Long Weekend, Sydney Part I

Victoria has a public holiday last weekend for for Labour Day and the Moomba Festival. Melbourne must be the only place in the world which officially celebrates a festival which means "up your arse" in the local indigenous vernacular. On Saturday night attended an amusing Velvet Goldmine themed-party hosted by severina_242 and _zombiemonkey. It was a relatively small gathering, but people where in very good spirits. The following day ran an episode of 7th Sea, involving a complex murder mystery which had some of my players rather stumped and ended with one of the main suspects also being killed. Following day caught up with Angela D., who is visiting for a short time from Norfolk Island; after dinner went to her 53rd story apartment which does have some pretty decent views over Melbourne. In between all this have been working on the paper for THETA 2015 on Software Tools Compared To User Education in High Performance Computing.

Arrived in Sydney this afternoon for training of researchers at the University of Sydney in the next two weeks. Staying at the not-so salubrious Macleay Lodge, which is very well positioned, inexpensive, and comfortable enough to someone used to sleeping rough. Despite my many visits to Sydney, the area is one which I am less than familiar with, so took an opportunity to familiarise myself with Potts Point, Elizabeth Bay, and Woolloomooloo; the latter really should have a university campus and a department of philosophy as per the classic skit (although aspects of it haven't dated that well of course). The area is quite beautiful in many ways, lovely old buildings of excellent quality and design, high density but with plenty of foliage and parkland, meandering streets, etc. Hoping to catch up with a number of people and have arranged a dinner at Opium Den on Saturday evening.