Weekend in Norwich and the Broads

The Red Lion, Norwich: possibly the most English of English riverside pubs we've seen.

Canoeing on the Broads outside Roxton.

Mid-canoeing lunch (before the food arrived).

Amsterdam

A surprisingly classy hotel room for the conference on Wednesday (my unmade bed notwithstanding). Shame there was no time to see the city.

Cyprus holiday

View from Kourion's annexe of Eusolios looking over Episkopi bay.

A non-Roman holiday

Photos from an amazing trip are over here.

I also have tales of random madness involving bicycle maintenance and more serious thoughts on international law I might get round to blogging soon.

In the meantime, here's a photo from Cinque Terre ...

Fun in the sun in France

So Monday I got back from five glorious days in the South of France. I won’t bore you with too many details, just photos.

The basic day consisted of rising around 10 for a breakfast of fruit, yoghurt bread and honey. We'd then leave the house at the crack of noon, and zip off to stand in a ruined Cathar fortress on a mountain ridge for a bit, going “Oooh, pretty.”

This was usually followed shortly by, “Right. Where shall we go for lunch?”

This in turn lead to several hours of eating far too much and washing it down with litres of Rosé, before crawling home for a nap and a late cheese-platter dinner.

It was great to see Beth, Peter and Jasmine and Clay in particular was an absolute legend for doing all the driving. This really was the neglected Southeast of France where doing anything definitely required a car.

In fact, we were so far off the backpacker and American tourist trail that the village where we stayed wasn’t even listed in Wikipedia or google!

The low tourist population was probably just as well, as few of the ruins we went to seemed very strict about safety. You knew something had to be really dangerous if anyone had bothered to install a hand-rail, safety fence or warning sign.

My French even held up to a conversation with an old guy in the markets at Narbonne about what a nice hat I was wearing. There’s even a photo of me in it over here.

The only downside was I couldn’t find anywhere to check my bags for my last solo day in Perpignan before my Ryanair flight home, and lugging them around felt rather heavy – especially when I was also probably carrying some surplus food. I must’ve eaten eight days worth of food in five …

Oh Canada!

Presently in Vancouver, staying with M and K. I arrived at the end of quite a long journey that started at 5 am in Philadelphia (or 2 am Vancouver time) and ended with getting into Vancouver on a bus from Seattle airport after 6 pm. Much cheaper, though much longer, to cross the border by land if you can afford the time.

Other than catching up with old friends, indigenous art has featured pretty high on the agenda. The Anthropology Museum has an astonishing collection of memorial (ie burial) boxes, door posts, potlach masks and totem poles. The symbolic depictions of real and mythical animals are enormously striking. Also, fortunately for my white middle-class guilt complex, they seem to have a very healthy relationship with the local first nations at the Museum; so these artefacts are largely voluntarily placed with the museum, not a monument to looting.

I've also rapidly come to appreciate Vancouver fashion sense. It rains a fair bit here and winter is long. Aboout 97% of people outdoors are wearing jeans and sneakers and either a North Face fleece or a waterproof jacket of some desciption. The other 3% are wearing jeans, black boots or slip-on leather shoes/clogs and a quilted jacket.

No wonder everyone can pick me a mile off as "visiting" in my jeans with (shock!) a red wool jumper and tan linen jacket.

Still, M and me were mistaken for a gay couple methinks by a couple of private gallery owners when we were wandering around town this afternoon. Quite amusing to be treated as serious potential buyers. Especially on my income.

Philadelphia

My time in Philly was also brief, but well spent. Major highlights of my stay with Im the archaeologist were the local Art Museum and the Liberty Bell centre. Sorry, "center". The Musuem is a gobsmackingly impressive pile built along late-Roman empire lines, with a healthy dose of ziggurat thrown in for good measure.

The main foyer looks like the steps could comfortably lead off to an area reserved for human sacrifice, but is dominated by a huge sculpture of Artemis (or Diana or some other Roman goddess with a bow) who apparently used to be a weather vane. Weighing, I would guess, a good half a tonne. Always important to know from which direction your hurricane-force winds are blowing.

In a lovely counterpoint, a huge white Alexander Calder sculpture hung from the ceiling. I dragged Im through the French Impressionists, she gave me the medieval high-lights tour and showed me where bits of Thai and Chinese temples, along with European monastic courtyards and Japanese tea-houses, had been artfully reassembled. (Hurrah for looting!).

The Liberty Bell exhibit was really well thought through, and a good introduction to the history of the object. Among other things, I learned that it was only renamed the "Liberty" Bell when its symbolism was taken up by the anti-slavery movement.

It also struck me, for the first time, that the opening paragraphs of the declaration of independence are actually a brilliant exposition of the principle of self-determination at international law as we now understand it. (Well, more or less.) Hardly surprising, given that it was drafted by so many lawyers.

Right, nap time.

Taking international law on the road

Spring had finally sprung in Cambridge on the Thursday of week before last. I could cycle without gloves and beanie, the daffodils were out and so, increasingly, was the sun.

What a fool I was to think that was Spring.

I'm currently blogging from a front porch in Washington DC, where it's been positively balmy since I arrived. Sunny, 20 degrees plus, and blossom on all the trees. There has been one - ONE! - cloudy day in the week since I arrived.

I need to move back to a warmer climate.

Anyway, blogging has been interrupted by the madcap antics of the American Society of International Law annual conference and my research trip. Okay, so "madcap antics" really doesn't describe ASIL.

Like any conference there were amazing, stimulating and thought provoking panels; and those that left you asking: "How the hell did you get invited to speak?"

I also had a great two-hour meeting at the State Department today about international fisheries law. (Tomorrow I talk about drug smuggling with the Coast Guard.)

Still, the real experience has been staying with friends in Washington DC's north-west. Over here, near T and 5th, my hosts are among a gentrification influx. The neighborhood around has a fine heritage, but not perhaps the best track-record on safety and criminal behavior. (One of my hosts has been mugged, late at night, on his own doorstep).

Basically, when walking around here you're liable to be the lone white guy: certainly a different feeling for me to be part of a visible minority. Once you cross 13th street though, the racial balance visibly shifts - and by the time you hit Georgetown, there are almost no black faces.

Still, even as the hopelessly naive gangly white guy off to a conference or meetings in a tie and suit jacket, I've felt quite at ease. Everyone is terribly friendly and helpful.

Okay, a nasty storm is breaking. Time to take this indoors and off-line.

Blogging will be pretty erratic over the next two weeks. Next stop: Philadelphia!

So, where the hell have I been? (If you even noticed I was away … )

I’ve been remiss, certainly: but the last two weeks has been a non-stop travel extravaganza. I’ve been in Switzerland, Oxford, London and the Peaks District in just under two weeks.

Executive summary (it's a long post)

Switzerland was cold, wet and less full of Swiss people than one might expect (admittedly, I was in Geneva, which is 50% foreigners).

I was in Oxford for a Friday afternoon, and found it pleasant enough that I may have to go back for a weekend, despite it being “The Other Place” and having backed the King in the Civil War.

Then a quick weekend in London with Peter and Jasmine, my tirelessly hospitable hosts in the metropolis, before heading off for three days of hostelling in the hilly bit of England.

Geneva

Friday 16 September I set off for a weekend in Geneva, pretty much straight from presenting a paper at a conference in Cambridge. I was greeted at the airport by my host (an Australian buddy from the LLM who works in – wait for it – international law), and was swept off to drink wine in a funky little bar.

Not sure what I was expecting of Geneva. It felt like most of the place was erected out of concrete in the 1970s. Or maybe it was just that my host lived in the student quarter. Saturday we tootled round the Romanesque/Gothic confection of the Cathédral Saint Pierre, had lunch at a café and in the face of flaying wind went shopping. (Yes, I found bargains in Geneva). I then went to a fun party of ex-pat Anglophones in what would have seemed a big flat, had it not contained about 40 people.

Geneva is apparently dead on a Sunday, so we headed up to a wine festival in the little village of Roussin with some of my host’s Red Cross buddies. We drank wine, ate sausage and watched a gloriously amateurish parade of oompah-bands from villages in the district, followed by little floats principally stocked with sombre-faced Swiss kids in costume.

In a very me moment, I got lost on the way to the train station on Monday, and so wound up jumping in a cab (“l’aeroport, s’il vous plait!”) to prevent a repeat of my Edinburgh easyjet non-departure.

Oxford and London

Friday 23rd I had a chance to have a discussion with a senior law of the sea academic in Oxford.

Bizarrely, there is no train from Cambridge to Oxford (though there is, apparently, a line that was last used in the war). The options are to spend a freak-load of cash and make a two-hour train trip going into London transferring from Kings Cross to Paddington and heading out again; to spend even more and fly "Don Air"; or spending a fiver and getting an epic three-hour, stopping all villages, bus.

Poverty won over common sense, but at least it was a chance to catch up on some reading.

The interview went well, Oxford was pretty (when it stopped raining on me) and has some amazing vintage clothing stores, and I had an agreeable time drinking with friends of my sister’s.

Then off on a bus to London Friday night. Saturday was a whirlwind social round catching up with my Australian lawyer friends for lunch or drinks, before a late train home to Cambridge so I could catch a visiting former flatmate for breakfast on Sunday.

Peaks District

Then, earlier this week, I was away Monday through Wednesday at a youth hostel in Edale, in the peaks district, for outdoor activities with 100 new scholars from my funding body.

Predictably, I managed to take a seat on the bus leaving Cambridge directly in front of an Australian lawyer, who’d been to the same law school, worked at the same firm and was at the Sydney Federal Court while I was at the Fed in Melbourne.

Unlike the uber-adventure-activity mistress Marissa, I opted for the soft (if occasionally damp) elective activities such as raft-building, canoeing and hill-walking over high ropes and caving. My height of adventure was a 40 minute walk through darkened cow fields to the pub (not without its risks!) and badly bruising one finger near the tip when I got it caught in a three-strand chain bridge and then fell off arse-backwards into the woodchips during a “team-building” exercise.

Now I’m back in the ‘Bridge, panicking about my state of readiness for supervising undergraduates, and reflecting on the alarming fact that half the new Masters students in college appear to be 12.

Scariest recent moment ...

I held the gate at Wychfield open for a newly arriving couple. After some pleasantries, I introduced myself.

“I’m Doug,” I said, honestly enough.

“Do you have a blog called courting disaster?” asked he.

Ye gods.

Forever departing

I can't believe I've been home four weeks and blogged so little, and now I'm leaving with so many things I'd like to set down before I head off, and precious little time. Unfortunately, the free web access at Sydney airport is playing up so I'll have to keep it brief.

In contrast to the mad flurry of seeing people and hopping between cities that was September, I kept this trip back to Oz simple. I think it was the best thing - I'd said my goodbyes for the coming three years, and it was great to have the time with family and old school friends.

In some ways, with one term of the PhD under my belt, everyone's support this trip back has strangely meant more than it did only a few months ago. My family in particular, have been lovely.

Still, in some ways the great joy of the trip has been spending blocks of time with the old friends (and my sister!) who know me best. Everyone's lives are at a stage when so many interesting things are happening, and many have been making their first big change in career. I couldn't be happier with the people my friends are becoming - the same people they always were.

Ah, I'm getting sentimental. I'd best leave it there. I think (fingers crossed) I finally have a decent seat for the flight back - but I'm too superstitious to boast about it in advance.

Adventures in Budapest: The mind-boggling stupidity of tourists, part 27

Right, back in Australia for some R&R (the story of making a 36 hour Cambridge-Canberra trip before going directly to a cocktail party armed with two litres of duty free can be saved for another occasion).

Anyway, the last port of call in Europe was Budapest, where armed with enough Hungarian to say “thanks” and a weekly public transport pass, I decided it would be fairly easy to get the metro and then the bus to the airport at the end of my trip.

Which it was. Emerging at the metro terminal and following the bus symbols towards the bus station, I passed a very obvious ticket booth. I queued patiently, presented my weekly pass and said: “airport?”

The ticket seller nodded her head gravely, and I took it I was fine to get on the bus without another ticket.

“Köszönöm”, I said.

I went to the stop with the red plane painted on the sign and got on the bus.

Simple, you might think. A matter of the smallest exercise of observational powers and common sense.

Apparently not.

The funky thing about Budapest ticket inspectors is that they are in plain clothes, other than huge red arm bands, which they get out and drape around their wrists.

Second last stop before the airport a lady boarded and whipped out her red band. My weekly travel card passed muster. Then she hit the English and the French dude next to me.

When both their ethnicity and lack of Hungarian became apparent she passed each a card in their respective language, explaining, I imagine, that - Sir or Monsieur - you're busted.

The fine is approximately 10 times the price of a valid ticket.

The Frenchman clucked and tutted and “Mais non”-ed in the hope that a display of Gallic incredulity might defeat steely Magyar determination.

The Englishman took an equally stereotypical approach.

“You can’t do this,” he said loudly and slowly in English. “There needs to be a sign. There wasn’t a sign anywhere. It’s not fair. You have to warn people. No, sorry, I don’t understand a word you’re saying.”

As someone who speaks English and (some) French, I chose to bite my tongue, because all I would have had to say was: “Buddy, even if they’re obliged to put up a sign stating something as blindingly obvious as ‘riding without a valid ticket is a criminal offence and will incur a fine – just as it does everywhere else in the world’, they’re not obliged to post it in English.”

Or: “Dude, if you can’t understand her, what makes you think she’s suddenly going to sprout the power to speak English? And more to the point, if you don’t speak Hungarian, how do you know there wasn’t a frikken sign?”

Sheesh.

Road trip

Like Lyn, I am about to head off on holiday with my parents. Three weeks: Cambridge, Lakes District, Edinburgh. I’m to meet them in a nearby village and drive the family into Cambridge in the rental car.

Driving, in Cambridge. The idea weirds me out. I’ve only ever cycled here, and have not been behind a steering wheel in ten months.

Anyway, time for some pet peeves and lessons learned in my continuing spate of tourism:

Peeves

(1) The self-narrating American. (S)he says: “Will you look at that bridge!” Doug thinks: It’s over a hundred metres long, nearly a millennium old, made of rock and right in frikken front of me. Where the Hell else would I be looking?
 
(2) European school-children on supervised holidays. Massed adolescence is not any better when it is French, German or Italian. Though watching them for’n kids trying to steer punts is terribly amusing, provided you’re on a bridge, not the water.

(3) People who, despite Ryan Air’s policy of boarding people in orderly batches of 30 by ticket numbers (after old people and those with children), still mill about in an absolute crush at the boarding gate.

(4) Those chronically unable to enjoy their holiday: “… and she looked at me like I was mad when I asked if we could sit together, just because we weren’t animals and didn’t barge our way to the front.” Doug thinks: It’s not allocated seating. Is spending a one-hour flight not grafted to your beloved’s side going to kill you?

Or: “You said outside TWO free drinks on this tour, I’d like my mineral water as well as my coffee, please.” Doug: Lady, the man is sorting out drinks for two dozen people here, I have every confidence he’ll come back with your precious second beverage.

Lessons

(1) When backpacking, carrying your own towel is always a plus. Douglas Adams really knew what he was on about.

(2) The world is a desperately small place. (Witness my bumping into college buddies in Barcelona, and meeting a girl at the hostel who knew someone I’d worked with on the phone fundraising campaign).

(3) Carrying a litre of water, camera and notebook at all times is seldom a wasted effort.

(4) The dumb hat, stupid shorts and ratty old sneakers packed for emergencies will almost always turn into necessities.

Milano, Milano

Given the serious damage Milan in a sales season can do to one's wealth I have probably gotten off light. Around 90 euro has netted me two jazz CDs (Brad Mehldau, Cassandra Wilson), some linen pants in a kind of denim blue with a thin brown double pin stripe and a white business shirt with a pattern of fine blue stripes.

I have also risked life and limb, getting used to being zipped around Milan on the back of S's scooter. We could, apparently, have taken a car had he not left his wallet at the metal detector at Stansted airport last week.

His parents have been absolutely lovely to me. Though I might rupture something from the sheer volume and variety of light summer foods and cold pasta that have been pressed upon me.

Basically, it's been a day and a half of taking it easy and ambling around in the heat. We were turned away from the Cathedral interior on the grounds we were wearing shorts and I was happy enough to skip any cultural dimension after the overload in Florence.

Our cultural high point was sipping white martinis on the pavement seating of a bar in a not terribly fashionable lane (eating free prosciutto, melon, artichoke heart salad, white cheese and tomato) talking about common friends and uncertain futures as the orange trams rattled by.

If S lands a job here while he takes a year out to apply to Columbia for a PhD, I will have to come back often. Especially now S has mentioned those fatal words in suit shopping: "outlet store".

Tomorrow I am going back to Firenze to finish off a few sights and to pick up that brown oily-calfskin leather jacket, even though it will blow a 150 euro hole in my budget, I just want it in ways verging on the idolatrous. Still, at the price it would be wasteful not to buy it.

I expect the train trip will advance me a further three hours through what will be my fourth reading of Jonathon Franzen's "The Corrections" - I don't think a book has ever given me so much pleasure on re-reading. I devour the words.

Thinking of that, in a room of a Fireze museum where the American women did indeed come and go, talking of Michelangelo, I heard the following conversation regarding a fresco:

"Mommy, why is the devil eating that man?"

"The pictures are about the seven sins, darling. That man is being punished for gluttony."

"What's gluttony?"

"Well, honey, it used to be a sin to eat too much ..."

Used to be. Glad to know that the statute of limitations applying to the word of the Eternal has run on that one - at least as regards first world consumerism.

A dedicated follower of fashion (Impressions of Singapore 2)
(Trip photos are still over here … )

Despite normally having the fiscal discipline of a first-term Tory Chancellor, I have poor-impulse control in high-bargain-density environments.

It’s like an inverse law. My iron-clad budgetary self-control (or my basically tight-wad nature) dissipates in a sales season. Add a sales season in Singapore and I get nearly as vicious as the grandmother you only let out for the Christmas shopping so as to hone her killer instinct.

Yup, that bad. And with my sister riding shot-gun to encourage me, well, things get messy.

Still, I went to Singapore with objectives. As a student whose cuffs and hands are now constantly smeared in bicycle grease (Singapore was the first time in ages my nails were grease-free) my top priorities were clear: another pair of jeans, and another pair of black cord trousers. Some new good black shoes, preferably boots (the kind you can wear to interviews or a black tie function) and a blue shirt would also be handy.

So, the attempted to go to the sales at Robinsons. On New Year’s Day.

In retrospect, going to Singapore’s oldest local department store on day one of the sales was not necessarily a good idea. It’s up there with inspecting ground zero at a nuclear test facility immediately after a detonation, and just in time for Godzilla. If the radiation doesn’t get you, the giant lizard will.

Anyway, the sales. Don’t get me wrong, no-one was pushy or baying for blood or fighting over the deals. It was Singapore - everyone was far too polite. But man, it was a tight squeeze around the sales tables. I might as well have worn a “clueless, clumsy westerner, please keep a safe distance” sign - I couldn’t seem to turn round without elbowing someone or swatting them with my bag.

Somehow I emerged unbloodied and unbowed with the blue shirt and black cords (English winter weight no less, in Singapore‘s climate). Tick, tick - items off the list. On track, on budget.

Somehow, somewhere between Orchard Road, Raffles City and Chinatown markets my sense of financial responsibility lost its oxygen supply, shrivelled up and died discreetly. I left Singapore with new jeans, funky blue shoes, a big green satchel bag, a heap of new t-shirts (including some cool Bathing Ape cartoon types), and some terribly comfy tan trousers from British India. In some weird colonial legacy the trousers have a button-in detachable lining, which can be taken out and washed separately to save wear and tear.

But sweetest gift of all - I miscalculated the exchange rate, and so got a 25% discount on currency value, rather than the 12.5% I was expecting. Yay. Now, as for the sales in Cambridge where I was spending pounds … well, I found the shoes I needed in M&S and a Gap jumper, both for under half price.

But I resisted the wonderful 20% off last sales-price brown boots I just don’t need. (But want, want so bad! Ahem.)

So, fiscal order has been restored to the financial force Chez Doug.

How was your sales season looting and pillaging?

Trading creature comforts for any semblance of cred

Florence is gone. Well, not literally, of course. Let me back up.

I have been a busy little beaver this week in Canberra, oh yes. My entire holiday is now sorted.

Now, let me explain something about myself. I sleep lightly. I cannot sleep on planes, or in hostel dorms. I need a room of my own.

I have spent chunks of the week on the internet trying to secure accommodation in Rome. Paris and Venice were easy – Rome, horrendous. Hostels, convents, monasteries – the first ten budget-accommodation providers I contacted were all booked out.

The concept of arriving after 30 hours without sleep at the Termini station in Rome and beginning doorknocking hostels was not looking good – especially if I eventually landed in a dorm and continued not to sleep.

The cheapest price for (not available) single rooms at a hostel was at least 54 euros. At this point my mother stepped in and hit the last-minute hotel booking sites.

As a result I have gone a bit over budget to pay a princely 69 euros a night in Rome for four nights. It seems a fair bit (about $110 Australian), until I consider what I’m getting: a 200 euro a night room in a four star hotel, with breakfast, a cardinal’s throw from the Vatican.

I can think of no better environment in which to shower, take an evening stroll around the city, and then sleep off the jet lag.

I love my luck.

Nuns in Venice
Now, in this flurry of activity, I was e-mailing convents and monasteries (the new thing in budget travel) like mad. I could only find one convent with a listed e-mail in Venice – the highly recommended Instituto Artigianelli. I composed an e-mail in both fractured and re-glued phrase book Italian and English and sent it off.

The sisters of Instituto Artigianelli replied (in charming English) within eight hours, confirming the availability of guest room one, single bed with bath and breakfast, at 52 euros a night.

Paris – Hostel/Hotel
I’ve found a place where I can get a private room within budget off the Place de Clichy, and rather belatedly hand out with “real” backpackers for four nights or so.

The big chop
So, with only seven nights in Italy, and four in Paris, I decided to drop Florence from my itinerary for the time being – prioritise three adequate, if short, stays, over running around like a mad thing.

I’m going to be tired, I’m going to want to indulge myself and take things at my own pace, I’m going to want to arrive in Cambridge well-rested. Florence can be the hub of a later trip in and around northern Italy. It’s still a must, but if I leave it, it can have adequate time.

I’m now so excited, I can hardly sleep.

Two nights in Canberra: Jazz at Hippo, and seeing “28 days later …”

Canberra’s nightlife gets better and better each time I’m back in town. A new tradition among some of my friends seems to be going to live jazz Wednesdays at the Hippo lounge bar upstairs in Garema Place.

Hippo features a lot of that fashionable burnt-red décor, mirrors, small chandeliers and fuzzy wallpaper. It felt a little like the Gin Palace, a little like the Lounge Downstairs in Melbourne. It also had a thoroughly adequate cocktail list. Getting a Toblerone for $10, or $8 before 8pm is almost reason enough in itself to move back to Canberra.

The jazz was good, the audience talkative but polite. The crowd seemed fairly mixed between students and professionals, jazz buffs and people looking for a good night out on a weekday. (Worst fashion statement of the night, though - woman in white shirt and matching white cloth cap. Fashion hats, indoors, at night? Ick.)

It was good to see some old friends, even if one arrived dressed exactly like me (black shoes, blue jeans, red shirt, black leather jacket). But then she and I have had a running joke for some time that we are each one half of the perfect gay man.

Last night was far more typical of my time in Canberra: custom-brewed beer and fried potato products at the Wig & Pen pub and micro-brewery. Good training for drinking from pint glasses in a dark-wood and plaster atmosphere. Afterwards I went with the boys to see “28 days later …”.

The protagonist waking up alone in hospital in an eerily quiet London was reminiscent of “Day of the Triffids”. Otherwise it was a fairly intelligent zombie film, with the “infected” being genuinely scary and grotesque (particularly in their movements and vocal effects), even if the red-eye contact lenses were a bit silly.

However, you could still far too often say: “No you idiot, don’t wander off on your own into a dark abandoned building!” Still, the characterisation was better than in most horror (British understatement is always good), and the film played with sensations of suspense and relief well. Some of the visual effects thrown into the road-trip sequence were pretty random, but the digital video production didn’t irritate me anywhere near as much as “hand held” films like “Blair Witch Project”.

Still, you wouldn’t lose anything by waiting for the DVD.

In Sydney: take a moment to reflect
(and other sappy calendar slogans)

Every time I’m back in Sydney for work (and this trip makes three), seems to be a moment to consider what I left behind exiting stage left from the life of a corporate lawyer and moving to Melbourne, and how happy I was to do it.

Many, many, of my Canberra friends live here now and it’s a shame more of them weren’t about while I was still in Sydney.

Still, looking back over “Sydney trip/Sydney sucks” entries numbers one, two, three and four – I have become progressively less bitter about my time here. Though the thought of returning to a firm still fills me with visceral horror.

Walking down to the legal precinct this morning the full two-block length of Hyde Park was beautiful. It was drizzling a little, and terribly humid (when is Sydney not?), but the central axis of the park with its canopy of trees is delightful.

The Hyde Park war memorial is about level with the apartment I’m splitting for the week here with two colleagues, and it’s art-deco era plinth-like outline is quite dramatic lit up at night. All the good buildings here are native sandstone, unfortunately most have been pulled down by successive waves of development, leaving the town with much less architectural history (for my taste) than Melbourne.

I also had a little nostalgia attack, smelling the leaf-mould in the park this morning, its scent fusing with the salty, heavy, humid air off the harbour. I'm growing very fond of the Archibald fountain in Hyde park, too. (Donated by the founder of the Archibald Prize for National Portraiture at the NSW Art Gallery?)

The best thing about this trip, so far though, has been the people – easily. It has been great seeing everyone again, there’s been a real celebratory air to it, in fact.

Monday I saw some of the old Balmain gang, all lawyers – and had a fabulous night of drinking a little too much, joking, reminiscing, gossiping, talking a little too loudly about law-type social issues, and having dinner at the Angus restaurant at the Sheraton on the Park. It’s lovely to catch up with people who you only met on moving to a city, who are genuinely happy to see you again, and genuinely excited for you about what’s going on in your life.

Tuesday I had dinner with Rob, Lyn, Davo and Lara (all of whom have commented on these pages from time to time), Patrick and Petra. Those of us who could get away early went to two for one cocktails at Martin Place Bar (so often my downfall) and we then had dinner at Chinta Ria Temple of Love, which looks something like a Malaysian temple and perches atop the Cockle Bay complex of restaurants. We had great seats outdoors until it started raining, but they scooted us inside pretty quick.

Old Canberra and Coogee friends, some of whom I’ve not seen in months, it was a great night. Hlaf of them had been in Canberra on the weekend – maybe I shouldn’t have just hidden out at the folks’ place.

Also, hanging out with and speaking with my lawyer friends up here has confirmed one thing: I know very few twenty-somethings who are still with a big law firm and genuinely enjoying their job. Those who've gone in-house, on secondment, to smaller firms, or switched career-path look happier and healthier than I've ever seen them. Tends to confirm my own choices, really.

Still, all this drinking and socialising ain’t helping my persistent cold.

PS Went to “Shaolin Soccer” at the Film Festival on Friday and it was spectacular: a really brilliantly funny martial-arts comedy sports romp.

A life lived in narrow compass

This is weird. Globe-roaming-Ben dropped me off at my serviced apartment in the heart of Canberra City (yes, that does mean something more specific than general Canberra) on Sunday night. He had to return on Monday morning to drop off my shaving gear, but that is another story entirely.

Since Sunday I have lived in a radius of, I believe, less than a kilometre. I have gone no further North than the tip of Garema Place, no further South than the Court buildings, no further West that the Wig & Pen pub and micro-brewery and no further East than the new Canberra Centre extension (it’s a shopping mall). This is a tiny, tiny area.

I don’t think I’ve ever commuted so little for work, and roamed so little afterwards. I’ve still managed to eat somewhere that is entirely new to me each night, so that’s good. Monday I had dinner with my sister and a lawyer friend at Flavours of India in Civic, which was good – and last night with Marissa I checked out a new Thai place in the Sydney building, also very good. (Marissa’s recent trip photos will be marvellous once blogger choses to display them.) Tonight I dine with Jason of the essay-length comments and Globe-roaming-Ben. Tomorrow the parents return from Queensland (Noosa, half their luck) so family commitments from then through to my Saturday departure I expect.

So once the parents are back, I imagine my sister will drive me out to the property and that’ll break my little one kilometre bubble by quite a bit.

It’s funny, I increasingly feel I’m living in some terribly sophisticated village, well-stocked with dining options and beer. I am getting the travel-allowance-bloated feeling, though. There’s only so long you can continually dine out without your body begging for a meal that’s just a plain salad.

Right, time to work. I’ve no idea how I’m going to get some Naylor posted tomorrow.