New York City Boy

I forgot to mention yesterday that one of the main things that struck me when I walked out of the metro was how the Center of Sydney reminded me of all the popular culture images of New York - tall buildings, busy people always in a hurry, streets in a pretty regular rectangular grid... I did not get that feeling last year, but only because I saw the circular quay area, not the downtown. Seriously, the place is like I imagined Manhattan would be.

After the second day of the conference ended, I went with Douglas and James to see a photography exhibition (top press photos). Some of them were quite striking emotionally. Topics ranged from war crimes to sports to androgynity to nature photos, and quite a few caused a strong emotional reaction. I do not get that often with art..

The conference dinner was also quite fun. Craig Gentry has a Harvard Law degree, by the way (that besides being one of the top cryptographers at the moment). Impressive, to say the very least.

The presentation that I had yesterday morning went pretty well. I had had a nice 9 hour sleep - something I managed last year only after a week of bad jetlag - so I could also follow the other talks. A few were quite interesting actually.

After the conference ended, I asked Phil Hawkes for suggestions as to what to do with the remaining two half-days I had in Sydney. He suggested I see Darling harbour and go check out the Powerhouse museum. So I did.

Darling harbour is actually quite darling, like the name suggests. For instance, it had a Chinese garden (celebrating the large Chinese minority in Sydney). I really have a thing for chinese garden architecture since my trip to Suzhou - and this time was no exception. Serenity, pure and simple. Something I really needed. Badly. I felt at peace when leaving the garden, ready to face anything life had to throw at me.

And then I got blown away. In a good sense. By the Powerhouse museum, a museum of pop culture, science, engineering and design. I had only 3 hours to spend there before it closed and I could have easily have spent twice as long. Exhibits were all very interesting, ranging from "80-s are back" (giving a broad overview of 80 pop culture in Australia) to "Sustainable living" to "Australian design awards" (which was really fun. This for instance) to an exhibition on steam engines (Word of the day: Line shafting - or what they had before they invented wall sockets). The latter exhibition also featured a short clip from the movie "Metropolis" where the steam engine exploded.. It made a lot more sense now. Then there was also an exhibition on musical instruments (For instance a Stylophone - a really odd instrument, featured quite fittingly in Bowies "Space Oddity"). And the exhibition on cyberworld that had a video of time-travelling Babbage meeting Turing was somewhat like a religious experience to me. Don't ask me why, though.

After the museum, I went back to the hostel, dropped off my bag and had a resevation made in a hostel in Cairns. I then went out to just walk about. I ended up visiting a boardgames store, a comics store and a used books store. The comics store had a whole shelf of Buffy comics. Sad they are so expensive, though. So were the used books, but I just could not hold myself back and bought three of the latter anyways.

Then got back to the hostel and took part in a quiz that they were holding in the common room. The others then went on to partying but as I still had jetlag, I decided to just head to bed. Which I did.

I woke up at 4 a.m. with roughly 5 hours of sleep behind me. Not too bad, but I am still considering stopping by a pharmacy to get melatonin. I went to the 7eleven next door and bought some cheese and ketchup, then got some pasta from the ground floor (they have free rice and pasta for guests) and made myself a strong breakfast (I suspect one reason I woke so early was that I was hungry ).

I then packed my stuff and checked out. Headed to the nearest McDonalds (that is one of the few places in Australia that has free wifi - as I remmmembered from last year). And so, here I am, writing this post.