The A/C at the Victoria Hotel isn’t up to snuff, at least not in my room.  It blows with a tender, soothing sound of distant seashores, impervious to the controls on it, and with all the raw power of a man trying to blow a tuft of cotton across a table without puffing up his cheeks. 

So I think of my apartment at home and what it’s like in summer and will answer any questions about my hotel room as follows: “It’s better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick.” 

I spent my first day checking e-mail, calling a friend, and eating dinner with Tim and Viv Davey and their two beautiful daughters.  We had a barbie, which means barbecue, not an über-endowed plastic doll, and pear-and-plumb crumble with vanilla ice cream.  More importantly, we caught up on what’s been happening in the last three years, how our gray hairs have increased, how being a Jedi master requires dedication and sacrifice, and how a Padowan’s apprenticeship can be difficult.  I learned that Caitlin was Alice that day, but would be Caitlin again the next.  It was heartwarming to hear Caitlin/Alice answer my question if she liked Isobel with “I lovver” and see in the course of the evening how she dotes on her little sister. 

Today I met with a contact and visited the RMIT for a laboratory tour.  It was cool to see the instrumentation and less cool to know that none of it was ours.  We’d have good stuff to supplement it! 

In the afternoon, before meeting with other contacts, I went opal shopping and met with success, but the details I must shroud in mystery.  We went out to dinner on Lygon street at Da Mattina’s, where I had a Moreton Bay Bug.  Dennis never told us why they’re called bugs, but who cares, when they taste great and come with a nice cool Sauvignon blanc with a Stelvin cap.  Dennis recommended the Bundaberg rum, because it’s supposed to have a smoky, woody taste, so back at the hotel after too much food I walked to the nearest bottle shop and bought a 50ml-bottle of Bundaberg.  It’s rum, it burns, it doesn’t hardly taste at all.  But that experiment only cost $5.00. 

What’s really expensive are the half-liter bottles of soda or water at the convenience stores.  Three dollars a pop – twice as much as in Japan! 

And while I’m on a roll, let me complain about the Kimberly-Clarke toilet paper dispensers at the Sydney and Melbourne airports.  Whoever suggested that all a person needs is an 8×4 rectangle of diaphanous EZ-rip material ought to be condemned to lifelong deprivation of decent toilet paper, if the Geneva conventions allow for that.  (Incidentally, if they do, perhaps the US could use that as a information extraction technique to replace waterboarding.)