually it's not on the map here, but it's called Hackett's Track. Take that down to...well it's also not on the map, but it's called Hillclimb Trail. Take that down to Belgrave and then take the train back to Melbourne!"

Hmm. A 4 hour trek through the wilderness, alone. The long quiet boy scout in me was reminding me that you shouldn't hike by yourself, certainly not in a foreign forest, in "the land of things that want to kill you."

But hey, guess what I did anyway!

First, a note about the 1000 steps. Formally called the Kokoda Track Memorial Walk, the hike represents the trek that Australian soldiers made with their wounded after the battle of Kokoda in WWII. It is a very steep trail. It's 2.8 km at what I am guessing to be a 30% grade. By no stretch of the imagination was this an easy walk, but my will was tempered by the fact that, and I swear I'm not making this up, there were old Chinese women happily making the journey wearing those chunky platform heel shoes. Clearly insane.

One Tree Hill Road has notably more than a single tree

As intense as the climb was, it was only about a quarter of the path I made through the Sherbrooke forest that day. The rest of the hike was not particularly blog worthy. I did see a wild echidna and I hiked for many hours. I also said hello to a pair of female hikers who looked at me like I was about to possibly murder them. There's something that occurs during a very long hike that I like to call a "hiking trance". Bill Bryson mentions it in his classic travel narrative "A Walk in the woods." The longer you hike, the more the hike starts to become more a meditation on walking then a journey to get anywhere in particular. Taking the next step becomes the only thing that matters. I experienced that a lot during my hike on the Appalachian Trail in my teenage years. On this trek, I had some flashbacks to that experience.

The clever people of Belgrave put a pub right at the exit to the trail, before you get to town. There I had the most delicious half pint of cider I have ever tasted. I finished the walk to Belgrave, ate a meat pie, and returned on the train back to Melbourne. I was pretty cooked, dirty from head to toe, and ready to take the next day very easy.

The Moomba Parade had a real 'Cirque du Soleil' feel to it...

Moomba! The next day was the parade for the Moomba festival. It's important to note that there's some controversy over the name "Moomba". The creator of the festival, who seriously made the thing as an excuse to have something to do before Lent, swore up and down that it was a dialogue word meaning "get together and have a good time" or something similar. His son later said that what it actually meant was "Up your ass". Later the comment was redacted. The origin of the word still remains a bit of a mystery. Anyway, the "Up your ass" parade consisted of many colorful floats and people and I sat on the sloping cliff leading up the Shrine of Remembrance and got some pretty good shots of the whole thing. The rest of the day was relatively uneventful. A bunch of the gang went to a restaurant/bar called Cookie in the CBD where we had some good asian-inspired food, drank cider, and had our bill brought to us in a children's book. Keep Melbourne weird, I guess.

Anyway, as I said earlier, my trip is being cut short due to the fickleness of the game industry, but this weekend I'm taking the opportunity to fly out of Sydney instead of Melbourne, so I can spend four days before I return to reality in the other major east coast city of Australia. Tune in for the end-of-trip report sometime next week.

Australia Week 2: Great Ocean Road, Otways and Apollo Bay

While the week was once again taken up primarily by work, sleep and exercise, we started the weekend right with an open bar social sponsored by the studio at Federation Square in the Melbourne CBD. Many beers were consumed and much conversation enjoyed.

The next morning, a large portion of the Salt Lake Squad picked up rental cars and prepared to head out on our first weekend adventure outside of the city. We had two drivers: one who had a British driver's license from 20 years ago, and another who was just crazy enough to drive on the left side of the road even though he'd never done it before...I decided to be the navigator for the guy with the ancient driver's license.

Relying heavily on GPS, we headed out of Melbourne on the winding Australian highway system. Getting out of the airport we managed to screw up and make a few loops around the terminals before figuring out what to do. Thankfully that was the worst of the driving errors we made. Our first destination was about an hour outside the city -- an open safari zoo in the town of Werribee.

Pretty sure they were showing off their natural tendency for
frame composition.

Werribee Zoo, somewhat ironically for our adventure, primarily features African animals. It was on our list because our boss was taking his kids there, so we decided, what the hell, let's go too. It was actually pretty cool, since the zoo is predominantly open range. I got some ok pictures, including some shots of a very photogenic group of giraffes. Sadly, the small Australian animal section was pretty much shut down for repairs or upgrades or some such thing -- I have yet to see a kangaroo on this trip, aside from the one on my lunch plate in our first week.

Next was a drive down the very picturesque Great Ocean Road -- a not to miss experience. It is, perhaps, a bit daunting for foreign drivers. The lanes are small and mostly along a sheer cliff face leading down to the rough and rocky beaches below. Our drivers handled it with much tact and the passengers with clenched buttocks you could probably crack walnuts between. The weather changes quite erratically in southern Victoria, so we had periods of sun, clouds and even a little rain along the 3 hour drive to our final destination for the evening, Apollo Bay.

Apollo Bay from nearby Marriner's Lookout...
spelled correctly.

Apollo Bay is primarily a surf town. Unassuming and only somewhat touristy, the town is nestled in its eponymous bay and consists of a main road, some offshoots, and not much else. It's a great launching point for the Otways National Forest, which was our primary destination for the following day. Before that, however, we had a few things that needed taking care of -- first off, dinner, which for me consisted of a mass of fried seafood with chips (read: fries). The place we went to for dinner was a yelp favorite, and it was *pretty* good, though they charged a fee for absolutely everything -- if you wanted grilled instead of fried, if you wanted ketchup or tartar sauce with your fish and chips. Needless to say, there was some grumbling.

A visit to the visitor's center a few hours earlier had informed us via pamphlet of an interesting night walk at nearby called Kennett's River, where one could see noctilucent glow worms. I told the lady at the information desk that we were interested in this, and she said something along the lines of "that's actually not the best place to see them. The best place would probably be Mait's Rest." At which point she pointed to a spot in the dead center of the Otways rainforest. "It's about a 20 minute drive."

Well. Why not, right? We're here for an adventure! Our drive into the rainforest occurred after sundown -- naturally the glow worms were not visible during the day -- so we were driving into the pitch black rainforest on a very narrow, winding road, to an unknown destination which, by the way, is not in Google Maps *or* the Garmin GPS system. We were told specifically not to rely on electronic maps in the rainforest which, for my tech-dependent brain, was a sure sign of the eminent disaster.

I don't have a picture for this part of the story.
But imagine this, only really, really dark.

About 40 minutes later (either she lied or we drove like frightened children), we finally came to Mait's Rest. Mait's Rest is a glorified turn-off on the winding jungle road with a 1km walking trail hidden in it. There were zero lights there, zero other tourists, and zero information on the signs at the stop saying anything about glow worms. Our tiny flashlights seemed like poor protection against the looming darkness, the killer wildlife, and the vague threat of tourist killing vagrants lying in wait on the trail. Ten steps onto the trail...we all chickened out. This was clearly insane -- surely the girl at the visitor's center was just having a laugh at our expense -- no one would send people out into the rainforest in the middle of the night to hunt magical glow worms -- aren't there spiders that can kill a man in 30 seconds in this place?

We got back in the cars. There was a few moments pause, then Oscar, one of the group, knocked on our window. "Give me your flashlights. We're going in." Well, no one in our car was going to let that go unchallenged. If the group in car A was going in, car B, clearly the more awesome car, wasn't going to wuss out. So...into the darkness.

It was slow going. We were not unafraid and we half believed these glow worms were a figment of the dastardly mind of the wicked visitor center wench, but on we trekked. I said the bene gesserit littany against fear, because I'm a huge dork. 'Fear is the mind killer.' About five minutes in we crossed a bridge in the darkness, and suddenly Katie, the wife of one of our coworkers told everyone to stop. What was it, we wondered? The killer hobo we all suspected was working with the visitor's center girl to rob tourists blind and leave their battered corpses in the jungle? She wanted us to turn off our flashlights -- a bold request at this point. We did.

And there they were, all along the embankment of the bridge. Softly glowing, like faint little stars peppered all through the moss. Glow worms! They were real! Disbelief and wonder, and then curiosity as we attempted to pinpoint them and then turn on our flashlights to see if we could see what was making the glow. They were literally undetectable with the lights on, and impossible to photograph. It's just one of those things you have to see -- and believe me, they're there.

Well, you don't go through that sort of thing without being galvanized as a team. In good spirits, we hopped back into the cars and returned to Apollo Bay, to the hostel that was to be our evening home. It was actually a very nice hostel other than the lack of air conditioning. We spent a pleasant evening talking and being thankful that at least one of us had been brave enough to convince all of us to go on that walk.

A Walk in the Woods

Day 2 of the Great Ocean Roadtrip started with breakfast in Apollo Bay, followed by an hour-long drive back into the rainforest. While it was indeed less terrifying in the dark, the road we had to traverse was not pleasant. In some spots, 20 kilometer long spots occasionally, there was only one lane, and if another car had come tearing around one of the many switchbacks, we would have eaten dashboard. We were headed to the Otways Fly Treetop Walk -- a destination that featured a several hundred foot scaffolding-like path through the canopy of the rainforest. This is another place where photographs do the actual experience very little justice. Being a rainforest, it was misting quite a bit, but I got some ok shots of the ancient growth there, including ferns that could have easily been around during the Jurassic period. We spent a few hours there and then headed down a gravel road to what was going to be our next stop -- Triplet Falls.

Unfortunately when we got there, we were greeted with what would have been another hour-long walk to get to said Falls -- and damn it, we had koalas to go see. We decided to skip the falls, and drove back out of the rainforest and out to the Cape Otway Lighthouse road, which is lined on either side by a eucalyptus grove.

This may be, no joke, the best picture I've ever taken

Where there's eucalyptus, there's koalas, and the little dudes were a little elusive at first. We did eventually find them, mostly because other tourists were parked along the sides of the road taking pictures of them already. Koalas are constantly high due to the semi-poisonous leaves of the eucalyptus tree, so they're very docile unless you frighten them. The legend of the "dropbear", according to an Australian companion, comes from the fact that koalas can get so stoned that they fall out of the trees and into the tents of unwary campers, causing the koalas to freak out and shred the tent to bits with their freakin' enormous claws. We shot some pictures, stood in awe of the majesty of nature for a while, then headed back to Apollo Bay.

Lunch -- scallop pie. Very good. Then beach. I had no real interest in plunging into the frigid Pacific Ocean on an overcast day in Fall, but some of our group did, so they rented wet suits and surfboards and braved the 10-foot waves. I laid out and hoped to collect at least a little tan from the cloudy UVs, but about an hour in I gave up and decided to walk down to the marina. No epic stories here, just a nice walk and then back again. We got in the cars, a bit exhausted after the whirlwind day, and drove back to Melbourne, stopping only briefly in the equally beachy town of Lorne for dinner (whole baby snapper, flash fried.)

It was a momentous weekend and I'm glad we did it. This coming weekend will be a 3-dayer -- it's Labour Day here in Australia. I plan on doing a bunch of little day excursions and maybe even sleep in, which I have literally not done once since I got here three weeks ago. Until next time.

Australia Week 1: Botanic Garden, White Night, Vic Market

After the initial burst of exploration and exhaustion during our first two days in Melbourne, the group was forced to return at least somewhat to reality and go to work on Monday at the game studio which will be our office for the next six weeks. The team there is very friendly and very familiar with running a live-service mobile game, which is our reason for coming out here to train with them. The studio is bigger than our office in Salt Lake, and more importantly, they have a $10,000 espresso machine in their break room – Melbournians are serious about their coffee.

Skyline over the Yarra River, just south of Fed Square

The week didn't lend itself to touring around the city. We went to a few restaurants in the evenings, but mostly it was exercise…work…eat…room…sleep every day until Friday. Friday we went out with some coworkers to the CBD, the Central Business District, which is Melbourne’s downtown area. We had beers at Federation Square, the controversial post-modern plaza and visitor center. It’s controversial because of its very peculiar design. There are very few right-angles to the building, lots of ornamental geometric shapes, and the whole thing is a bit of a maze to navigate. Still, it’s a cool little area with some nice bars and an outdoor music venue, which was home to an interactive game art installation the night we went.

Awesome tree at the Botanic Garden

The next day was busy. First thing I walked over to the Melbourne Royal Botanic Garden across the street from the hotel. The garden is a 38 hectare plot containing plants from all over the world, with particular focus on Australia’s native flora. Founded in 1846, it houses the National Herbarium, where active botanic research is still conducted, and has a wide variety of plots including a rose garden, rare and endangered species garden, an Australian forest walk, and a tropical greenhouse.

Block Arcade Interior

After walking the entirety of the garden, I went back to the hotel and then arranged to meet some of my coworkers at Collins Street in the CBD for self-directed walking tour. Collins Street has some cool examples of 19th and 20th century architecture, lots of interesting shops, and the central train station. The first major stop on Collins street was the Block Arcade, a Victorian mall filling with restaurants, tea shops and wicked cool architectural elements. We ate lunch there and wandered around a bit, then continued down the road to the ANZ Gothic Bank, which was closed for the weekend but the exterior was interesting enough.

We passed the Rialto towers, once the tallest building in Australia, now trumped by the Eureka Tower in south Melbourne (more on that in a later post), and ended our half-tour of Collins Street at the Southern Cross train station. At this point I had run out of time for touring since I had to race back to the hotel to change for a concert being held at the nearby King’s Domain park.

I got dressed and dashed over with minutes to spare…only to discover that the concert that I thought was going to start at 5 didn't start until 7. Ugh. It turned out though that because it was a free concert, the stadium had already begun to fill up even at 4:30, so I managed to get a great seat with an inevitable view of the soloist’s hands on the piano. There was blessedly a pre-show concert by an amateur symphony which was... something to keep me entertained for an hour, so there was that. The main event was the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra and local soloist Caroline Almonte performing my favorite Rachmaninoff piece, Piano Concerto no 3. It was not technically perfect, but it was really terrific.

Train Station Illuminated during White Night

It was 8:30 and the sun was starting to set. The main attraction of the day was still yet to come, because that night something really special was happening in the Melbourne CBD. For the second year, Melbourne was hosting something called “White Night,” a huge luminous arts festival that lasts all night and features illuminated buildings, performance art pieces, live music, street food and lots and lots and LOTS of people. Now, I've been in Tokyo at rush hour on a weekday. I've seen crowds where you can barely move for the bodies. This was like nothing I had ever seen before. There were over 500,000 people present at the event, filling the streets of the CBD to watch the lights, see the shows…stay up late together - actually a lot of the motivation was a little confusing since there wasn't *that* much to do, but the energy was great. I was there for about 2 hours, wading through the sea of people to take pictures and briefly hang out with my coworkers. They were going to go on to sing karaoke, an idea which, given the swarm of people, did not appeal to me, so I worked my way back to the apartment, which took upwards of another hour, and passed out.

mmmm...Tentacles

The next day I decided to take it at least a little easier. I spent the first half of the morning editing the photos from the previous day, then I went out with one of my coworkers to Victoria Market, a very large farmer’s and flea market. To be honest, I’m not sure I really got the whole experience from it. We wandered through the deli area and the produce section, ate lunch at the food court and browsed around the flea-market section. It seemed large and practical, albeit not particularly exciting.

After the Market I wandered back south in the CBD, through the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology mini-campus, down through China Town and over to the National Gallery, where I browsed for a few minutes before realizing I was too exhausted to continue staring at artwork from any century. So I went home, did my normal Sunday routine of laundry and video games, then in the evening strolled along the Yarra river until the sun set. Not a bad weekend.
Next week, it’s work again until the weekend, so expect some blog silence for a while. Next weekend we’ll see what adventures are in store!

CBD from the Yarra

Australia Day 2: St Kilda Street Market and Beach

Day 2 in Australia started at around 7:30 am. I slept extremely well and woke up fresh-faced and bright-eyed. The first thing I did was toast some bread and eat my first spreading of Vegemite.

He just smiled and made me
a Vegemite sandwich.

Now, folks who know me know that I recently fell in love with Marmite, Vegemite's lesser known cousin from Great Britain, so I walked into my first Vegemite tasting knowing what I was getting into. First off, Marmite is...gooey, whereas Vegemite is much more akin to Nutella in texture (and also looks like it, but those that confuse the two are in for trouble.) Vegemite tastes less meaty and more bready than Marmite and has a distinctively artificial aftertaste that Marmite doesn't have. I am definitely more partial to Marmite, but it took me a few times to fall in love with Marmite, so maybe Vegemite will be the same. More in the future on that topic...

Coffee shops around here tend to
add cocoa to the top of their drinks
to accent their foam art

After breakfast I went down the gym and ran on the treadmill for 45 minutes, and then came back to the room for second breakfast -- this time some fat-free Greek yogurt with a little plum jam stirred in. By this time it was absolutely pouring outside. My first full day to explore Melbourne, and it's raining cats and dogs. I decided to go down to a cafe nearby for a cappuccino and some Final Fantasy VI on the ol' iPad to wait out the storm. I met my coworker Tony there and finally when the rain subsided we walked to a nearby Woolworth's supermarket to pick up some more room supplies.

I might regret this tomorrow...

On the way there we discovered a huge street market with covered walkways. The market, which was bustling, was composed of clothing vendors, services from barber shops to eyebrow pluckers, and a huge selection of restaurants and meat and seafood vendors. Ah, this was my kind of place. At a fresh seafood vendor, we saw some amazing samples of the local catches including huge crayfish, bay bugs, prawns and oysters. The oysters they were serving right from the storefront on the half-shell, at one AUS dollar per oyster. I couldn't resist. I got some local Coffin Bay oysters and sucked them down right there. Hopefully their ominous name is not a foretelling of my condition tomorrow after eating raw seafood in a street market...I'm sure I'll be fine.

After the elevenses of oysters, I was still hungry. Tony, who is anti-seafood, was voracious. So we bought some grilled burritos stuffed with chicken and headed to Woolworth's.

One odd thing I've run into here in Melbourne is a distinct lack of vermouth in the supermarkets. Two places so far seemed confused as to what vermouth even is. The only type I've been able to find so far is Cinzano Bianco, which is really not very good. Anyway, I bought some sunscreen and a cheap wok, because the hotel only provides one pot which isn't very conducive to cooking much of anything.

Kite surfer catching air

We returned to the hotel and regrouped with the rest of the team to head out to the biggest attraction of the St. Kilda area -- the beach. The beach itself featured a nice big boardwalk with lots of visual..attractions. One of the coolest distractions was the huge number of kite surfers, who use para-sailing style chutes to catch the very prominent winds in the area and surf around the bay.

That's a lota calamari

After a long walk down the beach, we ate at a restaurant just off the beach and then returned to the hotel. It was certainly a long day! I'm still not quite adjusted to the time change, but things are mellowing out. Tomorrow we start our first day at the game studio office, so there won't be as many exciting updates until we get some more free time this weekend.

Stay tuned! I'll write when I can.

Australia Day 0 and Day 1: Travel and First Impressions

Salt Lake Mountains and The SLC->Lax Flight

My trip started around Noon in Salt Lake City. I took the new green trax line directly from downtown Salt Lake to the airport, which was relatively painless and cost two bucks instead of the normal twenty five it costs to take a taxi. After all my boasting about efficient packing methods, I panicked at the last moment and decided to put my bag through baggage instead of dragging it around for my time in the Los Angeles airport -- a decision I would later regret, but more on that later.

The flight from Salt Lake to Los Angeles was short and bumpy and typical. Arrival in Los Angeles was met with the realization that I would be spending the next eight hours in the airport. The large layover gave me time to appreciate the giant suck-salad that is LAX's terminal system. My co-worker Tony put it nicely by saying that LAX is not one big airport, it's eight little airports holding hands. There is no way to get from the domestic terminals to the international without not only leaving security, but literally leaving the building entirely and walking along the sidewalk to another building.

Fancy Digital Screens at Tom Bradley Intl Terminal

LAX's brand new Tom Bradley International Terminal is a thing to behold. Its got all the flash of a upscale mall, all the stores that no one feels particularly comfortable shopping in, giant digital displays showing...world cultural video installations, and a caviar and champagne bar because -- LA.

 I paced around the non-mall for about 3 hours waiting for the rest of my team to show up, and then we had our first food experience of the trip -- Umami Burger. Overpriced, high-concept burgers, flavorful and a bit overwrought. I didn't manage to take any pictures because I was so burned out waiting that I was devoured the social interaction with my coworkers more than I the truffle burger with sweet potato fries. (It was good, so, there you go.)

Fancy Lights in Virgin Australian Flight

 Another 3 or so hours and we finally got on the plane. Ah, Virgin Airlines. I had fond memories of Virgin from my trip to London in 1999, and they didn't disappoint this time either. The jet was huge, new, roomy and clean. The two highlights were the seat to seat chat program that let me and my coworkers chat to each other through the trip and the plane's lighting system, which transitioned between different colors and intensities during the trip to coincide with the sunset, sunrise and sleep cycles.

The flight was 15 hours. If you haven't been on a flight like that, there's no describing it. You get into a zen state of numb anticipation...of waiting, contemplating the various parts of your body going numb, and thinking about when the next meal service is going to be, regardless of the quality. I stayed up until LA time 4 am so I could try to force myself into Australian time. I played a lot of video games, watched some movies, the usual thing.

When we finally *did* land in Melbourne, we had to wait for about 20 minutes on the tarmac for another flight to clear out of our dock. Then we exited into immigration, where we were met with a *monstrous* line that could have easily held us up for 3 hours. Fortunately it was for people that didn't have our lovely modern chip-based passports and we got to subvert the entire process and walk right through to baggage claim.

Baggage claim. Damn the words. People that know me know that I don't normally put bags through baggage claim at all. It's a torturous process waiting for the bags to come tumbling down the chute one at a time, and somehow, against all the odds, your bag is always the very last one, isn't it? I know It sounds like hyperbole, but this very thing happened to me this time. I decided to check my bag because I didn't want to drag it around LAX. It was the *LAST* bag to come down the belt, on a flight with hundreds and hundreds of bags. Ryan, I say\id to myself -- that was the last time. Never, ever again.

My coworkers and I shared a cab to St. Kilda, the beach-side neighborhood of Melbourne's central business district where both the hotel and the game studio at we are training are located. The hotel is the Seasons Botanic Gardens, so named because it is located across the street from the Melbourne Royal Botanic Garden.

Shrine of Remembrance in St. Kilda

In an effort to stay up, I walked over to the Botanic Garden and the Shrine of Remembrance, Melbourne's tribute to Victoria's fallen solders of WWI. Since the shrine is a 2 minute walk from the hotel, chances are I'll be taking a lot of pictures of it . Also I'll try to explain more about it when I'm a bit more rested and I can do some research.

This blog entry is the last brain-flexing activity I will do today. I feel like I've been up for 48 hours, and considering how well I slept on the plane, that might be close to accurate. I have my photo editing software on my laptop, so I'll be posting images more as I go this time.

Pre-trip Round-Up: Australia 2014

Hello readers, few and far between! I'm excited to report that I've been given the opportunity to travel to Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, for a six week business trip. This means a few things:

Thing one is that I get to check off another continent on my tally! All I've got left is Africa and Antarctica.

Thing two, which may be obvious by this post, is that I'll be updating my travel blog again! Huzzah! The format is probably going to be a bit different this time around. I won't have a lot of time during the week to actually see anything; I'll be working. Most of my explorations are going to be during the weekends. I'll also have time to edit photos during the trip, so I'll try to keep my galleries more current and not have a giant image dump at the end that I can't keep up with.

Here's what I know so far about Melbourne, where I'll be spending a majority of the trip:

It's the second largest city in Australia. The "cultural capital of Australia", Melbourne is a city drenched in art: film, impressionism, TV production, street art, and Australian rules football...which we'll call an art form for the sake of this list.

It is a busy sea port and the closest ferry point to Tasmania (which I haven't decided whether or not is worth the 11 hour boat trip to get to just yet.) It also has a pretty excellent public transportation network.

It is hot in the Summer (heat waves bring it up around 100*F) which is when I will be going, though technically it is part of the Australian temperate zone. Summer in Australia technically runs from December to February with Fall coming in March to May.

Australian food culture is a bit of a cultural fry-up. Of course there is the ubiquitous "Vegemite" (whose British cousin "Marmite" I am currently having a torrid love affair with), and Australians are indeed known for grilling things (I'm trying to avoid being aggressively stereotypical here.) But Melbourne is quite eclectic in its food culture. While it inherits a lot of dishes from the British Empire (meat pies are national treasure, as well as fish and chips), it also receives a great deal of influence from immigrant cultures, specifically Middle Eastern and western European cuisine -- particularly to that category, Italian and French.

That's enough summing up Melbourne for the time being as there will be plenty of time for that during the trip. A few details for those that care. I'll be flying out on Virgin Airways from Salt Lake City to Los Angeles this Thursday. After a brutal 7 and a half hour layover in LAX, I and several of my coworkers will travel from Los Angeles to Melbourne, a nearly 18 hour flight. During said flight, we will cross the magical IDL, and be teleported forward in time 24 hours. So we leave on Thursday evening and arrive on Saturday afternoon.

For my east coast friends, the time difference (without taking the day change into account) is -8 hours. Or if you want use real math, its +16 hours total. So if it's noon on Friday in Orlando, it's 4am on Saturday in Melbourne. So...be careful when you call me, please.

I have a thing when I do these trips, where I post a map of my travel plans. In this case, it's pretty straight forward...

Only 3 days to go! Stay Tuned!

Bratislava and More from Vienna -- Photo Gallery

Hey, remember when I went on that trip in August of last year? I never finished editing/posting the pictures from that. Here's the next set, from Bratislava and our last day in Vienna.

Germany-Austria-Slovakia 2012 -- Vienna Part 2 and Bratislava