I haven’t posted on this for a while – not much being going on really. My main news is that I have started golf lessons, and I’ve just got back from my third lesson. Things were going well – I was quite happy with my progress – but it all went to pot yesterday at the driving range. Fortunately, I was back on track tonight in my lesson. Currently all the lessons have been at the driving range on a Monday  night, but my next set of lessons are going to be on Sunday morning (one at 7.30 in the morning) so we can be taught in daylight and we can go out on the course. It’s a good job the golf course is just  10 minute walk away otherwise I couldn’t see myself getting there in time.

Other than that, work is pretty busy with trying to get things done before I go to LA next week and I’ve been watching lots of rugby union and rugby league – not always by choice.

Last night as we were eagerly awaiting the first All Blacks game of the Rugby World Cup there was an unusual silence. As we overlook the main distributor road for south Sydney there is a generally a constant hum of traffic to be heard in our apartment, but all of a sudden it stopped – it was so quiet we could hear the sound of golf balls being collected by the machine over at the driving range on the other side of the road. We came out on to our balcony to see a totally empty road – we hung around for half an hour as we watch police cars and bikes do several sweeps of the road and helicopters hovering above with search lights (we got checked out). Then a whole load of American security vehicles went past, only to return again some 5 minute later. We hung around waiting and waiting, until we decided that the rugby game that was just about to start was likely to be vaguely more interesting that what we could only imagine would be George Bush coming past … but just as the players started to come out on to the field this huge motorcade, made up of at least 50 vehicles came whizzing past.  It was George Bush – pissing off the Sydneysiders caught up in the traffic mayhem and wasting tax payers’ money on (seemingly ineffective – see previous post) security.

Still, old Georgie has given Australians a bit of a laugh over the last couple of days. I’ll give you some snippets from an article in yesterday’s Sydney Morning Herald -

“The US President, for whom the English language is not a tool so much as a room full of baited mousetraps, started the day at the Opera House, where he told business delegates that he thought John Howard was a terrific host “of the OPEC summit”. “I mean APEC summit” he corrected himself grinningly “I’ve been invited to the OPEC summit next year”. (Not true, in case the oil producers among you were wondering.) The President plunged on … He congratulated Howard on his visit to Iraq last year, which had given hope and sucour to “the Austrian troops there”.

Marvellous!

I arrived back in Sydney last night having returned from Melbourne for the Australasian Evaluation Society Conference. It wasn’t a great conference, the highlights were:

1) My hotel overlooked Albert Park (site of the Australian F1 GP)

2) A saw the Sydney Swans (Sydney’s footie team) at Melbourne Airport

3) I could answer all the questions asked of me after my presentation

4) The woman sitting next to me at the conference dinner was a school friend of John’s Mum and Dad.

I’m happy to be back in Sydney and pleased to see the predicted APEC conference chaos hasn’t materialised. Has news of the Chaser stunt reached the UK? – the comedy team faked a Canadian motorcade and got through two ‘high’ security checkpoints – everyone over here absolutely love it. Apparently the next day the members of the team that didn’t get arrested dressed up with cardboard limosines strapped to them to see if they could pull it off again!

Last week I did my first Australian road trip – my boss and I drove down to Canberra to facilitate a couple of workshops. For once it was actually warm in Canberra (although very cold at night still). Not much to say about the trip other than lots of kangaroo road kill (I’m still to see a live wild kangaroo) and I saw a large ‘lake’ that is sometimes filled with water and sometimes completely empty, and no one knows why – apparently it has nothing to do with the weather.

I got back from Canberra on Thursday night and had to unpack my bag and re-pack it again so that John could meet me with it at the airport on Friday afternoon when we flew out to Wellington. We had a lovely long weekend in Wellington. It was John’s birthday on the 3rd, so the focus of the weekend was celebrating his birthday and hanging out with Kate and Al and his Wellington based friends. We went to a great French restaurant, that coincidently Michelle and I went to last year, for a meal to celebrate John’s birthday. I ordered extactly the same meal as last time I was there because I remembered it being so fantastic – it lived up to expectations.

Last night we got back from Wellington and I unpacked my bag and re-packed it for a trip to Melbourne. I go to Melbourne this afternoon for an evaluation conference for the rest of the week. I’m giving a paper on Thursday, but I haven’t written it yet!

Thankfully, when I get back on Friday there are no more trips planned until we go to LA in October.