Trip to Ballina & Byron Bay for AusWeb

Hi boys and girls,
I've already e-mailed a few people differing versions of text below, but we were out late at the Flogging Molly show last night so I'm lazy (plus the sun is shining so I need to get away from this PC soon).

Well, I can now check off 'become an international speaker' on my list of things do to. We just got back from Ballina/Byron Bay, which is about a 2.5 hr flight north of Melbourne. I presented a paper at a mostly techno type conference (i'm kind of the 'normal' guy that represents real people at these type of things). All in all it was a good time - met some really fun people from Melbourne that I'm certain we will be hangin out with more in the future. However, the trip was very bizarre for several reasons:

1) It poured rained for 4 days straight so poor Christy didn't really get much beach time
2) The first night we were there I hung out with fellow conference attendees drinking. One of these folks, a crazy drunkard that was at the conference with his girlfriend, came pounding on our door at 1:15am. I tried to ignore the first 18 times he knocked, but when the knocking started again 5 min. later and I angrily got up to see what the hell he wanted, I opened the door and no one was there
3) A 16 year old boy died from a shark attack at the beach about a 1/4 mile from where we were staying. We heard the ambulance go by the resort the morning it happened
4) We went to the this place called an RSL - can't remember the acronym, but kind of similar to a VFW. The one we went to was much fancier than most - actually it was very similar to Vegas - a huge cavern of a place with cheap grub, cheap drinks and gambling. At one point some random dude pulled up a chair, made some smart ass comment about being Russian after I told him I was American, then he took of his shoes, propped his feet up on one of our buddy's chairs and passed out.
5) While at the conference we received a rather alarming e-mail from our neighbor in Portland stating that it appeared that our tenant had moved out. To make a long story short, this was indeed true, and our property management company is working on finding new renters.

Your Aussie lingo lesson for today - grunter: pig
ex: 'This kid is as fat as a grunter - git im orf the junk tucker'

My recommendation for your daily dose of rock - this guitar will melt your face if you're not careful....


Bye for now,
Sweany