I was in Adelaide last Thursday and Friday for the Law Council conference. There was a pre-conference drinks session on Wednesday night but I wasn’t going to spend an extra night away from home just for an hour of hobnobbing with other lawyers I hardly know and unlikely to meet or have anything to do with for the most part. So I just left early on Thursday morning – leaving home at 5.30am – to catch an early flight to arrive just on 8.30am for the first talk.
The first morning was enormously boring – it was laden with detailed discussion of the development of trustees duties in the context of legislative expansion in that area. 2 current judges – one each from South Australia and NSW – 1 ex-judge from NSW (who was also my lecturer in UNSW) and a senior QC right through the morning made it heavy going and sadly, switched me off the rest of the conference.
Anyway I ploughed on and tried to take it all in and at the end of the first day was ready to look at some emails and do some work when the boss rang to ask if I wanted to have a drink with him. He too had switched off but out of necessity as the office had been hounding him. When I caught up with him at the lobby of the hotel, he looked drained. We walked a couple of blocks to a bar. We had that drink but he looked like he just wanted to get away from his laptop and have a drink and chat to someone.
There was a dinner that night for the conference delegates so we left the bar and walked to the dinner venue. It the food was a bit ordinary the wine was nice but there was the next day – another full day of talks – to work through.
I finally left Adelaide at 6pm, got home around 8.30 and felt relieved to be home again. Tress fixed a very nice dinner for me and it was good to be home again.
I no longer enjoy travel for work.
We didn’t do much over the weekend – just a lot of cleaning. The house hasn’t been vacuumed for a while so I got on with that. Scruffi’s groomer called on us, so he got clipped and washed too. Tress did a truckload of laundry including all the sheets so at the end of Saturday, the house felt clean and I was able to really relax. We had gone to Madam Kwong’s for lunch so we weren’t going to have a proper dinner. We’d also rented a promising movie (Gravity) from iTune so we just settled down on Saturday night to enjoy that.
Sunday was the usual except after lunch at Madam K’s we went to Master’s – the other hardware store – to look at options for edging our front garden bed.
Overnight there was an entry in Kiddo’s blog. Tress wondered how she was doing and I said I thought it was a reflection of her thoughts and also possibly a self-admonition exercise. There are too many “look good, feel good” programs (and dare I say it, mainly in Universities or amongst so called intellectual circles) and too few outcomes based actions. I said I thought I wasn’t particularly concerned with what she has written as it didn’t sound like a negative experience, intensity of angst notwithstanding.
Ante 