On Sunday I’ll be going to Melbourne. I consider reading material to be an essential part of my travel inventory, and normally, by this time I would be seriously pondering what book to bring with me for the trip. It’s a lot more difficult than you would think. The book has to be interesting enough that I will be happy to pick it up at the end of a long day. Ideally, it has to be of the perfect length to last me the entire trip. If I am currently reading something, I either have to finish it before I go so I can take something fresh with me, or it has to be long enough to last the entire trip. It can’t be bulky or heavy.
This time however I will have lots to read while away:
- Doctor Thorne by Anthony Trollope (currently reading, may be finished by Sunday)
- Framley Parsonage by Anthony Trollope (next book in the Barchester series after Dr Thorne)
- Can you forgive her? by Anthony Trollope (first in the Palliser series)
- Jasper Jones by Craig Silvey
- Unknown by Mari Jungstedt
- Four Kate Wilhelm detective novels. FOUR!
- The Tale of Genji by Murasaki Shikibu (Royall Tyler translation)
- Assorted journal articles
Such variety! And the best part, all of this on the one device, the iPad. (I do still wish I had my Kobo, but what’s that pithy saying for these sorts of situations? “First World Problems”!)
You might look at the list and wonder if I am just going to Melbourne to READ. The reality is that I will probably only have time to read on the plane. The rest of the time I will be attending a two-day seminar, and catching up with some of my Melbourne PLN. I’m looking forward to it!
Leaving for Aurora today. Spending tonight in Sydney at jadedlotus’s. Canberra and Thredbo tomorrow. Looking forward to meeting Kate next week.
I don’t know how much blogging I’ll manage to do while I’m away, but I do intend to write when I can. We’ll see if there’s anything worth transcribing into electronic format.
Five things I am grateful for:
- sunrise. My favourite time of day.
- the mobile phone. I left my phone home yesterday and boy was it inconvenient not being able to quickly send an SMS! I kept telling myself to reflect on the fact that the mobile-phoneless-state is how I lived for most of my life and I was fine…
- air travel. I know I complain about cattle class and how uncomfortable plane seats are, but it would take so much longer to get places without planes.
- chai latte
- hugs.
Auckland:
City has a nice feel. I was quite surprised how close New Zealand is to the east coast. The flight over only took 3 hours or so. (Sydney is closer to Auckland than it is to Perth - Perth to Sydney normally takes about 5 hours!)
Hilly. Some streets are quite steep (good exercise) walking around.
Many interesting buildings – combination of old and new.
Lots of Asian restaurants in central Auckland - Japanese, Korean, Indian. We had a very nice vegetarian thali at a nice restaurant called Rasoi, on K’Road. K’Road is a long road in the city. We asked someone on the street if there was a supermarket nearby where we could buy a few groceries – she gave us directions to “Kay Road”. We walked and walked and when we weren’t sure if we were going in the right direction, asked another passer-by, who said we were indeed going in the right direction – for Karangahape Road – K’Road, of course!
Burger King is Burger King in Auckland – not Hungry Jack’s.
The hotel:
TripAdvisor has some really bad reviews for the hotel we’re staying in, but I don’t think it’s bad as some others have found it. When we checked in we were given a room with two beds, and we’ve now been moved to a larger room – a room with two separate bedrooms. It’s clean and pleasant enough, if not particularly inspiring. The staff are… interesting, shall we say. I’m not sure how I would describe their attitudes, except perhaps to say that they are not falling over themselves to be helpful. It’s also very centrally located, and just down the road from the conference venue, which is good.
There’s wireless access here in the hotel, which is available at a quite reasonable NZ$40/1gb/week, but unfortunately it is somewhat flakey (technical term). There doesn’t seem to be much free wireless around the city, which is a pity.
I haave some photos but I don’t know if I want to use up all my bandwidth - might try and upload the shots using the conference terminals tomorrow.
