Thursday, October 27, 2005

Quest for knowledge, wifi, and the food court

Today my search for wi-fi brought me to the State Library of New South Wales, specifically The Mitchell Library and its beautiful Reading Room, you can take a little online tour of it and imagine me at one of the two-person tables with my Mac, catching on up on emails and reading Trent's blog. The guy at the next table was up to his chin in Environmental Studies reports on the Homebay Bush and at my table sits a copy of Australian Economic History Review, Vol. 10-11, 1970-71. Light reading, if you will.

The Reading Room is just as it should be all grand and quiet and well-lit, with big wood tables, stained glass windows and three stories of built-in bookshelves. Haydn has a friend who comes here for the wi-fi and the air of scholarly productivity, and the librarians were very nice to give me a library card despite not having anything with a local address on it. The library is downtown in the area known as the domain. The Sydney Hospital is next door, the Parliament house is on the street, and the Australian Mint, too. Though, I think the mint is more of a landmark than a place printing the Australian dollar. Hyde Park is nearby, a long lovely stretch of green in the middle of the city, and on the other side of the park and the historic buildings are the skyscrapers and such.

Before I found the library, I found the big mall area and was happy to stumble upon the Body Shop. Then I found myself incredibly starving and ended up at...the mall food court. I was going to opt for good ol' Subway -- afterall, I was at the mall! But the meal deals there include a soda and a cookie. Um, hello, it isn't a meal deal without potato chips, right? So then the Chinese place next to Subway lured me away.

Haydn is picking me up in a bit and I believe we're checking out the band The Cops tonight. Hmm, but I bet I will be able to watch McLeod's Daughters before that.

And with that, a bit more web cruising and more to come tomorrow!
--tc

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

okay, I forgot to tell you who I saw in LA besides Gang of Four and LCD Soundsytsem. I saw the Cops! They're awesome. I saw them at this tiny hole-in-the-wall club called Silverlake Lounge, because my sister's friend (and fellow WBR Int'l marketeer) wants to manage them, and asked us to come along for moral support. They rock! Just plain ol' good seattle rock & roll. if you do go see them, lemme know whatcha think.

Anonymous said...

Ooh the new office sounds very lovely. It's nice to hear you've got such industrious co-workers unlike my office which is populated largely by the lunching elderly.

The lack of crisps at the subway is v. disappointing...do they smoosh up the cookie inside their turkey sub?

Oh and thanks for the fruit info in the last post. I still find it v. suprising that there is only one novel fruit. I mean this country has animals with pouches, but the fruit's the same? Maybe it's all just been overrun by non-native species...seems like a question for you Environmental Studies friend...

Anonymous said...

Greetings from the Urneses;
Printed out chunkytoast
Looks very interesting
Sounds like you're having fun
Lots of love Jim and Lois