Free Trips for Work
15 November 2012
Spring has gone by very quickly with looming deadlines for Jay for the release of Need for Speed: Most Wanted in October and now the final rush for Real Racing 3. Need for Speed has gained excellent reviews (and sales) on both iOS and Android. The studio’s Sims Freeplay is also continuing to do well. My work has been slightly busier than previous years and I’m really looking forward to a few weeks off at the end of the year.
As with previous years, we were asked to help with the rowing club trivia night. This year the host was “The Queen” and we played the role of her attendants in the video presentation and on stage. We actually did surprisingly well at the trivia competition as well considering that I was the only one at the table who was Australian-born and the questions were skewed towards old TV shows and politicians.
I discovered the joy of medical research as a subject rather than an investigator. While getting plans through the ethics committee at St Vincent’s was beyond frustrating, being a subject in the control group for a longitudinal health study at The Alfred has been almost fun: free parking and coffee and cognitive testing as well as a host of blood tests and bone density testing. I’m also informed that I have “lovely” carotid arteries on ultrasound.
We are allocated a certain amount of funding for maintaining current clinical knowledge each year by the public hospitals. It’s on a “use it or lose it” basis, so we took the opportunity to take a free trip to Hobart on the weekend of the AFL Grand Final. I found the anaesthesia conference worthwhile and Jay found Hobart to be cold and windy. The real attraction was MONA, the new art museum and it lived up to its reputation. There was an evening reception there and we had a few hours to examine the collection as well as the striking building. The football final we watched in a bar with Kevin and Scott, friends from Perth who also happened to be in Hobart that weekend. It was an excellent game.
A free trip to Hobart seemed less impressive when Jay was sent at short notice by his studio to California two weeks later. He wasn’t able to tell me anything about the reason as he left, other than that it was for “meetings”. Find My Friends gave me a pretty big clue as to the reason for the trip.
A few days after he came back he was able to reveal that he had been asked to prepare for Apple a custom version of the studio’s forthcoming racing game to show off the capabilities of the new iPad which was launched the day after he returned. It was gratifying to see it used in the promotional material for the product. He had only a small amount of spare time while away, but managed to have dinner with his sister and her family and so in the same week got to play with (but not say anything about) unreleased devices from both Apple and Google.
Because he was away, Jay missed my cousin Matthew’s wedding which we had planned to attend. He and Jaime married at Labassa, a historic home held by the National Trust. I enjoyed the wedding mainly for seeing a number of people I had known as a child when visiting my cousins’ house but whom I had not seen for thirty years or so.
Also while Jay was away, the IFBB Victorian Bodybuilding Championships were on. We knew several guys from the gym who were competing and I had also met the visiting guest poser, Evan Centopani, while training earlier in the week.
In September my mother had enjoyed going to the Royal Agricultural Show in Melbourne and so when the Geelong Show was on she asked to go to that as well. I had last gone to it in 1997, but we drove there with my sister for the day. After looking at all the craft work and prize animals and flowers, Mum insisted that she wanted to go on the dodgems (bumper cars). I was very nervous about getting her into the car quickly enough but it turned out to be a highlight for her.
On Jay’s birthday back in July his sister had sent us a gift voucher for dinner at Attica. It is one of the most highly-rated restaurants in the country. The eight course degustation menu with matching wines meant that I had to go really easy on the wines if I was going to remember anything from the second half. It was a fascinating meal, with four little appetizers before the listed courses. The courses varied from the very simple presentation of basic ingredients such as the potato to the positively baroque: a tiny dish served in half a walnut shell which we could see being garnished in the kitchen with the aid of fine forceps. Some of the wines were very unconventional.
For the long weekend of the Melbourne Cup (otherwise known as Election Day in the US), we went to a revival of “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum” starring Geoffrey Rush in an appropriately cartoonish performance followed by a couple of quiet days at the beach, staying at the family house at Sorrento. The renovations at the holiday house have been complete for some time and it was really hospitable and relaxing.
Our plans for Christmas and New Year are mostly complete. We will be having an early Christmas with my family here and then meeting Jay’s family in Maui for Christmas with them. For New Years Eve we will be in California. Our itinerary there is not yet fixed as it depends on the plans of friends there. We hope to see as many friends as possible in Los Angeles and might have time to visit San Francisco and San Diego as well.
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As with previous years, we were asked to help with the rowing club trivia night. This year the host was “The Queen” and we played the role of her attendants in the video presentation and on stage. We actually did surprisingly well at the trivia competition as well considering that I was the only one at the table who was Australian-born and the questions were skewed towards old TV shows and politicians.
I discovered the joy of medical research as a subject rather than an investigator. While getting plans through the ethics committee at St Vincent’s was beyond frustrating, being a subject in the control group for a longitudinal health study at The Alfred has been almost fun: free parking and coffee and cognitive testing as well as a host of blood tests and bone density testing. I’m also informed that I have “lovely” carotid arteries on ultrasound.
We are allocated a certain amount of funding for maintaining current clinical knowledge each year by the public hospitals. It’s on a “use it or lose it” basis, so we took the opportunity to take a free trip to Hobart on the weekend of the AFL Grand Final. I found the anaesthesia conference worthwhile and Jay found Hobart to be cold and windy. The real attraction was MONA, the new art museum and it lived up to its reputation. There was an evening reception there and we had a few hours to examine the collection as well as the striking building. The football final we watched in a bar with Kevin and Scott, friends from Perth who also happened to be in Hobart that weekend. It was an excellent game.
A free trip to Hobart seemed less impressive when Jay was sent at short notice by his studio to California two weeks later. He wasn’t able to tell me anything about the reason as he left, other than that it was for “meetings”. Find My Friends gave me a pretty big clue as to the reason for the trip.
A few days after he came back he was able to reveal that he had been asked to prepare for Apple a custom version of the studio’s forthcoming racing game to show off the capabilities of the new iPad which was launched the day after he returned. It was gratifying to see it used in the promotional material for the product. He had only a small amount of spare time while away, but managed to have dinner with his sister and her family and so in the same week got to play with (but not say anything about) unreleased devices from both Apple and Google.
Because he was away, Jay missed my cousin Matthew’s wedding which we had planned to attend. He and Jaime married at Labassa, a historic home held by the National Trust. I enjoyed the wedding mainly for seeing a number of people I had known as a child when visiting my cousins’ house but whom I had not seen for thirty years or so.
Also while Jay was away, the IFBB Victorian Bodybuilding Championships were on. We knew several guys from the gym who were competing and I had also met the visiting guest poser, Evan Centopani, while training earlier in the week.
In September my mother had enjoyed going to the Royal Agricultural Show in Melbourne and so when the Geelong Show was on she asked to go to that as well. I had last gone to it in 1997, but we drove there with my sister for the day. After looking at all the craft work and prize animals and flowers, Mum insisted that she wanted to go on the dodgems (bumper cars). I was very nervous about getting her into the car quickly enough but it turned out to be a highlight for her.
On Jay’s birthday back in July his sister had sent us a gift voucher for dinner at Attica. It is one of the most highly-rated restaurants in the country. The eight course degustation menu with matching wines meant that I had to go really easy on the wines if I was going to remember anything from the second half. It was a fascinating meal, with four little appetizers before the listed courses. The courses varied from the very simple presentation of basic ingredients such as the potato to the positively baroque: a tiny dish served in half a walnut shell which we could see being garnished in the kitchen with the aid of fine forceps. Some of the wines were very unconventional.
For the long weekend of the Melbourne Cup (otherwise known as Election Day in the US), we went to a revival of “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum” starring Geoffrey Rush in an appropriately cartoonish performance followed by a couple of quiet days at the beach, staying at the family house at Sorrento. The renovations at the holiday house have been complete for some time and it was really hospitable and relaxing.
Our plans for Christmas and New Year are mostly complete. We will be having an early Christmas with my family here and then meeting Jay’s family in Maui for Christmas with them. For New Years Eve we will be in California. Our itinerary there is not yet fixed as it depends on the plans of friends there. We hope to see as many friends as possible in Los Angeles and might have time to visit San Francisco and San Diego as well.
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