Into the Blue Mountains

Sunday, 9/5/99

First of all: Sports errata: "footy" is rugby, not soccer; the kid's name is "Ian" NOT Matthew, "Ian Thorpe" Sorry. Back to our story, which is already in progress:

What a difference a week makes. . . the project is on a self-destruct arc worthy of Grecian tragedy, but I am having a wonderful time! As I write, it's Sunday evening in eastern Oz, the Simpsons are on TV, and Janet and I are unwinding from a whirl of activity over the weekend. It's almost like being at home, except for the hotel and all the other stuff, but whenever we're together, I feel at home.

Tuesday morning was probably the world's longest, as I waited for Janet to arrive from the airport. I was in the lobby from 7 am, since I expected her flight to arrive at 6, as mine had. However, her flight had been delayed over an hour in San Francisco, and it was almost 9 before her cab pulled up. I escorted my lovely wife up to our luxurious accommodations, only to warn her that I our stay would be briefÉwe would have only two nights of first class treatment, before being exiled to the ghetto rooms by a cost-cutting edict from our project management. After a brief but intense greeting, I had to go in to work and leave Janet to her first day in Sydney.

I wasn't able to return until nearly 7:30 pm. Janet was tired, but not jet-lagged or sleepy. We ordered room service and then found ourselves in compromising positions when it actually arrived. We shared a joint, my first in three weeks, and got so engrossed our 4-dimensional reality that we almost forgot the bottle of Australian champagne chilling in the other room (the bathroom, being well-ventilated, became our "smoking room" in the nominally non-smoking accommodation). And ultimately, it took only a couple of glasses of bubbly to put us both out for the evening.

The balance of the work week got progressively weirder from the business viewpoint. Major movement of the players, with Bob and Ron returning to California. As this unfolds, serious questions arise about the status of application development and the prescribed rollout schedule. We can meet the schedule, but at what price? And the client's upper management seems committed to a date on a piece of paper above all else. We believe that commitment dooms the project to failure, but it's clearly their call. So I am quite uncertain as to how long I will be here. If things proceed on this seemingly inexorable path toward doom, I will be scheduled to continue through rollout on October 4; but we'll never get that far, because the application will fail the user acceptance test and all training will be cancelled; according to this scenario, I should be home by the end of the month. If, unexpectedly, they do the right thing and delay rollout (for an additional two to four weeks) to allow for additional development, then I will probably be sent home immediately and returned for training just before rollout; this scenario does not appear likely, but if it does happen, it would be this week. So we wait, on pins and needles.

Obviously, Janet and I decided to have some big fun over the weekend. More on this later.

Those of us remaining (David & his family, Jack Chao, and Janet & I) have moved to smaller rooms, with lesser (or in our case, no) views. We're in the "11s", a column of rooms with a common size and configuration. Unfortunately, we're in 811 (moved up from 611 after Janet complained) and we face the wall of another building across an airshaft. Two floors higher and we'd be able to see over it. I believe we've been further discriminated against because we requested a smoking room, but I guess that's price we pay. We still have the health club, room service, lobby ambience, and Hyde Park across the street.

Janet has gotten together with David's wife Adrien a few times and is getting to know their baby girl Sydney. We went out to dinner with them on Thursday night. Adrien made reservations at Edna's Table, a restaurant noted in one of her guide books for their use of local foods in their cuisine. We weren't sure exactly what that meant -- another place specializes in aboriginal cuisine, which includes grubs and other yummies; we were definitely not looking for that. We went on a long adventure just finding the place, since it had moved from the address listed in the guide book. Fortunately, downtown Sydney is a wonderfully small and walkable area, so we finally found Edna's and settled in for what turned out to be a rather extended dining experience.

The Australian cuisine included native ingredients like herbs, seafood, kangaroo, emu, and crocodile. Adrien opted for their prix fix menu, which was a six-course selection of local specialties, including emu tartare and crocodile wonton. The typical restaurant meal here consists of an appetizer course (called "entrŽe") and a main course, ordered separately. I chose the crocodile tempura for an entrŽe, and went with the grilled snapper special for a main course. Both were excellent. The crocodile actually tasted a bit like a fish ball, but it was wrapped in nori and deep-fried in tempura batter, so I thought it was quite a treat. I also sampled the emu tartare, which was somewhere between sashimi and beef tartare, also delightful. Adrien also gave me a taste of her kangaroo steak, which was reminiscent of venison, but perhaps milder. Quite the dining experience, but as I mentioned, it got stretched a bit long--over two hours in the restaurant. The staff was extremely amiable: the hostess was a Southern Californian who had been living in Australia long enough to pick up a bit of the accent; finding that we were from San Francisco, she told us that she had recently had an urge to move back to Northern California. Later another waiter introduced himself to mention that he had managed Lulu's, a SOMA dining spot across from the Moscone center; he was Irish, but had lived in the Bay Area for several years and intended to return soon. Janet was astonished when the bill came; I was a little more prepared, as I've become familiar with the expensive tastes of some consultants. But amortized over the week, we still fall well within our per diem, so it was an affordable luxury for the week.

Friday evening arrived with the project in disarray. With project management in Taiwan and Emeryville ducking for cover, David and I left the office in Homebush Bay early on Friday. Unfortunately, we've set an expectation for late arrivals from the office, so our wives were out and about when got in. I spent an hour in the gym and returned to find a message from David, who was drowning his sorrows in the bar. I met him downstairs and we dissected the situation as we waited for Janet, Adrien, and Sydney. When they finally returned, we proceeded to go up to our room and restore balance to David's world by getting him high for the first time in several years. It was cute. They got so stoned they had to cancel their restaurant reservations because they weren't sure they wanted to be in public. Fortunately, Janet had a wonderful meal of bread and cheese hiding in the cabinet. Not to mention the macadamia short bread. (Macadamia nuts, by the way, are the only native Australian food that is exported; we learned that at Edna's Table.) Order coffee from room service, and we're set for the evening.

Saturday morning dawned bright and early, although we can no longer see it in our airshaft. But we were up and out at reasonable hour, on a short walk to Sydney Central station to catch the 10:02 train to Katoomba. We were on our way to the Blue Mountains! A two-hour train ride to the west took us past the Olympic Park in Homebush Bay, out past the western suburbs and up to Katoomba, a small town at the edge of Australia's grand canyon. Not a fair comparison, as the canyons are not as deep or stark, but the conditions are closer to the rain forest than the desert. There are some steep, rugged cliffs and dramatic rock formations like the Three Sisters, but there are beautiful wooded pathways along the cliffs and around the waterfalls. The canyon floor is heavily wooded, presumably teeming with birds and wildlife that we just glimpsed.

When we arrived in Katoomba, we did the typical thing, which was to buy a day-pass on the Blue Mountain Explorer Bus, which makes an hourly circuit of the main scenic highlights. We quickly discovered that the distances are small enough to make the bus unnecessary, but we got the map and a quick orientation to the area to get us started. We got off at Katoomba Falls, the first major scenic spot, and we started off on a "bushwalk" to Echo Point, the next scenic stop, about 1.5 km away. We followed the Prince Henry Cliff Walk, which is a well-defined path. The guidebook classifies it as an "easy to medium" walk, but because of the length and some of the steps it climbs, it can be a reasonably challenging walk. The path passes a spot that I am certain must have been a point of power for the meditations of the indigenous inhabitants. We crossed Katoomba falls and finally arrived at Echo Point. We planned to catch the bus at Echo Point and ride to another point along the cliffs, but the next bus was not scheduled for forty minutes, so we went for lunch at scenic deli at this overlook. But we missed the bus, so we decided to continue with the cliff walk. Very scenic, but after another hour and a half, we were starting to get tired, so we emerged from the trail at Kiah Lookout. We were a bit disoriented, but we found the bus stop at the Fork 'n' View Restaurant, and we waited for the bus. We road the next few stops into Leura Village, where the shops were already closing and nothing particularly caught our fancy. We enjoyed a coffee on a park bench and then found the local deli, where we picked up a takeaway dinner to bring back to Sydney.

We caught the train back from Leura, the two hours seeming longer in the dark, with no scenery for entertainment. We slept for part of the way and read a book on aboriginal mythology. Back in Sydney, we found a bottle shop on George Street, which seems to be the main artery for downtown entertainment on a Saturday night. We picked up a bottle of shiraz cabernet and returned to our room for a late dinner.

We were up early again this morning. Checked in with the kids and then headed out, expecting to take the ferry to Manly and explore the beach up there. As we headed down to Circular Quay (pronounced "key") to catch the ferry, the light sprinkle became a steady drizzle. It was not cold or even unpleasant, but we agreed that this would not be the best day for the beach or even a boat ride, so we decided go to the nearby Rocks district and do some shopping.

We visited a crafts store that had some exquisite glasswork, and we went to an aboriginal art gallery. There was some very nice art, if we had a budget for such things, but I shopped for boomerangs and digeridoos, which are available everywhere. There is an open street market that stretches for a couple of blocks and features a variety of crafts and memorabilia. Finally found a shop run by musicians that specializes in digeridoos, and began to get educated about the instrument. Tired after this day's walking, we returned to the hotel in time to make an early supper of late afternoon tea. Seated in the atrium restaurant with Hyde Park spread out before us across Elizabeth Street, it was a mellow end to the afternoon.

Although it seemed early to undress and cocoon, it felt pretty good to get the feet up and relax. I did my expense report while Janet wrote postcards. And here we are, ready for another week through the corporate looking glass. I 'll take a breath and see you on the other sideÉ