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Sunday, 19 September 2004

Australia

If you’re wondering where the promised travel stories from Melbourne got to, you’ll have to wait a bit longer; other events overtook me.

Right after I got there, Anitra (still here) was bit by a spider (an ironic thing to happen to an Australian expat) and had to go to the emergency room, because all sorts of unpleasant things were happening. Since I was overseas and we don’t have any family nearby, it was a bit touch-and-go for a while, until our lovely friend Angie came over and helped out.

Meanwhile, in Melbourne, I got a cold, presumably from my nephew Brendan, but it developed into something much worse, with a fever and a nice helping of lethargy to boot. When I got home, it only became worse, so last night we went to the same emergency room as Anitra did last week, to find out that I have pneumonia. Lovely. As a bonus, Charlie is throwing up this morning, so he’s off to the weekend doctor as I type this.

Needless to say, this has all made it difficult to write entertaining travel blog entries. However, I was still able to see a lot of family and friends, and visit one of my favourite places in the world. I’ll work on the Opinionated Guide to Travel in Australia soon, but I need some rest first. In the meantime, a few tidbits:

• Federation Square turned out really well, and I take back what I said about it previously. It’s a really good public space.
• In Fed Square, we visited ACMI, which had a really amazing 20-foot projection of Peter Murphy’s Panoramic VR Weblog. Well worth checking out.
• After I shared my thoughts on the current state of WS-*, the kind folks at the University of Melbourne gave me a demonstration run through their Grid labs. The coolest and simplest was Alchemi, an Excel plug-in that lets you harness a Grid (Enterprise or Global) to perform macro calculations.
• My new favourite television show: John Safran vs. God. Episode three is a gem; until the DVD is out, most are available as torrents. Needless to say, you’d never see this on TV in the states.