{"id":181,"date":"2009-02-21T03:43:17","date_gmt":"2009-02-21T02:43:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.morbidcornflakes.ch\/thduggies_blog\/?p=181"},"modified":"2009-03-08T19:22:55","modified_gmt":"2009-03-08T18:22:55","slug":"three-weeks-of-separation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/2009\/three-weeks-of-separation","title":{"rendered":"Three weeks of separation"},"content":{"rendered":"

Australia:<\/p>\n

Only Brisbane this time.\u00c2\u00a0 Arrival at about 11pm.\u00c2\u00a0 The taxi driver who took me to my hotel said his business was down about 30% due to people travelling less.\u00c2\u00a0 One thing’s for sure: the economic crisis provides a universal topic of conversation.\u00c2\u00a0 The Grand Chancellor is overrated and overpriced.\u00c2\u00a0 Never have I written as many critical comments on the comment card.\u00c2\u00a0 Good thing I only stayed there two nights and then moved to Mark’s house.<\/p>\n

I spent two days with our distributors getting to know new people, showing them our system, and visiting customers with it.\u00c2\u00a0 They had organized two presentations at the main universities in Brisbane – a good start and an efficient use of time.<\/p>\n

The weekend at Mark’s consisted of a fabulous outing to the Noosa headlands, a church service at the Sherwood Uniting Church<\/a> where his mother preached, and noontime in the city and South Bank with Mark’s sister.\u00c2\u00a0 Brisbane was hot, but not as hot as I had feared, and I feel like with a little more time there would have been plenty more to do.<\/p>\n

\"Flat
\nFlat Stanley digs Noosa.<\/p>\n

New Zealand:<\/p>\n

We flew into Auckland on Sunday evening and spent the night near the airport.\u00c2\u00a0 Monday we drove down to Rotorua and set up our booth.\u00c2\u00a0 The drive and its vistas made me want to see more of the country, but a visit every other year is about as much as is reasonable given the market size.\u00c2\u00a0 If only we could sell microscopes to sheep!\u00c2\u00a0 One of the little towns we passed, Tirau,\u00c2\u00a0seemed to be the corrugated sheet capital of the country, with most signs and several domestic fixtures made of corrugated iron<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Rotorua announces itself by gentle wafts of sulphurous (IUPAC: sulfurous) odors.\u00c2\u00a0 Your eggs could go off in this town and you’d put it down to the local air.\u00c2\u00a0 The upside is a plethora of spas and baths, of which\u00c2\u00a0I tried the Polynesian Spa, a bit expensive indeed but ever so enjoyable late at night after a day at the booth and a big dinner.\u00c2\u00a0 Of course, it’s not Japanese style, so now my bathing suit reeks of sulfur.<\/p>\n

The conference once again distinguished itself by its aura of familiarity.\u00c2\u00a0 This is indeed a small, tight, and friendly microscopy community, a group of people excited about microscopy and happy to hang out with fellow microscopists, wherever they may be from.\u00c2\u00a0 As usual, I have a photo of dancing microscopists.<\/p>\n

\"Dancing
\nDancing Microscopists in Rotorua.<\/p>\n

On Thursday we had the afternoon off and headed down to Wai-o-tapu, where\u00c2\u00a0the local geological instabilities reminded me of\u00c2\u00a0just how fragile our earthly existence is and what a\u00c2\u00a0mercy it is to be sustained day by day.<\/p>\n

\"Mud
\nThe mud pots.<\/p>\n

\"The
\nThe Champagne Pool.<\/p>\n

\"Rock
\nWai-o-tapu has a mind of its own.<\/p>\n

\"Champagne
\nMore from the Champagne Pool.<\/p>\n

The next day it was up early and off to the Rotorua airport.\u00c2\u00a0 This is an airport where the planes taxi up the runway, u-turn at the end, and then take off along the same runway.\u00c2\u00a0 My plane was a 19-seat Beechcraft 1900D, and I was seated in the second row and therefore got to watch the pilots all the way.\u00c2\u00a0 Here’s a picture of us landing.<\/p>\n

\"Landing
\nLanding at Auckland Airport with a Beech 1900D.<\/p>\n

See how the plane’s longitudinal axis is not at all parallel to the runway?<\/p>\n

I haven’t yet transferred many pictures from Japan to my computer – most are still on my camera – but here’s one that also is the quiz of this post: What is in the below bag?<\/p>\n

\"Mystery
\nMystery Accessory.<\/p>\n

More later – going home now.\u00c2\u00a0 It’s about time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Australia: Only Brisbane this time.\u00c2\u00a0 Arrival at about 11pm.\u00c2\u00a0 The taxi driver who took me to my hotel said his business was down about 30% due to people travelling less.\u00c2\u00a0 One thing’s for sure: the economic crisis provides a universal topic of conversation.\u00c2\u00a0 The Grand Chancellor is overrated and overpriced.\u00c2\u00a0 Never have I written as many critical comments on the comment card.\u00c2\u00a0 Good thing I only stayed there two nights and then moved to Mark’s house. I spent two days with our distributors getting to know new people, showing them our system, and visiting customers with it.\u00c2\u00a0 They had organized two presentations at the main universities in Brisbane – a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,8,10,6,14],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=181"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/181\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=181"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=181"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thduggie.com\/thduggies_blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=181"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}