Day 19

The last day of the tournament, and almost our last day of work here. This has been a very interesting and rewarding tournament for me. It is awesome to be in Australia at all, and getting this opportunity two years in a row is still a shocker.

Colleen and I woke up late, which was nice, and sort of lazed around the apartment. Today (29/01/2006) is the start of the Chinese New Year, and the housekeeper wanted us to make sure we got down into Chinatown to see the celebration. I hope we will get the chance. It is the year of the dog for those who don't know. Celebrations actually have been going on most of the week. We even walked past a dragon parade costume and drum beaters on their way back from one of the parades.

We went down to the Victoria Markets and did a little bit of shopping. Colleen bought a jacket for her, a shirt for me, and (oh my goodness) a pair of 3/4 length pants for me. Yes, I now own a pair of manpris. That's the term affectionately given by folks here to describe pants on a man that look amazingly like capri pants. I was really surprised. They look pretty snazzy, but I am still under strict orders to only wear them outside the United States. I am sure I'll try to find a way to slip them into the wardrobe back in the states, and who knows, maybe I can start the fashion trend there. ROFL

So, we're trying to round up and complete our sherpa duties for the event, and seem to have hit a small snag. Apparently, the boxes we're being left to ship are outside the acceptable dimensions for Australian Post. I don't know how we're going to compensate for that in the least. Last year, we didn't have anything this large, and so I guess we're going to have to improvise. An interesting premise. I hope they determine a reasonable way out of this mess. At the same time, I did manage to aquire some additional items not on the standard swag menu. :-) Always a good thing.

Dinner tonight was fish and chips in the staff cafe. It was reasonably tasty. Hard really to mess up anything fried. I won't miss the staff cafe to be honest. It isn't bad food, but I wouldn't want to eat here regularly. I did, however, want to get a bite in if we're seriously going to be at the Belgian Beer Cafe tonight. Colleen had Thai food, I bet that was better. I do promise that I am not going to swill beer tonight. It will be a couple of casual beers, and then back to the flat early. I have had enough alcohol to last a lifetime.

I am not really sure when I will get to post again. Day 20 will be the end of my network here at the tennis event, and the Medina charges far too much money for me to consider using the broadband there too often. Still, I will try to get in one post prior to the flight to Sydney, and then hopefully will have some reasonable access there. At the rate I am paying for the room there, I better get some sort of broadband access without additional costs. For how on-line this country is, they sure do make a lot of money providing the access to the Internet. I will contine to write my blog, just the posts may be less frequent, or a large burst of them at once. The story will continue to be serial until I land back in Raleigh.

Cheers!