Conference goodness
I've spent the last week in Auckland, attending the
LIANZA annual conference.
A brilliant time overall (I won't go into the details here, save that for my
professional blog. But the social aspects were good, too. I spent Friday and Saturday with Mandy, an ex-classmate of mine. Friday we'd hoped to catch SJD playing live but they'd sold out, so we wandered the streets of Kingsland for a while, tossing up between classy cocktail joints and dirty rock and roll. The dirty rock and roll won - we checked out the Have and SlaveTrader, both young loud bands. Nothing fantastic, but nothing wrong with them either - the sort of sounds that have become fashionable with the success of the Datsuns and the D4. Not a huge crowd, sadly, and at least two dodgy mullets spotted.
Saturday we chilled as Mandy has her son that day, and he was sick. Watched a documentary on feminist film makers and Antiques Roadshow, and ate pizza.
Sunday was the welcome cocktail party, which (for reasons I still haven't worked out) took place on the platform of the Auckland train station. It was a pleasant evening though (no cocktails, dammit! just wine). I hooked up with Matt Powell, an old schoolmate of mine who works at Wellington City Libraries, and a bunch of his workmates. We got very drunk, very quickly, I realised that one of the workmates knows Rhonda and had been instructed (by another friend of hers) to track me down at conference and check me out. I made it easier for her by finding her myself.
The next bit is hazy, but I remember being in a bar on the Viaduct Basin, singing Smiths and Billy Bragg songs, and eating. At which point it seemed like a good idea to go home.
Conference passed uneventfully - I did run into a bunch of my former classmates, plus a few lecturers and a few other librarians I know. A good feeling, generally, that I'm starting to meet people within the profession. I passed on the conference dinner, which was apparently either very good, or rubbish - depending on who I asked. But the last night was the best, when I'd been expecting that I'd have to go home and watch the Simpsons alone (Vanita had gone home, Mandy was sick, Matt had gone home that evening). On my way home I ran into a vendor I'd been talking to, and a bunch of other vendors. They dragged me out with them, and we had a great time of it - lots of drinks and banter. We also found a very cool (literally) bar called
Minus Five - it's made entirely of ice, and you have to wear big arctic jackets to go inside. Even the glasses are made of ice, and there are some cool sculptures as well.
Unfortunately I had to be up by 6am, so left early-ish. But not before discovering that two of the vendors knew people I knew - one of them knew Rhonda (does everyone know this woman?) and another once worked at the Australian Institute of Sport with people I know.
Home today, tired but revitalised. The big news is that I have a second interview for the job, tomorrow. I spent Sunday afternoon completing a web-based personality test. I'm quite excited, I must be down to the last two or three candidates. Which is a much better result than I ever expected. Cross fingers for me :-)
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