Victoria trip Sunday 13/1/08
Thursday, 24 January, 2008
(Here begins my travel diary of last week in Victoria, which includes photos but not of my travelling companions who would prefer not to have their likenesses plastered across the internet. Incriminating details have also been omitted!)
(This is a photo of Anita's very cool keyring which looks like the Wikipedia logo. It's a puzzle and the central ball is magnetic. I spent a bit of time putting it together properly the night before while Anita was preparing our dinner because it had gotten all mixed up. Unfortunately some pieces are missing.)
Liwen and I were up at 4:30. I was feeling quite gross so decided to have a quick shower. We carried our luggage downstairs and ate a very quick breakfast, then helped Anita and her father load the car (which Anita had named Jasmine). We were a bit worried that everything wouldn't fit (not that the three of us have a lot of luggage but there were things that Anita needed to bring back to Warragul for work, etc.) At 5:45, we were off, Anita taking the first driving shift. She had a TomTom which she was using for the first time, and directions would be uttered from it by an Irish male (called “Sean”, of course!)
We were going to go via the coast road which Anita had never done before. I was awake as far as Wollongong and then I fell asleep, listening to the music from Anita's iPod (I was iPod master for this leg). I woke up again just south of Nowra.
We stopped at Mollymook for second breakfast/morning tea. There was a nice little place down by the beach that did your basic breakfast foods and also sold various beach paraphernalia. I had crumpets and green tea which I enjoyed very much, and it was nice to sit in the sun and breathe the fresh air.
Then we were back in the car again on the highway, me subjecting both Liwen and Anita to my eccentric music tastes: Pink Floyd's “Comfortably Numb” sung by Dar Williams and Ani DiFranco (which I think is just ghostly and enchanting), Alison Krauss (who has won more Grammys than any other female artist), Sad Kermit, Katie Noonan's covers of “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden and “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” by Elton John, The Twilight Singers (which they actually like) and so on. We also stop at Mogo and spend a bit of time poking around in the antique shops and craft shops, but it's incredibly hot and not the sort of weather to be outdoors.
Around lunchtime, we reach Bega and I suggest we go visit the Bega Cheese Factory (mmmm, cheese!) The factory isn't actually open for visitors but there's a Heritage Centre where you can get brochures of the area, buy cheese (and many cow-related products—cow stuffed toys, cow teapots, cow milk jugs, etc.), taste some cheeses (I recommend the Vintage!) and buy lunch. We decided to eat lunch there (I had a frittata with salad which was quite yummy) and it was nice to sit at these massive wooden tables and benches, a video about cheese production playing quietly in the background.
Then it was back in the car where I set my MP3 player to play something and then fell asleep while Anita drove. When I woke up again, we had already crossed the border (but strangely there were no signs telling us to get rid of our fruit which means the fruit flies have migrated south ... what a pity ...). Anita was at her limit so she pulled over on the side of the road and I took over for the second shift, Liwen riding shotgun and controlling the music.
It was my first time driving an automatic (Liwen and Anita are auto drivers). So they gave me instructions about what to do and we were off on the road. Anita's speedometer was located in the middle of the dash which was a bit weird for me as I'm used to it just above the steering wheel. The TomTom kept track of our progress and showed us the lie of the land, the number of kilometres to our destination, and the speed it thought we were going (which differed from what the car said so I just ignored it). The TomTom did, however, moo at us quite loudly if we exceeded the speed limit too much which we found vastly amusing. You couldn't help but talk to it (or maybe I couldn't help but talk to it; I kept thinking of this article in the Washington Post that Luke sent me following the CHN I wrote on sex, pets and robots because it was about people's relationships to robots used in war [e.g. to test for landmines because it doesn't matter too much if a robot with five legs gets one of them blown off by a landmine as it will still have four left] and how the colonel overseeing the landmine test ordered that it be stopped when the robot only had one leg left because the test was “inhumane” ... anyway, it's an interesting article; go on and read it. And the bit at the bottom made me laugh:
The bot world “reminds me so much of that time when Paul Allen and I looked at the convergence of new technologies and dreamed of the day when a computer would be on every desk and in every home,” he writes. “Robotic devices will become a nearly ubiquitous part of our day-to-day lives.” He describes a world “when the PC will get up off the desktop and allow us to see, hear, touch and manipulate objects in places where we are not physically present”—from planting crops, to allowing doctors to treat distant patients, to providing care for children and the elderly.
That world is arriving fast. The 2 million personal bots in use around the world in 2004 are expected to grow to 7 million next year. The South Korean Ministry of Information and Communication hopes to put a bot in every home there within six years.
Joseph W. Dyer, the retired three-star admiral who heads iRobot's government and industrial division, says, “The androids in the movie ‘I, Robot,’ who are projected to exist in 2030? We think that timeline is about right.”
Most bots won't look semi-human, like C-3PO. Nonetheless, Gates says, “they could have just as profound an impact on the way we work, communicate, learn and entertain ourselves as the PC has had over the past 30 years.”
Perhaps those days have already arrived.
Right now Avis is airing a 30-second spot that features a young man in a necktie having a conversation with the navigation bot in his rental car.
“Traffic ahead,” the female voice says to him.
“Incredible!” he replies. “You found a golf course near the conference—awesome Chinese. Now you find me a way around traffic.”
He shakes his head and lifts his thumbs off the wheel in a gesture of emotional helplessness.
“I love you,” he says with feeling.
The music swells:
Turn around / Every now and then I get a little bit lonely / And you're never coming 'round.
Fall hard for a bot at Avis.
Anyway, that was an interesting diversion to emphasise how easy it was to start talking to Sean the TomTom and treat it like a human being. “Turn right here.” “No, I don't think so, TomTom.” “In 800 metres, take the third exit on the roundabout.” “Really? That's a stupid way to go!”, etc.)
We stopped for petrol and then I finished my driving shift at Lakes Entrance (and Anita may never let me drive her car again! I think I took some of those corners a little too fast, and I spent a bit of time trying to work out how to set cruise control). There were a number of black swans on the river and it was very windy.
However, I said we must cross the bridge to go have a look at the beach. (We did and we got sprayed with sand. And the café wasn't open so Anita couldn't get her coffee.)
(These are the beach toilets which I only photographed because I thought it was interesting architecturally.)
We ended up deciding to have dinner at Lakes Entrance and, of course, the smell of the sea got us in the mood for fish and chips (yummy greasiness and saltiness! I told Ben via SMS that we were having fish and chips, and he SMS-ed back that he wanted some too). Being three girls, we couldn't finish it all so not all the chips got eaten. But nevertheless it was a good effort on all our parts!
Liwen took the next driving shift and Anita rode shotgun. I kept falling asleep in the backseat, my head rolling all over place (Anita said she noticed I'm a light sleeper because we'd turn a corner and I'd wake up and then go back to sleep again.) Anita took over the driving just before the freeway because freeways freak Liwen out. I think I was asleep all the way to Warragul, and only woke up when we stopped at the Safeway supermarket for supplies (why do they call it Woolworths in the cities and Safeway everywhere else???) Anita and Liwen did the shopping while I kept sleeping in the car (very lazy of me, I know!)
At around 11 pm we reached Anita's house. She warned us it was all different and that certain significant pieces of furniture would be missing as she just had two new housemates move out and a new one move in. The new one—Jacqui—was still awake so we went in to say hi to her. She was watching Alfie on the television, and we came and joined her, Anita serving us cups of tea. A Robert Altman film (Dr T and the Women came on afterwards). I had sand in my hair so decided to have a proper shower (even though it was a bit indulgent to have two showers in one day, but I had sand in my hair!!!). I forgot to ask first whether anyone needed to use the bathroom. Oh dear!
Afterwards, I borrowed Anita's hairdryer to dry my hair (because I hadn't brought mine) but after using it for about two minutes, it blew up! Oops! Anita was very good about it; she said it was probably old and that she didn't use it much. I went to bed with a towel on the pillow and sheets around my ears.
Blinks:
A way of funding writing in the future: pitch and idea and get people to support it.
Place where you can hire play equipment for parties, etc.
How to recalibrate the home button on your iPhone.
Unsolicited manuscripts accepted by Pan Macmillan with certain conditions.
Thought Balloon is a group blog in which the writers tackle a new theme every week? month? with one-page scripts. This URL is for their Phonogram ones.
How to sew a zipper on a knitted garment.
Issues organised by tale.
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I feel pleasantly worn out just from reading that!
One of our Colleges guys works at the Bega Cheese Factory. Here’s a little bit of trivia for you - take a good look at the Bega Cheese logo. You’ll find that it actually says “Beqa"Cheese ^_^