After yesterday’s efforts, I decided to take the morning off from conferencing and spend a little time checking out Perth. The first session was on Women in Leadership anyway, so I didn’t feel like I was missing anything.

Walked up Jacob’s Ladder and dodged a few people running up and down. Legs already sore after 10 minutes of walking, I wandered around King’s Park for a couple of hours checking out the views and taking some photos. Having the 200mm (well, 320mm due to the camera’s cropping) lens is great in “real life” use; I rarely felt as though I was unable to frame something how I wanted.

Made it back to the Perth Conference Exhibition centre just in time to see the last (fifth) person from Deakin present.

The major prize at this conference was a Sharp plasma TV of some sort, which I didn’t win. Unfortunately, it was made worse by the fact that someone from my office did win the TV. The rest of the prizes were crap so that was all I wanted to win. Least I left with my cheap two up set which I was given for presenting.

Fiona Wood, Australian of the Year gave the final keynote speech to end the conference, and was quite a good speaker. The speech had nothing to do with the conference at all, but was interesting and entertaining nonetheless.

After the conference ended, we made our way to Freemantle Prison for dinner. The prison has only been closed for around 15 years, and for the first two years they couldn’t do anything as the smell in the prison blocks was just too bad for tourists to stand.

I’m glad to say that the smell has gone (well, occasionally I think I could smell sweat and other things, but it might have been my imagination, or perhaps just the other people nearby) as we were eating in cell block A — the cell block where prisoners in jail for life were located. Dinner wasn’t particularly good but the location was great. Strange to think that while we were laughing and generally enjoying ourselves, there used to be people there who had only a lifetime of (probably well deserved) hardship ahead of them.

Caught the second-last coach back to Perth, which was a rather boisterous trip back. People singing “Swing Low Sweet Chariot” and “American Pie” (well, the first couple of verses) as well as someone playing blues on his antique harmonica… funny stuff, especially since we were on a bus leaving prison. Perhaps it was just funny at the time.

Got to bed at 12:45 before having to get up at 4:00 to catch the 6:10 flight back home. Much faster flight home due to the headwinds now being tailwinds.

Slept well enough again. Morning was the sort of weather I expected from Perth, but it didn’t last very long.

The presentation John and I gave went down well — I cracked jokes unintentially — and it seems people were geniunely interested.

I should also thank Diana as she was kind enough to buy me a pair of (lucky) black socks to go with my suit — I forgot to bring some!

Afterwards, we took a tour ferry to Freemantle which is a rather old place. The building are all old (well, depends on which part you visit) and all probably have historical significance.

After a few drinks a few of us went to “Gino’s” (you’d think a place with that name would serve pizza) which didn’t have very good food. Catching up with some others at the Little Creatures brewery we had quite a few drinks (pilsner was OK, pale ale tasted funny — almost lemony) we made our way ‘home’.

Slept alright. Conference officially started at around 9:00 and although some of the presentations made between then and 17:30 were relevant to my job, all were pretty much snooze fests.

Of course, I can’t say much for our presentation. We did, though, manage to relax a little by testing that it worked on the PC in the room where we will be presenting.

Diner was boring, long, fancy and not particularly impressive. Was held at Government House.

Weather not much improved. Went to conference opening cocktail party thing which was rather boring.

Grabbed some dinner and am absolutely knackered.

Excluding naps, I’ve been up for 21 hours which is pretty rare for me.

Sleep time.

Got up at 3:30 this morning to prepare for the flight which left at 6:10.

Plane left on time, but took an extra 30 minutes (so 4h 30m) to get to Perth due to the strong headwinds. Descent and landing were awfully bumpy but we got down OK. During the flight, I managed to get some sleep in and start/finish Fahrenheit 451 which I’ve wanted to read for ages (but was always unavailable at the library). Not a bad book.

After, wandered around Perth for a couple of hours and took some photos. Weather here is awful so far.

From (very) early tomorrow morning until Saturday, I will be in Perth attending the 2005 TEM conference (exciting stuff, indeed).

I will be co-presenting details about some software I’ve made that’s been in use for over a year. Not particularly exciting but a lot of people are telling me it’s some sort of big deal. I don’t really like giving speeches or presentations, but I’ve been asked to do it, so do it I shall.

Spare a thought for me at around 16:30 on Thursday, when it will be 14:30 for me. That’s when the presentation starts, though luckily I probably won’t start until another 10 minutes after that.

I doubt I’ll have much spare time but I hope to snap at least a few good shots during my stay. Probably won’t be any updates until I get home (thus continuing the horrible lack of posts this month) but I might have some interesting stuff to write, at least.