australia

Our replacement cards are due this morning from UPS. We’ve been religiously monitoring their progress for nearly a week … with a minor panic when they seemed to arrive in Melbourne Saturday morning then go to Sydney. Irrespective, a check this morning shows they are in transit in Melbourne at around 0530. Cool.

Not so cool is that I have to go back to the Claremont guest house. Since it was our planned address in Melbourne, it’s also the delivery address UPS had (which couldn’t be changed … I checked). The kind folks at Claremont would be happy to receive the package – but would refuse to sign for it. Come 0730 I’ve left the Seasons Heritage Melbourne (grabbing a couple of complimentary papers) and take the 2km walk back to the Claremont.

I’ve still got 30 minutes internet time there … so kill some time logging on for a couple of minutes, pulling down lots of wikipedia items, then logging off again. I am now an expert on Ricardo Montalbán, the main characters of Star Trek movies, found out that Leonard Nimoy decided to stay on for more movies after Star Trek II since he enjoyed it so much, Scotty stopped someone committing suicide and they were later inspired to undertake and engineering degree and in real life Walter Koenig (Chekov) was best man at George Takei (Sulu’s) wedding. Awww.

Anyhow … Therese arrives around 0930, reads the papers, gets bored and is dispatched to find some coffee. Time passes slowly. There’s only so much Star Trek trivia I can do in one go. Just as I start leafing through obscure background to The Empire Strikes Back, Mr UPS appears. A signature later and we have the package. Woohoo.

Back at the hotel our wallets almost feel normal again. There’s quite a lot of relief since we need our newly issued drivers licences in a couple of days for New Zealand. We also don’t need to rely on the one Amex card (that’ll do nicely, but we’ll charge another 3% due to the huge mark up) we had and can return to the real world with Visa and Mastercard.

With the temperature in the mid 30’s, we jump the tram down to St. Kilda. It’s full of school kids on their last week of holidays, along with a few loud tourist kids who take great pleasure in blowing and popping the loudest chewing gum bubbles imaginable.  My best telekinetic efforts to transport them to Kuala Lumpur (where gum is banned) fail.

We stop off at a “Lentil as anything” Near Acland Street. It works on the principle that you pay what you think it was worth. Any profits go to charity. The food is good and it’s worth a visit. No nut roasts in sight.

A little fried by the sun, we pop back late afternoon for a little packing. There’s be an early-ish flight tomorrow – then out for a couple of drinks. This will probably be the last decent sun we have until May.