Day 99: Hello Melbourne...

Day 99: (14 Mar) So barely asleep before I'm up again to catch the early flight. Lucky I'm an earlybird by default. Travelling outside my usual timezone presents its own challenge for this exercise. Do I stick with 6.12am Brisbane time, or 6.12 wherever I am? Ah, whatever. 

Leaving on a jetplane, etc

At the airport by 4.30am though there's a bit of time to kill but no coffee places open at that time. Of course, that can mean only one thing...aeroplane coffee in about an hour's time. Oh well. Still, there are a few of the early morning tweeps up and about at that time so some interesting exchanges at hat hour with @Chasseur06, @Aquapuppy (living a fascinating new mum's life in Germany) and @shelleylloydabc, busy preparing news bulletins, but never too busy to engage with us online. No wonder 612ABC is winning... 

I spend a bit of time at airports and there is a sameness about them across the world really. Rather than find this boring, I am in fact, intrigued at this mechanism the modern world has developed to shuttle people and goods around the world. I particularly marvel at this at conference time...the way the people from near and far manage to converge on one place at a particular point in time. I'll see this in action again next month in Chicago...

Reading on board, at 6.12am

On board and it's a smooth take-off and time to read the notes for the meeting, at 6.12am (OK, Brisbane time, even though we were over NSW but I hadn't changed my watch)...breakfast as well, back to the small bottles of milk with cereal, bit impractical and always too much left over. Always glad I'm a contented reader...can read, will read, anything, anywhere. 

There's a delay in the landing time because the air is thick with planes apparently. It is also the weekend of the Melbourne Grand Prix...oh, crowded city. I don't mind really, as someone who grew up around racetracks watching my uncle, car racing (like my love of a particular code of football, and a particular team) is one of those unreconstructed moments of my past that people find, well, interesting. (I've also spent the flight down sitting next to Collingwood supporters so, you know, there is that 'we-feeling' for being fans of our respective codes most-hated teams...should've worn my maroon and white.)

Dinner, Italian style, at 6.12pm
Melbourne time, in...>

Many envy my not infrequent trips to Melbourne...they think shopping, shows, eating etc. For me it is just always work...taxi from the airport, direct to the office followed by a walk to the hotel and then back in the morning for day two (or three, as the case may be) and then taxi to the airport. My Queensland colleague and I did seek to vary things a little this time with a bit of a stroll around the hotel precinct since we had some time. Dinner at a restaurant in one of those lanes that Brisbane is trying so hard to emulate in places. And so it was that at 6.12pm, Melbourne time we enjoyed a pleasant meal in an Italian restaurant...most pleasant. Then back to the hotel where, despite my best intentions, the forty winks from the night before caught up and overtook any plans to keep working. 

Ready for day 100, a milestone of sorts! 

...a lovely Melbourne laneway,
by Flinders St Station