Thursday, January 31, 2008

After conference - Life in Kuta

So after nearly 4 days of hard conferencing I have settled in Kuta to relax for a few days. If you can call partying all night relaxing. I am staying in a small beach side hotel called Melasti , it has nice old buildings and garden and a couple of pools. The beach is a stone's throw away as is the mall. The nightlife is a short taxi ride and you can stagger your outing properly to hit the right spot at the right time.

I started with dining on the beach while watching the sunset and moved onto Poppy's and Bounty. Big aussie crowd here - not hard to make friends and across the road there was a band playing. Most of the time was spent dancing in front of the air-con and fan for position. When Poppy's died down I headed to MBarGo and ran across a few familiar faces seeming to have a lot of fun with the locals.

When I ran out of steam a short cab ride dumped me right on my bed.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

At the Intercontinental Resort in Bali



So I have finally arrived at the conference. The balcony has a superb view over the garden. The rooms are quite stylish too. Here are a few photos to whet your appetite.
The long-long queue at the airport was definitely worth it. I again got into trouble over my dog-eared passport, can't wait to get a new one.

Saturday, January 26, 2008

Off to Bali

Stealing a minute .. boarding flight to Denpasar in Perth. See you on the other side.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Box seat at the Tour Down Under

So I caught too early a bus out of Adelaide after doing my test. Since there are like 6 buses to Woodside per day I have to wait for an hour for my connection. By the way the test went well the only thing I am unsure about is who has the right to free speech in Australia, Australian citizens only or everyone.

Meanwhile sitting on the dirt by the roadside I have prime view of the tour down under. All the peletons going past for the steep and windy hill climb just ahead. So found a shady spot and settled in for the wait. May be I will capture a bike pile-up, fingers crossed.

Still waiting to have an Australianity check

After all the hard reading for weeks, I can recite the Australian Citizenship book by heart. So, ask me anything .... When did Abel Tasman visit Van Diemen's Land ? When was the Eureka Rebellion ?

Unfortuanately I cannot do the test, I have been waiting for an hour or so, the Australia wide testing server is down. Surprise, surprise they do not have a backup hardcopy test. So I will spend a fair bit of time here waiting and getting hungry for lunch, till I cannot think anymore. May be its their strategy to make the test more difficult, frustrating your attempts at doing it. Leave alone a paper based test, why cannot they have a fail-over server ? Talk about putting all your eggs in one basket. I keep asking them to take the book and ask me questions, they would not take up on the offer ... DIMIA ....

On the brighter side apart for some legal hassles my PhD enrollment seems to be going through, I have also got my P2 licence so I do not have to carry those ugly red P's around.

Hopefully it will be ready today, otherwise it will be a day wasted.