Part One: Welcome to Oz

Welcome to Oz

I must have subconsciously not really wanted to come to Australia given that I, a) misread the departure time for my flight by a day, and b) failed to notice I needed a visa for entry and thus didn’t get one until the night before my flight.  However, despite my best efforts, I managed to haul myself and a sizable amount of luggage, including a 4-foot portaledge disguised as a set of golf clubs, from Honolulu, Hawaii to Melbourne, Australia in the state of Victoria.  I am happy to announce that despite the fact people drive on the “wrong” side of the road here, I have yet to be flattened by a car or truck while navigating the city.

Strangely, customs didn’t care at all about the portaledge, but they were very concerned with the Pepperidge Farm cheesy fish crackers that I was bringing into the country – my bags were gone over by an incredibly cute looking Beagle in case I was lying about only bringing in the cheese fish crackers.

So, after my sailing story, this post is decidedly boring.

I am in love with the city of Melbourne, or at least the 20 square blocks of it that I have so far traversed by foot.  I only had a few days to really get out and explore.  The majority of my time in Melbourne will be spent in the conference rooms of the Ibis Hotel talking about globalization.  This event was put together by the Globalization center at RMIT. RMIT hired away one of my valued colleagues, Nevi Soguk, and in exchange we hired away one of their valued colleagues, Manfred Steger.  Technically, these hires didn’t have anything to do with each other, and are not part of some reverse MAD strategy, but the timing overlapped. The result, however, is that I get to come to this conference for reasons I have yet to fully understand but seem to have to do with the fact I am department chair.

I am totally out classed at this conference on the identity level and my personal contribution to humanity at a global scale.  Here is a typical interaction:

Conference participant:  "I was born in Uzbeckistan but left when the Soviet Union collapsed, studied in India, but now live in Japan where my 10 year old son knows English, Japanese, and Russian.  His Iranian father is teaching him Persian too."

Me:  "I lived in Ohio for 12 years."

Conference participant:  "I teach human rights and international law.  I took these on because of my experiences in the Soviet Union.  The Soviets were good at providing equal rights to women but not anything else.  What do you research?"

Me:  "Intellectual property"

Conference participant:  silence.

Ripple this through the conference and you get what I mean.

Anyway, the knowledge that I will be spending most of my time indoors means that I am further motivated to maximize my exposure to the city during my limited free time.  Manfred, Nevi, and Clare (Nevi’s wife) have helped me do so.

I am a serendipitous traveler and when I am in control, I make no plans or sign up for any tours -- which suggests little in the way of control, really.  As a result, walking the city is my most favored pastime.  It helps also to have people who know the city.  

It also helps to have a mission.

My mission for the first day was to find a transformer that makes electronics working at 110 volts not die when you plug them into a 240 volt outlet.  I figure since I am not traveling with a laptop and a kindle plus a camera and other assorted things that need to be plugged in, it might be a good idea to not destroy them.  I think travel was less complicated when there were not so many cords to manage. This mission means I now have a working knowledge of all the electronics stores in the central Melbourne area.

My first stop, after breakfast with Manfred at the amazingly cool (literally and figuratively) outdoor market called Victoria Square, was at Woolworths.  Manfred pointed me to it and said it was ok to go there because the W didn’t stand for Wallmart, just Woolworths.  However, in the process, I violated an important travel rule – never take an escalator underground, get trapped and disoriented in a large department store, and then emerge in a totally different part of the city on your first day when you don’t know where you are or where you are going.

I managed to reorient myself and find my way back to the hotel where Clare found me and helped me go to the next five electronics stores until we finally located said transformer.  This took much of the day, which was a beautiful and sunny winter day.  It also allowed us to wander around the city chatting and checking out the architecture. 

The part of Melbourne where I am staying is filled with a wonderful assortment of buildings, many of which it turns out belong to RMIT from the old Melbourne prison to the very modern new business school.  RMIT began life as a very practical school focused on engineering and technology and stuff like that.  I take this original focus on the pragmatic to be the reason none of the buildings have names, just numbers.  They seem to be numbered in order of their addition – so number one is the oldest.  

Interspersed with the RMIT buildings are assorted other places to shop and do business, as is common in downtown areas.  Melbourne, like many cities, has an attachment to its past and so has strict zoning laws about maintaining facades.  As a result, there has been lots of internal remodeling of the already existing storefronts and homes.  Also, you cannot get rid of a façade, but you can do really interesting things to the building behind the original façade – the new business building is an example – it is tacked onto a 19^th century building in a way that kind of seems like a huge postmodern parasite.

This is RMIT's new business building attached to the facade in the front.  It is building 80.

Different View of Business Building

Generally, I like it – it makes for a combination of the modern and the traditional, though seems to violate the spirit of the facade law. 

One shopping center has been build around a glass pyramid thingy for making bullets – a shot tower.  I think I had heard this word before, but had never put the words into a visual image before.  The original shot tower is enshrined inside the shopping mall and you can visit the “museum” by going through this western clothing store.

The only way I would go into a mall -- to see something like this.

Walking around the city gives you a sense of neighborhoods and all my self-appointed tour guides made sure to point out all the excellent food available here.  My preconceived idea of what Australians eat includes vegimite and meat pies.  However, so far, we have eaten Greek, Nepalese, Italian, and amazing bread.  Indeed, there seems to be lots of great food and so I am also embarking on a plan to eat as many different things as possible. 

Of course, it should be noted that my tour guides are also nerdy academics like me and so I have now been inside two libraries, a lot of RMIT buildings, an independent bookstore where I just couldn’t help but buy a book, the independent movie theatre, plus I have had all the major museums within walking distance pointed out to me.


There is also a vibrant sense of public art here that goes with the architecture, some authorized and some not so authorized.  To get all the pictures, I did an early morning run/walk/picture taking tour when there were not so many people around.  It is a good way to concentrate the photography and get exercise at the same time -- but you look even weirder.

Need to go down some more alleys

Birrarung Marr

This is the description of the above installation which was along the river. 

In the serendipitous travel mode, my first night in the city included attending the book launch of a book by a medieval historian on the order of the garter, which is evidently the highest order of chivalry one can achieve in the UK and has been around since the 14^th century.

 Not every visitor to Melbourne gets to do that.

Needless to say, I am on my own when it comes to the more active side of the city.  Manfred kindly pointed me to the amazing river trail that runs along both sides of the river. It is beautiful!

Melbourne from river trail -- lots of bike commuters!

Lots of this too.

Also, luck would have it that there is the climbing gym around the corner from my hotel.  I may be in a different country, but I am still quite predictable – books and climbing factor high in my tourist view. 

So now that the conference has begun I can only report on the interesting facts about Australia and globalization.  However, I will spare everyone the details of the conference, despite the fact I have taken copious notes.

Instead, I will post an update once I do something interesting, which might involve using that portaledge.  In the mean time, I am going to enjoy access to good tea...