![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
Fire on the Snow
Aug. 17th, 2012 01:04 pmOn Wednesday, it was decided (not by me) that I should attend a board meeting on Thursday, in case the board had any questions about a discussion paper I had written for them. Joy. For once, I thought it went well, but a seven-hour round train trip for half an hour of listening to a board member paraphrase my paper before turning to me to say, 'Did I get all that right?'… well, I don't know that that is the very best possible use of my time.
The staff member who acts as the board's minute taker works in the other office, so it was nice to have a chat with her. I said the thing about all these board meetings is that we are working our way around all the conference facilities on Melbourne. In the last two years, between us we have been to eleven different hotels and the Royal Australian College of Surgeons. We should write a guide. I like the Vibe Savoy best, largely because it is across the road from the train station, although I think the Grand Hyatt yesterday provided some excellent curried chicken wraps for lunch (I also like the giant birds at the entrance).
After my thirty-minute cameo appearance, I realised I had a couple of hours before my train home. I would have liked to have gone to the Mesopotamia exhibition at the museum, but that is in the opposite direction to the train station, so I went to the art gallery's Napoleon exhibition instead, being less out of my way. I am not normally that enthused by things that belonged to famous people (Charles Dickens' pen or what have you), but I was unexpectedly thrilled to see the Hat. The actual Hat. Well, one of them, at any rate. He apparently had quite a few the same. He also had a Sèvres dinner setting, which he ordered specially, green-edged, each with a different hand-painted scene of places he picked himself, largely ones where he had won battles. Imagine if I could do that. There'd be, what, one sugar bowl depicting my desk at work.
Also: marble busts of your own head displayed in your living room. Yes/no?
I was in the gallery at the same time as a school group, so I eavesdropped on their guided tour for a while. The first room was an introduction to the Ancien Régime and the Revolution, and the guide kept referring to the revolutionaries as being 'like us'. As in, imagine if we lived in those times: we'd be revolutionaries too, wouldn't we? I get what she was doing, but, I mean, don't presume, guide lady. One of those kids could be the Bourbon heir.
I walked from the station to the Grand Hyatt to the art gallery and back to the station, which is pretty much all in one little part of central Melbourne. Well, clearly, all within walking distance. And within that walking distance, I passed seven pie face outlets. Seven! Does any city need that many pies?
The staff member who acts as the board's minute taker works in the other office, so it was nice to have a chat with her. I said the thing about all these board meetings is that we are working our way around all the conference facilities on Melbourne. In the last two years, between us we have been to eleven different hotels and the Royal Australian College of Surgeons. We should write a guide. I like the Vibe Savoy best, largely because it is across the road from the train station, although I think the Grand Hyatt yesterday provided some excellent curried chicken wraps for lunch (I also like the giant birds at the entrance).
After my thirty-minute cameo appearance, I realised I had a couple of hours before my train home. I would have liked to have gone to the Mesopotamia exhibition at the museum, but that is in the opposite direction to the train station, so I went to the art gallery's Napoleon exhibition instead, being less out of my way. I am not normally that enthused by things that belonged to famous people (Charles Dickens' pen or what have you), but I was unexpectedly thrilled to see the Hat. The actual Hat. Well, one of them, at any rate. He apparently had quite a few the same. He also had a Sèvres dinner setting, which he ordered specially, green-edged, each with a different hand-painted scene of places he picked himself, largely ones where he had won battles. Imagine if I could do that. There'd be, what, one sugar bowl depicting my desk at work.
Also: marble busts of your own head displayed in your living room. Yes/no?
I was in the gallery at the same time as a school group, so I eavesdropped on their guided tour for a while. The first room was an introduction to the Ancien Régime and the Revolution, and the guide kept referring to the revolutionaries as being 'like us'. As in, imagine if we lived in those times: we'd be revolutionaries too, wouldn't we? I get what she was doing, but, I mean, don't presume, guide lady. One of those kids could be the Bourbon heir.
I walked from the station to the Grand Hyatt to the art gallery and back to the station, which is pretty much all in one little part of central Melbourne. Well, clearly, all within walking distance. And within that walking distance, I passed seven pie face outlets. Seven! Does any city need that many pies?