Sarah's Excellent Melbourne Adventure

Greetings from a city that currently has temperatures in the early 20s. Haha boy am I glad to have escaped the relentless Perth heat for a few days!

Yes, I managed to find an internet cafe and do a post to let you all know I am alive and well.

The library conference is pretty good. Some of the talks are a bit boring but you get that. I even fell asleep in a couple and woke up when I felt my head tipping forwards. Spending three days with over a thousand librarians can be a bit full on. There are two other people from my uni there plus a few other Perthites that I recognised from...um....Perth ;) Most of the time I am content to be a loner and just do my own thing. I hate mingling and small talk for the sake of 'networking' and most people seem to have their token friend or group that they hang with mostly. However I have met a few people at the Tuesday evening welcome reception with drinks. I reckon they must think that if they plaster librarians with alcohol then they will talk to each other. It's a bit sad that people will only talk when they're tipsy/drunk but that's a topic for another post.

There are quite a few 'stereotypical' librarians but then there are others with piercings, wicked clothes and coloured hair which defy the stereotype.

Basically a typcial day at the conference goes like this:
Talks and eating, talks and eating, more talks and more eating.

That's why I'm enjoying walking everywhere in the city.

I was so happy that my presentation went really well yesterday. People seemed to like it and even asked questions.

Some more observations of Melbourne:

• Melbourne has these cool little toilets in the CBD. They are silver with sliding doors and self-flushing and self-washing cubicles. I sat down on a wet seat and thought 'Yuck, someone peed over the seat and didn't wipe it' but then I realised that the toilets automatically wash themselves. You can't stay in there too long otherwise the 'wash cycle' will begin.
• There is graffiti EVERYWHERE...it's much worse than Perth. Not art graffiti - disgusting tagging graffiti, especially in the Fitzroy area. I don't know that teenagers can claim to be bored in Melbourne when there's so much more to do.
• A lot of the buildings look pretty rundown but I guess it's part of Melbourne's charm.
• I saw Rebel Wilson in a restaurant in Carlton.
• The convention centre has self flushing loos and sometimes they flush while you're still on there.
• There are 7/11s (24 hour convenience stores) everywhere!
• There is a Neighbours shop in the city. You can buy Neighbours merchandise and go on tours of the locations where the show is filmed. Since I'm not a Neighbours fan, I think it's pretty sad.

Bye for now. Will post again soon with photos.