Schwelmo's Welt

Well, I am back in Palmy. Nothing really seemed to have changed. What you would expect in a town like Palmy (been only 10 days away, anyway). Oh… it seems to getting closer towards spring as it is warmer than Melbourne and I found a rotten chicken wing in laundry, which must either be part of the famous French cuisine or a traditional Pakistani storage method.

The Cairns Conference was kind of successful. I think I left an acceptable impression and got a kind of a job offer in Perth. Perth is about as far away as New Zealand from anything else but has better weather. Anyway, I first finish here I guess.

Cairns in winter has lovely 29 C but it was freezing at night. Beside that, it is a touristic place with the same kind of non-quality clubs as in Palmy. You can’t swim in the sea cause of crocodiles and jellyfishes. So there is a pool in front of the sea. Die spinnen, die Australier! They have funny smoking laws as well. In a pub you are not allowed to smoke anywhere else than in a designed outside smoking area. OK in the tropics I can live with that. But you are not allowed to eat or drink in that area. So you can’t bring your chips into the outside area and have a beer and smoke with it.

In Melbourne (Victoria) you were allowed to smoke everywhere, even inside pubs. They seem to be more open minded there anyway as they have sex toys as handles in the trams. (And the “locals” I asked about that were only disturbed by the colors as they didn’t match).Yeah, they have trams! A public transport system! And it works! And there is a street called “AC/DC Lane”! How cool is that!

I was kind of surprised how big Melbourne is. I lived to long in Palmy. There are about a million of vegan food options, so I could even go out for dinner. Everyday at a different place. I even had vegan cakes. There are a lot of subculture groups and a lot of beautiful women in every color. I think I would like Melbourne.

I didn’t know too much about Melbourne before besides it is full of Italian people. Seeing the World Cup-cheating-designer players in every window was a bit of a down-side though. On the plane to Melbourne I thought I would make pictures of the famous opera house. Than I realized that the opera house is actually in Sydney. So I decided not to tell anybody as they might think I am an American.

# posted by Schwelmo @ Tuesday, August 29, 2006