Melbourne, in a bit less glory

Melbourne. It's a masculine apartment with one dark gray wall, dark gray carpeting… dark gray tile in the bathroom and open kitchen… there are black shades over the windows to stop too much sun from coming in. The granite countertops are black.

On the first day we actually took out our red Marmots and hung them up on a chair just to brighten up the space.

There are enough beds for six people, but Ioan elects to sleep on one of the couches instead of bringing out the folding single bed.

We watch TV. The person here has a collection of movies (almost none of which we find interesting-looking at all), which includes Ghost Town (Ricky Gervais, Tea Leoni; a man going in for a routine operation dies for seven minutes while under general anaesthetic, and finds he can see ghosts)… and some Pierce Brosnan movie with the… Vietnam war? I didn't watch it, so I don't know. Rest assured though, I heard a great deal of gunshots, groaning, etc, and I read the back of the DVD cover, so I know enough to be able to say why I didn't want to watch it.

It's a pretty big city, this. We generally walk to the tram station,
take the tram to wherever it is we want to go, take possibly another tram, and then walk. I'm not certain when walking stopped hurting my feet so much. I remember when we were in Paris we'd walk walk walk all day, then sit down at the end and be unable to feel our feet. It still happens, but only rarely, even though technically, we're on our feet all day.

I think it's the orthopedics we have underneath the soles of our shoes. Those things are seriously lifesavers.

We see many things in Melbourne, including the Museum Victoria, where we go before the 3:30pm showing of Titanic. The first places we go to look are… well, I don't remember. Suffice it to say that Ioan, Ileana and I were happier going down to see animal skeletons than gems (I just can't get into gems. They're pretty, they cost a lot, I can make do with paste for everything but my wedding ring… they're very interesting, yes, but really? Look at this fascinating animal skeleteon and tell me you're not amazed by how everything is put together.).

We also lost Ileana somewhere in the Mind & Body exhibit (though we didn't know it until we got to the 1920s), and spent 20 minutes looking for her with the clock running down and ticking at us.

I'm the official time-keeper of the family, so I can never get lost. The watch never leaves my arm, except when I'm getting wet or my arm is so sweaty it's probably better not to wear the watch. Those times are few, so the watch has stayed on since December 2010, almost without a single break. You can tell— the straps have fallen off and the shiny plastic coating is coming off the watch. But the strap still holds, and the watch still tells time, and no one is studying my wrist to see how well my watch looks, so I'm fine.

At one point, Ileana comes over and taps me on the shoulder.

"WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?" I exclaim, shocked that she's found us (she hasn't, Dad found her and brought her over).

"I went into the 'mind' part of the Mind & Body exhibit. It was so cool, they had a Memory game but with sounds, and it was awesome…"

I felt a bit put out. "I didn't go in there because I knew there wasn't time to enjoy it."

It's always a bit put-outing when you think something can't be done and then your little sister goes ahead and does it. It's different with drawing or singing or writing songs— those you know you can't do… but simply getting lost for the sake of an exhibit which you decided against due to time constraints, and actually seeing it… argh.

I would have liked to have played the Memory game with sound. Ah well. 

Titanic is up on a huge screen that makes the close-up faces have a nose about the size of my forearm and fist. You can imagine how hard it is to figure out what's going on when you can't fully take in an entire face. It's a bit annoying, and I think I'd rather have a screen that makes everything life-size, not giant size. The movie is also in 3-D. It's an interesting way to watch a movie, but probably not something I'd pay so much for. (Of course, probably when I have kids the only way to watch movies will be in 3-D, which means that Disney, which has been touching up Snow White, will have to do it again to 'keep up with the times,') I mean, 3-D is very nice and all, but it doesn't seem to add much to the movie experience, and it sort of limits the amount of people that can come in and watch a few scenes, just because they have normal glasses on instead of 3-D ones. This last bit for when 3-D comes into houses.

All in all, Melbourne was a pretty interesting city, but definitely not my favorite place.