Saturday, August 2, 2008

Australia: Day 1

Arrived here, at 730 AM local time on Saturday (lost a whole day in the plane). Made it through customs, waited in line for a cab, arrived at my hotel to find a room not ready for me. So I stashed my luggage and went in search of friendly faces. Found Kelly, then Mark, then the other Mark. We worked on the course some, caught up, then went for beers. There we ran into Greg, the SETAC director, and Jeff and Matt wandered up to the table. I love how you can be in a completely foreign place, and when SETAC is happening, all you have to do is grab a beer, and friends will find you.

We went on an expedition to find the Sydney Fish Market, and scored big time. We saw lots of new underwater creatures, found a couple of bottles of wine and ate some of our new friends. It was the best meal I could have imagined.


Then on the way back to the hotels, we happened across a pub, went in to make some new friends. Next thing we know, the bar is packed and the people are going crazy. Unknowingly, we had stumbled into a pub just before the start of a huge game: New Zealand v. Australia Rugby! It would be like finding yourself in a bar right before the SuperBowl started in the US. Awesome. We couldn't stick around for all of it, but NZ won. Probably wasn't a happy place to be at the end.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Have a great time!!!!! Looking forward to reading the rest of the posts.

Anonymous said...

We miss you!