Rhonda Bracey: At Random

… of the country.

I flew to Sydney on Thursday as I was presenting at a conference there on Friday. I stayed on for the conference sessions on Saturday, and am now writing this in Sydney Airport awaiting my flight back to Perth. A quick trip!

Last night they changed the clocks in Sydney – actually, in all of NSW, Victoria and South Australia – going on to Eastern Summer Time. Which makes it very confusing when you have a flight later that day – is it due to depart at the stated time, the time plus or minus one hour, or what?

In Western Australia we’ve voted out Daylight Saving in three referendums, so it’s not a situation I’m used to… However, I’d better get used to it as it looks like our pollies will be voting very soon on trialling it in WA – if they haven’t done so already – and it’s likely to be up and running either by Dec 1 or Jan 1 if it gets through Parliament. Of course, the pollies tell us this is only “a trial” for 2 to 3 years, after which time they “might” have another referendum. Personally, I don’t care one way or the other about daylight saving as I avoid the heat of summer wherever possible by staying indoors!

Overall, the conference was good (a couple of sessions didn’t interest me), but there were one or two things about the venue (Citigate Sebel) that narked me a bit. First, the only loos we could use were through the restaurant, and they closed the restaurant between 3:00pm and 5:30pm! So we had to go downstairs to the lobby area, then up the stairs again from another angle. The other was the lack of anything to drink at the breaks other than tea and coffee (plenty of water was provided on the tables). Most conferences I’ve been to, have had some juice and soft drink available for those of us who don’t drink tea or coffee. After 2 days sitting in the conference, I’d drunk so much water, I was sloshing! I love water – but a small Diet Coke would’ve been nice occasionally.

I was lucky to stay with a multi-removed cousin (we have a common ancestor in the 1700s I think!) who was also attending the conference, so that meant I didn’t have to stay in a souless hotel, eating over-priced and uninspiring room service, and catching cabs or shuttles  to and from the airport (she lives quite close to the airport though not in the flight path, thank goodness). It was good to curl up on a couch with the cat!

Just heard… flight to Perth is delayed at least an hour (as was the flight over, by the way).