Catching up... and another funny story

As some of you have probably noticed, we haven't been the most consistent bloggers. I think what happens is that we fall behind in posting, and then we feel like we have to catch up on everything that's happened before we can write more current posts. Then, we don't feel like we have enough time to write about everything that's already happened, and so we end up not writing posts.

Dave made a good point the other day that we don't just have to write about big events on our blog. We can also include more day-to-day topics, and that this might help us keep our blog a little more current. A good idea indeed. So, while we are working to catch up on our recent trips (and we have some exciting things to share from our trip to Darwin and Melbourne!), I thought I would share a little story for this weekend.

The department I am a part of at UniSA had a conference this weekend, and had booked out a hotel for the visitors. They had two last minute cancellations, but couldn't cancel the hotel rooms on such short notice. They sent an email around to the department, asking if anyone was interested in having the rooms for the night. I thought it sounded like a fun idea -- we could stay late in the city without thinking about catching the train home -- and so responded to see if we could get a room. As luck would have it, the rooms were still available.

We checked into our room, which was really quite nice, apart from the strange painting on the wall. We meant to take our camera, but forgot. It would have been worth it just to take a picture of this picture. I'll try to describe it, though it's hard to imagine it without actually seeing it. The painting was a picture of a the top 3/4 of a woman. It looked as though someone had taken a picture of a naked woman, and then painted over it. Her body was covered in a pattern of diagonal squares of different colors, sort of like you might imagine a jester wearing. But, you could see her belly button and the bottom of her breasts as well, making it unclear whether the colored squares were clothing or not. That part of the painting would have been tolerable, but her eyes were also painted with this very strange makeup. They looked sort of like the eyes in Japanese anime, except they were narrow, slanted, and sinister looking. As bad as our picture was, it was better than the one in Judy and Graham's room, even though theirs was much smaller. Their picture was just a girl's head, with lots of letters and numbers behind and to the side of her head. But, her eyes were very disturbed and angry. They stared right at you and seemed to be saying, "What are you doing in my room?" Spooky.

Anyways, we had decided to make a night of it and go out for dinner, so we left the angry-eyed jester woman and headed downtown. We decided on a sushi restaurant for dinner (what is it about raw fish that tastes so good?). We ordered "the boat," which had a combination of sushi and sashimi. There were a number of Japanese people in the restaurant, but interestingly, we noticed that none of them ordered the boat. I'd always assumed that eating sushi was a traditional thing, and what most Japanese people would eat. But, after our experience, I wonder if it's not usual to have an entire meal consisting of raw fish. That certainly makes sense. We agreed we should return and try some of the other traditional Japanese foods served there.

We stopped by the Central Market to pick up some desserts on the way home. Judy, another student in my office, had gotten the other room, and so we thought it would be fun to have her and her husband over for dessert in our room. I had done a little research before hand, and found out that the hotel had a 'heated jet pool' on the 5th floor, with views of the city. Excellent! We had packed our swim suits (or, bathers as they call them here), and were looking forward to a dip in the hot water before bed. After a lovely dessert with Judy and Graham, we got into our swimsuits, and donned the bathrobes (which were almost impossible to get off the hangers) and slippers (which were too small for Dave) provided by the hotel, and headed up for some warmth.

We arrived to the top floor, opened the door, and were thrilled to find that we had the pool to ourselves. Also, we were excited that the pool was outside, and that we had a view of the tall city buildings (not really an incredible view, but not bad, either). We were feeling pretty special indeed, right up until we stuck a foot into the 'heated' jet pool. We had been expecting a hot tub, but the temperature of this pool was probably about the temperature of a swimming pool at a retirement home. Too warm to swim in for most people, but not quite warm enough to stand around in for any length of time. And indeed, after about a minute, we were feeling pretty cool. We looked around for the jets, thinking that maybe we needed to switch these on to get the heat going. We finally found the switch and turned it on only to have even colder water shoot out at us. And, the jets were industrial strength, pushing us to the far side of the pool.

The pool was not warm enough for a hot tub and too small to swim. After turning on the jets, we decided that the only practical thing you could do in the pool would be to run or swim against the current while its strength held you in place. But, if you did that, you would surely want to wear a tight fitting swimsuit. Mine nearly came off in all of the turbulence.

After a minute or two of strong jets and cold water, we decided we'd had enough. We jumped out, and shivering, put our bathrobes and slippers on and dashed back inside. When we got back to the room, we got straight into the hot shower.

Disappointing though the pool may have been, it was honestly pretty hilarious. We are still not sure why the hotel has that pool. It was like someone almost had a good idea, but not all of the pieces came together. Like when you bake a cake with lots of good ingredients but forget to put in the baking soda--everything just flops. Oh well! We did get to enjoy a nice breakfast (with the rest of the Workshop participants who we'd never met) the next morning, and got a complimentary weekend paper. And, they had the most fun little hotel-sized bathroom conveniences, including a dental kit with the smallest tube of toothpaste I've ever seen, and a shaving kit, with a similarly-sized tube of shaving cream.

Not bad at all, though I must say we were happy to sleep in our own bed last night if only because we didn't have a strange woman staring down at us with her scary eyes! I know these little boutique hotels want to be different, but whoever thought pictures like that were a good idea must be a little odd indeed!