Australian Impressions
I'm finally home, and trying to wind down enough to go to bed. Meanwhile, some thoughts.
Sydney is an attractive city built around a number of sheltered harbours, with plenty of trees and lots of public space. It reminded me some of Seattle. The opera house was surprisingly beautiful up-close, even though I've seen plenty of photos of it before. It's made up of 3 separate buildings, and the open ends of the shell-like shapes are glass, which gives it a very sacred, church-like feel. I'd like to go inside sometime, perhaps see a performance of some sort. It seemed like a lovely place, and I'd be happy to visit it again, but was not struck with "OMG I could so live here."
Canberra, on the other hand, seemed to be specifically designed to be singularly unappealing to people like me. It is a soul-less planned city distributed across various townships a few km apart and separated by areas of eucalyptus bush. There are height regulations on buildings so that suburbs blend into the trees. That sounds okay, and generally I'm a fan of decentralization, but it is brown and bland and designed for cars, and feels too much like inland southern california suburbs. The limitations of the taxi service are apparently a contentious political issue. Both times we caught a cab it required waiting for 45 frustrating minutes.
So I have to say that my initial experience of australia has not blown me away. It was also 34º, in Canberra, with a hot wind that felt not unlike a hairdryer. That didn't help.
All of that notwithstanding, I had a decent meeting. Not great, and certainly not as valuable as the meetings in Europe, but decent.
Sydney is an attractive city built around a number of sheltered harbours, with plenty of trees and lots of public space. It reminded me some of Seattle. The opera house was surprisingly beautiful up-close, even though I've seen plenty of photos of it before. It's made up of 3 separate buildings, and the open ends of the shell-like shapes are glass, which gives it a very sacred, church-like feel. I'd like to go inside sometime, perhaps see a performance of some sort. It seemed like a lovely place, and I'd be happy to visit it again, but was not struck with "OMG I could so live here."
Canberra, on the other hand, seemed to be specifically designed to be singularly unappealing to people like me. It is a soul-less planned city distributed across various townships a few km apart and separated by areas of eucalyptus bush. There are height regulations on buildings so that suburbs blend into the trees. That sounds okay, and generally I'm a fan of decentralization, but it is brown and bland and designed for cars, and feels too much like inland southern california suburbs. The limitations of the taxi service are apparently a contentious political issue. Both times we caught a cab it required waiting for 45 frustrating minutes.
So I have to say that my initial experience of australia has not blown me away. It was also 34º, in Canberra, with a hot wind that felt not unlike a hairdryer. That didn't help.
All of that notwithstanding, I had a decent meeting. Not great, and certainly not as valuable as the meetings in Europe, but decent.