Maussies are kinda like mules - 1-17-12

Melbourne Convention Center

Tour with the Site Manager

I thought I had seen some incredible "smart buildings" in my day with integrated sustainability measures and AV connectivity, etc. until I was lucky enough to take a tour of the Melbourne Convention Exhibition Center.  This place absolutely blew me away.  The level of technological integration throughout the building in the simplest forms to the most high tech resources truly makes this a smart building.  The entire project cost some $1 billion and this building alone took almost half of that budget.  I will spare the details but for those interested, their website, linked above, could do a better job than I ever could, but not as good a job as Clive, our tour guide did for us.  Really was a spectacular building that made me want to get into mega projects such as this.

Awkward?

Our next visit required the necessary safety equipment, and in such fashion we took the tram through the city to the job site.  This gave us some hysterical looks that I enjoyed to the fullest.  Told most ladies that inquired that we wore our yellow vests as a way to keep track of everyone in our tour group.  Made me laugh, anyway.  More of the same at the next job site with some impressive concrete work being done as they were still working on the form work for the car park.

Nom Nom some dishes.

On our free time we thought we would grab some Chinese grub as we were a bit reminiscent of our Sydney favorite, Bling Bling Dumpling: an angry birds themed Chinese joint.  China town is not far from where we were as RMIT is conveniently, for the predominant student base of Asians, located only a couple of blocks away.  We made our way through the neon lit streets adorned with Chinese lanterns, window shopping with those cats that fist pump like Eminem to find a little restaurant on an alleyway called Kum Den that served the typical dishes style of Chinese where several large portions are ordered and shared amongst the group.  Cracked me up because back in China you can get almost twice the food we did for roughly 1/10th the price.  Makes me long for Chongqing and some Hot Pot, but nonetheless I am out of Alkaseltzer.  Therefore, hot pot must be avoided at all times.  No one wants a case of ladudzah (sp?) when not properly armed.

Big gulps and leather cop pants, huh?

After a killer meal and some free homemade food from our waitress (possibly because it had spoiled, I couldn't really understand what she was saying but scarfed it anyway), we made our way to a local rooftop pub for some end of the night drinks.  Met a group of kids from Melbourne who were going to RMIT and Melbourne University and got to talking with them for most of the night.  A very interesting and thought provoking conversation, I talked to one who was a Maussie - an Australian of Maori descent.  This particular guy's mom was born in Maori culture and they had immigrated into Australia for work.  I found it interesting how his buddies poked and made fun of him about this, and related it back to many of the cultural mixtures back in the states who receive similar flack for something so seemingly meaningless.  He didn't seem to mind, however and acted quite proud of the fact to me, personally, so it didn't get to me too bad; just an interesting observation of how these type of cultural blends can be received throughout the globe.

Called it a night fairly early and some how found our way home although the trams weren't running as late as it was.  Long and early day ahead of us tomorrow, we were very lucky to finally make it back.  Strong reflections on fuzzy recollections.

Cheers.