I walked over to Federation Square. I had read that there was an art gallery called the Kirra Gallery where they had beautiful glass sculptures. I am always impressed by glass sculptures, I think because it's a very difficult medium to work with. After walking around and trying to find my way in, I found the gallery and it was more of a store than a gallery. Regardless, some of the pieces were impressive. No photos were allowed so I didn't get any photos, but it was cool to look at. The cheapest piece was upwards of $400.
Then I walked around the area a bit more, towards the botanical gardens, towards the boat houses on the Kirra river, then back towards the main shopping area. I spotted a My Mac store, an authorized Apple reseller, and went inside. I played chess on a mac mini, which seems pretty reasonable, price wise. About $900 for a decent mac mini. I played with the iPod Touch, which is basically the iPhone without the phone. I was getting tired of walking so I made my way home through the Southgate mall. I noticed a flower shop and bought Denise an oriental tiger lily. It's nice to give her flowers, since I normally can't. Our cats love to eat them and last time, we found that lilies are poisonous to cats...
I watched "I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry" on my laptop and then a bit of TV before D came home around 5ish. We talked about our days for a while before getting ready for the conference sponsored dinner. After getting ready, we walked the 15 minutes to the Melbourne aquarium. As we were walking over, we witnessed a cool fire display. On the other side of the river, there were about 8 pillars, each about 50 feet high. There were small flames coming out the top of each of them, just a few feet. But every so often, in some sort of pattern, a huge fireball would erupt from the top of each column. It was quite a sight.
Dinner began with a cocktail hour. Since we didn't know anyone at the conference, D and I sat talking and drinking a wine and a beer, respectively. The waiters and waitresses would come around with hors d'ouvres and drinks to refill our glasses. We were asked to take seats about 20 minutes later. We sat at a table with a few other people, Chris, an older woman, Peter, a man in his late forties, and Brett, a young man of 20. The drinking age in Australia is 18.
Dinner itself was eh. The entrees (appetizers) were a smoked salmon thing that was meh, and a shallot and mushroom salad that neither of us even dared to try. The wierd part was that they alternated who got what and you had no choice. So D got the salmon and I got the mushrooms. Same thing with the main course. I got a half roasted chicken, which was quite good, along with pumpkin mash that was decent too. D got lamb, with au gratin potatoes, neither of which was very good. For dessert, there was chocolate mousse.
We were joined halfway through dinner by a gentleman named Gavin Cooney. He was very flamboyant and outgoing and showed off his newly purchased iPhone. I gotta admit that the interface is spectacular. You gotta give it to Apple for really reinventing interfaces like the iPod and the iPhone. They are really great at ignoring the current world and making devices that make things easier.
Brett, Denise, Gavin, and I had some good conversations about technology, the telecommunications industry, and generational gaps. Overally the evening was fun. We checked the time and it was already 10:30, time had flown by. So we all decided to take a walk over to the Crown casino. Gavin, being the extrovert, picked up a couple young women from the conference and they joined us for a few minutes although they bailed soon after we got in the casino. We went straight for the craps table, but there was only one and it was packed. Brett plays poker so we started walking towards the poker tables, when we saw cool game of roulette. It was all electronic except for the wheel. There were about 20 positions around a ring with a full electronic roulette board at each spot. You could bet within a 30 second period before betting stopped, an attendant spun the ball, and it landed. The system would figure out where it landed, and deal with all the betting. I put in $5, put $2.50 on red and ended up winning 6 or 7 consecutive spins. I was literally on fire. Then I mixed it up by putting down $5 instead of $2.50 and it all went to shit. After being up about $20, I ended up losing $40 after about an hour of playing. Not too bad for an hour... Gavin lost $100 in the first 15 minutes and then got up to make a phone call. Within 20 minutes, his friend Laura showed up. She seemed like a nice girl and when we were done with roulette we all decided to go to one of the bars upstairs. After some discussion about which bar (Laura was not interested in the nightclub) we ended up sitting around and talking in a funky open bar with couches, etc. We talked for about 45 minutes before realizing it was after midnight and we were all a bit tired. So we called it a night and were home sleeping by 1:15.
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