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Starting the week well...
Entry 10 of 18 | show all | print this entry |
Monday morning, yet another hot and sunny day. As I drew back the curtains after a considerable lie-in I saw the sun was shining and I was quite sad that the conference was about to begin as it would mean not seeing any sun for days on end.
I had arranged to meet the team at the conference venue at 1pm as this was set up time. When I arrived there Jen and Hannah were already there, so we collected our very sexy orange exhibitor vests (just so the forklift truck driver could see when he was going to hit us). James and Ged turned up a bit later and we set about putting the stand together. As we are all so damned efficient it didn't take all that long and it ended up looking quite good. The other stands around us were also looking quite good and we found that we were in an excellent location.
At about 4pm we decided to leave. Hannah, Ged and I decided to take a boat trip before the Ovid cocktail party, so we headed down to the harbour and had a look to see what was available. As we only had an hour and a half we decided to take the water taxi around to the Opera House and then wander back at a leisurely pace. The boat was really good fun, it was just the 3 of us and one other couple. The driver took us right out into the bay, varying speeds before stopping just before the harbour bridge so we could take photos. We then carried on round and pulled right in front of the Opera House for more photos. He gave us a commentary of the area and various anecdotes on our way round, which made the trip more interesting, before dropping us off down the side of the Opera House.
We got off and wandered around the area, stopping for a rather huge smoothie at a little cafe. It would take the entire walk back to finish this, but it was so worth it! We realised that we were going to be late getting back so sped up a little. Ged left us in the middle of town as he obviously had better things to do. Hannah and I jumped on the monorail and went back to the hotel to pick up Jen. As it happened she was running late too so we headed over to the Chinese Gardens without her.
The Chinese Gardens were beautiful, a gift to Australia on her Bicentenary from China. It was like a small oasis of calm in amongst the busy city - pagodas, streams, flowers and trees. You would hardly realise you were in the city. We did our socialising with various people and partook of drinks and nibbles. We stayed until the end, which to be fair was only a couple of hours.
Hannah, Jen and I then headed over to the Welcome Drinks for exhibitors which were being held at the Convention Centre. This was quite a quiet affair, presumably because we had only been notified about it a couple of days before it happened. However, we did get flashing ice cubes out of it, so that made up for it. We didn't stay here for all that long as we were getting hungry. Hannah went back to the hotel and Jen and I headed over to a restaurant on the harbour for dinner. Dinner was particularly good and we stayed out for a good couple of hours.
We headed back to our hotel at about 11pm, quite tired after what was a long first day. I had planned on getting an early night, what with the conference starting the next morning, but as I had a guest turn up very late that was not going to happen. Ho hum...
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