Yarra Valley Wine Tour

On my last full day in Melbourne, I set off in another 24-passenger bus with 18 other wine connoisseurs to the Yarra Valley, one of the grape-growing regions in Australia. Other Aussie wine regions you may have heard of include Hunter Valley outside Sydney or Barocha Valley outside Adelaide. Interestingly enough, during the conference, I met some people from Canberra, and learned that wineries are starting to pop up around Canberra as well. A mention of this to a native Melbournian I met at my guesthouse, though, was met with a polite smile and slightly skeptical look, followed by an enquiry as to whether if I had been to Yarra Valley yet, or if I was planning to go.

I hit the road with the Australian Wine Tour Company, a business started by ‘a guy with a car’ who wanted to share his appreciation for the Yarra Valley’s scenic locale for fermented grape juice sippers, but grew to include a fleet of a 24-passenger bus and a smaller minivan service—with customizable itinerary-- for those gourmet types who may not want to mix with the regular riff raff.

We visited 4 wineries:

Yering Station

Rochford Wines

Yering Farm

Domaine Chandon—yes, the Dom Perignon people.

At each winery, we were given an introduction to a few of the wines by a member of the staff, and then allowed to visit the tasting bar to try some more. Our itinerary and tour price included a lovely gourmet lunch at Rochford Winery served with a glass of wine, ice water after our stop at Yering Farm, and then a bread/cheese platter and a glass of sparkling wine to finish at Domaine Chandon.

I had never been on a wine tasting tour, so I didn’t really know the finer points of tasting wine, or how the sometimes flowery descriptions are written. Tasting wine requires a number of steps—they may seem overly academic, but are necessary to fully appreciate the flavors of the wine as well as to prevent overindulgence. As it turns out, 5 20 mL tasting serves equal a full drink, so professional wine tasters who sample 50 to 60 wines a day would certainly fall over by noon if the wine were actually consumed.

Great Ocean Road

I went on a Great Ocean Road day tour during my stay in Melbourne. “Day tour” is not a mislabeling, either—I left my guesthouse at 7.10 am, and didn’t get back until after 9pm that night.

The Great Ocean Road is a two-lane (sometimes three) winding road that starts just west of Melbourne, at Torquay, and ends 12 kilometers east of Warrnambool (still in Victoria). Our tour only covered half of the road, from Torquay to The Arch, although a 3-day tour will cover the whole road as well as the remaining distance to Adelaide (or back to Melbourne, a “boomerang” tour I didn’t know anything about until after I had returned).



The highlights of the Great Ocean Road are ample surfing opportunities, the Great Otway National Park, and Port Campbell National Park—home of the famous Twelve Apostles. Large cattle buses (carrying camera-toting tourists, not cattle, but you get the idea…) storm up and down the GOR next to smaller 24-passenger mini-buses. I rode in the latter type with a tour company called Bunyip Tours, as recommended by my guesthouse travel shop, and can’t imagine going in a large bus as the small minibus for that long was challenging enough.

We started out from Melbourne, and after a quick stop in Geelong (juh-LONG), weaved our way toward Bell's Beach, a surfer’s haven. From there, we weaved our way down to Apollo Bay for a picnic lunch and a view of the start of the Great Ocean Walk—a multiday hike that leads to the Twelve Apostles. Following a post-lunch hike through a rain forest, we were on our way to the Twelve Apostles.


Bell's Beach

The Twelve Apostles are limestone formations which have been formed—and have been, or will be, destroyed—by erosion. Ocean waves hit the limestone cliffs, causing caves to form. Eventually, at the rate of 2 centimeters a year or so, the caves are ‘eaten’ away until an arch forms. Over more time, the arch collapses, forming a separately-standing limestone stack. There were originally twelve stacks, but now only 8 remain. 6 can be seen from the main viewing platform.


Great Southern Ocean. As our driver reminded us, the only thing separating us at that point from Antarctica was water.


Twelve Apostles.

In other parts of the park, recent archway collapse has occurred. In 1990, a double archway formation called London Bridge went the way of the song, as one of the arches fell down. As an interesting aside, there was a man and a woman who were stuck on the isolated stack and had to be rescued. This is an amusing tidbit in itself, but the best part has to be that both the man and the woman were married—to separate people. As the news and resulting rescue of the Trapped Duo was televised nationally, their cover was blown—and all thanks to natural science.


London Bridge

I've placed some more photos on my Flickr account.

Heatwave...

I've been in Melbourne for a week-- just long enough to fully experience the heatwave that's gripped Southeastern Australia.

While it does get this hot in Doha, the difference is that Doha is not an 'outdoors' culture. You certainly don't walk anywhere, and you go indoors for the summer. Everything is air conditioned, and carparks are either covered or underground. Here, though, walking is a popular form of transportation. Even if you did take public transportation, there have been a large number of train cancellations and reports of people getting sick on the overpacked trams, which aren't air conditioned.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/asia-pacific/7860776.stm
http://www.theage.com.au/national/state-melts-down-in-heatwave-20090130-7u10.html
http://www.theage.com.au/photogallery/2009/01/30/1232818733640.html

Sydney Olympic Park

On Saturday I ventured out to Olympic Park, to have a tour of the 2000 Olympic grounds. The tour is fairly well-organised, where you can either take a guided tour or a self-guided tour with audio. I opted for the self-guided tour, which was smart as I spent almost 3 hours seeing the things I wanted to see. Olympic Park is impressive in that the surrounding areas are marshlands which preserve local ecosystems. Just near the stadium, in a pond, I saw that grasses were being started in paper milk cartons, then transferred to the pond to take root and grow. The park’s presence doesn’t disturb the surrounding area hardly at all.

A few points I remember from the tour:
-The two hotels at Olympic Park, the Novetel and the Ibis, are eco-friendly as well. There are roof gardens, where the chef grows vegetables and herbs. The windows are made from recycled glass, and the air conditioning system is programmed to shut off the instant the windows in a room are opened.
-Solar power fuels the lighting outside the stadiums. Each lighting tower commemorates a past Olympic game city (in the case of London and Los Angeles, the two years are written together), and the 1972 Munich Games tower has plaques in English and Hebrew with the names of the Israelis who were killed.
-Olympic Park was constructed from the beginning to not only to meet the requirements of the Olympic Games, but the Paraolympic Games as well.
-ANZ Stadium has seating which can be changed electronically to suit the requirements for cricket, rugby, or Aussie Rules Football.
-The 8 women sculpture commemorates 8 Australian women (7 Olympians and 1 Paraolympian) who have contributed to Olympic success.
-Australia has participated in every Summer Olympics.

Sydney

I have had the privilege of spending the last 8 days in Sydney. It’s my first (of what I hope is many) times to Australia, and so far the experience has been good. I am in Australia courtesy of the education leave clause in my contract, which gives me one education leave per fiscal year to attend a conference, course, or series of workshops relevant to my profession.

I arrived in Sydney on Friday morning, after a very long flight from Doha (15 hours of flying total; all in all it took me 22 hours to get to Sydney). While it’s good to arrive in the evening when you are going somewhere, if you have to arrive in the morning or during the day sunshine helps you adjust more quickly to the time changes. It’s an 8-hour time difference between Doha and Sydney.

So I decided to go on a walkabout, to find coffee and to have a look around the city. I headed up George Street toward the Harbor Bridge and Sydney Opera House. Sydney Opera House is something I’ve always wanted to see. My conclusions, though, are while it’s quite impressive from a distance, up close it’s not so shiny and white. It’s still a magnificent piece of architecture, though.

There are some more photos on my Flickr! account

Dubai Terminal 3 Emirates Business Lounge

I was greeted with a pleasant surprise upon arriving at Dubai International Airport this morning. Expecting the cramped quarters of the old lounge, where a head count of more than 250 meant you were almost sitting on top of one another, I was treated to a New and Greatly Improved lounge.

http://www.dubaiairport.com/DIA/English/TopMenu/News+and+Press/Arab+News/Emirates+Terminal+3+at+Dubai+International+A+new+era+in+Dubais+aviation+history.htm

http://www.emirates.com/english/plan_book/dubai_international_airport/emirates_terminal_3/lounges/business_class.aspx

This lounge still isn't as nice as the Qatar Airways Premium Lounge in Doha, but it serves as a nice alternative for destinations that can't be reached via Qatar Airways (like Australia...). There is heaps more seating space, more choice for type of seating (chair, sofa, lounger, etc.), and more power outlets for those who carry laptops. Best yet, they've added WiFi access.

Even with the quoted 1200 seats from the Dubai Airport website, though, I still had trouble finding a place to sit at 6 in the morning. My original plan was to fly to Dubai the evening before and stay in the airport hotel, but then I was unable to get on the late evening flight and instead ended up leaving Doha at 3.45 am. There were some tables, but I wanted to sit in a 'squishy' chair.

Another thing that could be added, as the lounge is spread out over such a distance, is a cloakroom where you could check your bags instead of having to pack them all over.

While they've set up a main dining area, and smaller counters serving condensed versions of the same food, there is only one bar set up in the entire lounge. This was really surprising, because all the food counters are staffed, and had the non-alcoholic fare readily available for serving.

For breakfast, I enjoyed a nice snack of beef pastrami, freshly-baked kaiser rolls, edam cheese, and horseradish sauce. There was a good assortment of Western breakfast, Arabic, and Indian hot foods available.

In short, though, the lounge is a great improvement over the "intimate" setting of the old lounge, and the chairs aren't decorated with that red and white checkered fabric which seemed more fitting for a Croatian sports bar (Croatia's flag is red and white checkerboard) than for an Emirates lounge.

Information Online 2009

http://www.information-online.com.au

I am a member of the Australia Library and Information Association (ALIA), as Australia is where I am interested in living and working someday. They sponsor a biennial conference called Information Online. Information Online is being billed by ALIA as "the No 1. event for the online information industry in the Asia-Pacific region", and focuses on topics which are relevant not only to traditional 'brick and mortar' libraries, but to electronic-based libraries as well. Workshops include topics in electronic information literacy, bringing electronic resources to user context, search platform utilization and customization, collaborative physical/virtual space, e-learning professional development, knowledge management, Web 2.0 technologies, and much more. The conference is 3 jam-packed days of learning and social networking. I'm also going to a pre-conference workshop on professional development for committee/board appointment, and a post-conference workshop on learning how to "train the trainer". It should definitely be a good experience, but hard work. As my director said, "People think that you're having fun when you go to meetings, but they're actually hard work. It's not like your regular workday at all." Which is exactly right-- the conference day may only be 8 hours, but you're constantly busy. And there are often social functions before and after the conference day, in which you are meeting people, or meeting vendors, and talking shop and/or socializing. Thus, the "workday" can end up being 12 hours. Add in, in my case, a 15-hour flight to Australia and an 8-hour time difference, and it ends up being a pretty strenuous week.

Happy New Year

明けましておめでとうございます！
Just wishing all of my readers a happy and prosperous 2009, albeit a little late.

I have much to tell you, and will do so as I get caught up. I've just returned from a 3-week dive holiday in Indonesia (Bali and North Sulawesi), and I found out just this last Sunday that I am being sent to Sydney on business next Wednesday. So I will take a week's holiday after the conference, and am trying to figure out what I want to do with that week. Yes, I certainly could go diving on the Great Barrier Reef. Then again, it may be nice to see some of the land above water. Also, I did just return from a dive holiday, so it's not like I haven't been diving recently.