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On Sunday I caught up with Anthony L and Robin M, for our semi-regular dinner and was quite delighted when they pulled out a couple of old bottles (from 1998) from Kirwan's Bridge Winery. More than 20 years ago, I created a website for the winery (now sold off, sadly) and received a crate of plonk for my efforts, the final bottles being quaffed more than 10 years ago. The 1998 bottles were past their best, but still very drinkable. A credit to wine, the company, and the people who kept it in careful storage! Perhaps in this way, aging red wines and red people are similar.

Hot on the heels of the visit to the Pharoah Exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, the last few days have witnessed a couple of delvings into the dramatic arts. On Tuesday Erica H., came to visit and we went to the Malthouse Theatre (located five minutes walk away) to see "Macbeth (An Undoing)", scoring some pretty decent seats. It was quite a clever re-writing focussing mainly on Lady Macbeth as less of a villain and more of an opportunist. The rotating stage really worked well, creating the illusion of the many rooms of a Scottish castle, whilst the performers took the opportunity to break the fourth wall a few times. It was really quite an excellent performance.

Finally, last night Ruby and I ventured out to one of my favourite haunts, the Astor Theatre, to see Yorgos Lanthimos' latest work,
"Kinds of Kindness". This was a challenging and often gruesome triptych with more than a dash of magical realism, and thematically orientated around control and violence. It is certainly not to everyone's taste by any stretch of the imagination, but I'm quite happy to see disturbing films - or series for that matter - in a completely different subject, Erica H., and I smashed our way through "Baby Reindeer" in a single sitting, a rather tragic and painful tale which is full of wrong decisions by all parties.

Anyway, I'm composing all this at Melbourne Airport about to board a flight to Bali for several days. Lara D., has organised a small party of six to actually have a real holiday where we put work and Australian life on the backburner for just a short period of time. Whilst I am a bit of a seasoned traveller to the island, it has been several years since I've put foot on the place. I suspect that I will certainly. visiting my old haunts in Sanur and Ubud. Holiday time!
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It's been a few days of wine-based events, starting with the South American Masterclass on Friday at Union House, featuring samples from Chile, Argentina, and Brazil. There was nothing particularly terrible or spectacular about the selection, with a fair glera and a reasonable malbec. However this pales in comparison with the wine tour we took over the weekend as the Westralian side of the family are visiting. With a small and personalised tour to the small vineyards of Mornington peninsula, we dropped into the Paringa, Panton, Pier 10, and had a pretty substantial lunch at Merricks General Wine Store. Half on taste, half on sympathy, we picked up a few bottles, the relentless laws of economies of scale and capital development will the doom of almost all such places over time - and the success of one or two. Tonight we finished with a dinner at Long Grain.

Still, it hasn't been all play over the past few days. Prior the dinner I gave a guest lecture on the Spartan HPC system to the masters-level course ENGR90024 Computational Fluid Dynamics. More significantly, I've been asked to join the development of an International HPC Certification Program with HPC educators from the University of Reading, Universität Hamburg, and Université de Versailles Saint-Quentin, and others. At the moment it is all very nascent with but a poster presentation for the Frankfurt International Supercomputing Conference and a mailing list, but from such small acorns mighty oaks can grow. It is not as if there isn't sufficient demand for such a group and whilst there have been attempts in the past, if they get PRACE onside that will make a great deal of difference.
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Took the silver bird to Western Australia on Friday for the niece's wedding, watching Love is Strange and Automata. The former did well to elucidate the destructive effects of discriminatory employment practices. The latter had a good premise and deriving from a number of near-future sf films, didn't quite deliver. Getting off at Perth, turned on Ingress to discover that my home portals had been smashed just as was taking the taxi to the airport. It was particularly disappointing as a number of them were at 85-plus days, including one at 89 days. Given that there is a guardian badge at 90 days, which would have given me the criteria to get level 15, it was a little annoying to say the least. The charitable side of me wants to believe that the surprise attack was not the result of a screenscraper, as that would constitute cheating.

Initially staying in [personal profile] caseopaya's mother's house in the southern suburb of Kwinana and went to the Rockingham foreshore for dinner. This has changed significantly since my childhood. Once very much a fringe suburb of beach shacks and campsites, it is now very much mainstream suburbia with modernist mansions overlooking the sea. Of course the facilities are much improved but it has certainly lost a great deal of its isolated charm. On the following day made our way to the Yallingup Forest Resort taking accommodation in a pleasant chalet surrounded by bushland, which includes some very friendly magpies.

Shortly after arrival joined a tour of some of the other guests a few local wineries and breweries (there's apparently around 125 in the Margaret River region). None were particularly astounding, although we picked up a reasonable limette at Happs and a good tampranillo at Hay Shed. Lunch was at a local brewery, Bootleg, which had good food and setting, although the beers were very uninteresting. I certainly could have done without the ignorant old white man at the lunch table trying to tell me how much better the aborigines had it before equal rights. It is interesting that I have never in all my years heard an indigenous person say such a thing.

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Diary of a B+ Grade Polymath

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