Just a big kid

  A man came to my block of units to mow the lawn the other day and his young son, who'd be about 6 years old, was with him. I guess mum was busy and couldn't watch the kid.
  Earlier in the morning I'd been out the back cleaning and caring for my leather kote gauntlets for Kendo, shoes, and sandals. It was the day before we were to go to Great Keppel: I wanted in particular to waterproof my sandals, and while I was about it I might as well do my other leather goods.
  So it was while I was inside and my kote were drying outside that I heard an exasperated "Hey, put those down; they're not yours!" over the droning buzz of a whipper snipper. I looked outside to see the curly-haired kid beating up the neighbour's boxing bag with my kote. I walked out to pick up the kote that had been hurriedly dropped to the ground, smiling at the little boy. His dad, satisfied our property wasn't in any immediate danger, carried on mowing.
  "Are these yours?" the boy asked curiously and I squatted in front of him to talk face-to-face.
  "Yep, they're my kote - for kendo." He looked blank. "Do you know what kendo is?"
  The boy shook his head.
  "It's Japanese sword-fighting - you know, like samurai?" I said, pretending to chop something. The boy nodded his understanding.
  "What does it look like?"
  "The sword?" I asked. "Wait here, I'll show you!" and I ducked back inside to bring out my wooden bokken.
  "This is what a katana - a Japanese sword - looks like." I was smiling amiably, happy to share some of my hobby with this young lad.
  "Are they all like that?" the boy asked, his head tipped to one side quizzically and his eyes screwed up in confusion.
  "Yes, pretty much all katana are like this... oh wait!" - realisation - "No, they're not wooden. This is just for practice, so no-one gets hurt."
  I pulled one kote onto my hand and offered him the bokken. "See, you can hit me without it hurting," and he whacked my hand hard with the wrong side of the blade, but I nodded encouragingly and he grinned in satisfaction. He waved the sword around for a bit and posed dramatically over an imaginary fallen foe, before giving the sword back to me.
  "Are you a man?" he asked.
  I blinked, trying to process the question.
  "I beg your pardon?"
  "Are you a man?"
  "Am I a man?" I repeated slowly, to make sure I understoood the question. Do I look like a woman, I thought to myself?
  "Yeah, are you a man or a boy?" the short fellow patiently clarified for me.
  "Oh!" I said in my hearty, manly voice, "Of course I'm a man!"
  "No you're not," he said giggling.
  "Er... I'm not?" For a postgrad, I was not maintaining a good grasp on this conversation.
  "Men don't play with toys like this," the boy explained knowledgeably. "They go to work and earn money and stuff!" His dad, who obviously qualified as a real man, was wiping the sweat off his brow and emptying the grass catcher into his trailer full of clippings.
  "Ah, right. I guess I'm a big kid then."
  "Yeah," agreed the boy. "Do you want a whale sticker?" he asked, producing from his pocket a sheet of paper with four little whale stickers left on it, two yellow and two pink.
  "Sure," I said, pleased that I was apparently accepted. "Can I have a yellow whale? I like yellow, and anyway, pink is only for girls."
  The boy nodded sagely and peeled off a yellow whale for me.
  "Thanks... what's your name?" I asked.
  "Timothy," he replied, and "Timothy!" his dad called, starting the car.
  "I'm Nick. Nice to me meet you Timothy!"
  Timothy laughed and ran off to his dad waiting in the car. "Nice to meet you too, dunder-head!" he said over his shoulder.
  Damn kids...

Nick no longer in Cairns

Thursday:
Took a 45 minute ferry to Green Island for the morning.
I wanted to go snorkelling. I convinced Rinku to come snorkelling with me, while Deepani just wanted to go on the glass bottom boat.
I thought Rinku was exaggerating when she said she couldn't swim... but after floundering in waist deep water I believed her :) Fortunately, half an hour of practice and a life-vest later, we were exploring the coral.
I saw:

• Lots of seaweed
• Lots of fish of all sorts, including a breed that took offence at my flippers and kept charging at them. Better the flippers than me.
• A big blue starfish!
• A huge great turtle, in about 1.5 metres of water, from a couple of metres away! It was so big it had small fish swimming in the shelter between its shell and flippers.
• Bright clams; waving anenomies; deep banks of coral - cool stuff!

We ran out of time and had to bolt back to the ferry, getting split up by the mobs of Japanese tourists. The mobile reception was patchy, and we couldn't find one another, but eventually we all made it onto the ferry - the last ones on board, with the deck hand looking at us impatiently as he waited to cast off :)

Sat through rest of the day's conference sessions in sandy beach clothes.
Realised that night that I was sunburned in interesting patterns where I'd missed putting sunscreen on. Thankful for longsleeved shirt at formal dinner :D
Went to casino with Jason afterwards and won $5! Must spend winnings on Sarah to placate her ;)

Friday:
At conference all day. Good Nick.
Xiaolong and Rinku presented well - very well for first time conference presentations!
Mexican food for dinner. Yum.
Off to pack and sleep. Have to get up far too early to drive back!

Saturday:
Up at 3am, leave at 4am, and sleep through most of the really interesting leg of the journey from Cairns to Townsville. It's called The Green Passage, and it's pretty much lush rainforest the entire way. It was so eerily beautiful in the predawn mist. I'd love to explore that area more - sometime when I'm awake ;)
Alternated driving every few hours with Kerry. We made excellent progress, even stopping to pick up her sister in Townsville. I expected heavy traffic this time of year, but the road was astonishingly empty. Made it back into Rockhampton at 7pm.

End of trip to Cairns. It was a really fun week, and the best conference experience I've had :D

Nick in Cairns 2

Tuesday:
Attended bad tutorial.
Had sushi for lunch. Got to sit at one of those low tables where you kneel on cushions!
Attended awesome tutorial. Got games on CD as part of handout. Good stuff :)
Welcome function in evening. Julius got plastered on free champagne; had to take him stumbling back to our hotel, scenic route via the docks and beach to tire him out. Moment of panic when he realised he left his backpack at the convention centre, but it was ok; he had keys in his pocket.
Went back out for dinner. Note: Don't let Rinku order indian food for you.
Fell asleep reading over slides. If it sends me to sleep, what's it going to do to the audience? :

Wednesday:
Paid price of stubbornly finishing curry.
Met Julius at breakfast. Informed him that vegemite was good for hangovers. I don't know if it is, but it was worth it seeing him try it :D
Morning technical sessions at conference.
Buffet lunch, inc. potato skins. Brillig :D
Absenteed myself from afternoon keynote speech, to "prepare presentation".
Went shopping for toys.
Practiced presentation. Good enough :)
Back to conference. Gave presentation. Excellent feedback from friends. Careful not to talk to anyone unbiased...
Hang around for poster session. AI'04 delegates get free drinks. Complex'04 delegates don't. World not fair.
Off to hotel internet cafe...

It appears I'm driving back to Rockhampton. Kerry Hand and Alanna North drove up in a Uni car, and on the way they had a near accident with a semi that's apparently shaken Alanna up badly, and she won't drive any more. Russel volunteered me to drive back with Kerry over the weekend.
I would have done it anyway (and I did agree to), but Russel's also arranged that I be paid for doing so. I'm not insured to drive the car unless I'm being employed by the Uni, so they have no real choice but to pay me to avoid liability :D
That'll pay for some Christmas presents :) And anyway, I've never driven along the coast north of Rockhampton, so I'll try to think of it as an experience rather than a chore.

I'm planning on going snorkelling off Green Island on the Great Barrier Reef tomorrow morning, so long as it doesn't rain. It broke out into a downpour earlier this afternoon. Here's hoping for good weather!

Nick in Cairns

This is the first time I've used an internet cafe. There is one free internet cafe (attached to a tourism shop) down the road, but it's always crowded so I'm paying by the hour for the convenience of using the hotel's internet cafe.

Speaking of tourism shops, there are so many of them in Cairns. I don't just mean shops selling discount plush koalas, either, though there are enough of them as well. I haven't seen this sort of thing before.
Every street on every block has one (or more) of these. They're shops that just organise packages for tourists. And they're always full of people. There are so many tourists here. Some of them try to masquerade as official information points, with the blue "i" symbol, but they're all the same. They're all small, one-room, hole-in-the-wall shops, but they're thriving here.
I'm going to try counting them all sometime...

I arrived in Cairns yesterday evening after a 2.5 hour delay at Rockhampton airport (make it 3 hours total wait at least, since Brett and Melanie did such a good job of getting me to the airport early :) ) . Thankfully I brought Fluxx, so I initiated Rinku in the game to pass the time.
Rinku, Deepani, and I met up with Russel and cohorts for dinner last night at a woodfired pizza place. Very nice food of course, but they're pretty much all the same (same for just about any cuisine, I guess).

Today, I got up early (hear that, Sarah?!) to help out at the conference opening - some big problems there that I'm not going to rant about because other people are going to be doing more than their fair share of ranting in the days to come.
Rinku, Deepani, Xiaolong, and I spent the rest of the day wandering about Cairns, which I'm getting the hang of. That's not hard though, because the city centre is very well laid out. It's just a grid of roads bordered on two sides by the sea, that's very easy to get around.
We went swimming in an artificial lagoon in the afternoon; went to a Thai restaurant for dinner. I love being spoiled on conferences :D
There wasn't anything else (productive) for me to do though, so no guilt. Today was just workshops, and I only registered for two tutorials that are on tomorrow. So tomorrow it starts.

I've got some good present ideas already though. In that sense I've been productive today :D

Time for me to give Sarah a call. I have to make sure she hears all this from me instead of reading it in my blog ;)