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I’m through with my first day in Australia.  It was a good day.

First, the airlines didn’t lose my luggage.  I was very happy about that.

I didn’t mention this in an earlier post, but I almost caused an international incident in New Zealand when I accidentally assaulted a security officer.  My dealings with the Australian security folks were uneventful.

They had a driver bring me back to our apartment, where I met up with Shane.  I got a quick shower, and our friend Matt came over to pick us up.  (Matt is our Australian friend who has been working with us for a number of months now.)  We grabbed lunch/breakfast at McDonalds and went back to his house to wait for delivery people to bring our order of Cisco equipment.

While at Matt’s yesterday, I was able to get most of the Cisco stuff ready for the data center, and I also started server configuration.  I got a lot done, especially considering that I was on a minimal amount of sleep.  I had to take a few breaks to walk around and wake myself up, but I wasn’t fighting sleep too badly.

When Matt’s girlfriend (Lisa) got home, we went out for dinner at a really good Japanese steak house.  I ate squid (not something I would normally eat), and it was actually pretty good.  The highlight of that meal was the steak though…it was amazing.  We also had prawns (better known to Americans as shrimp) that were brought out with heads and feet still intact.  The guy cut the feet and heads off and gutted them right in front of us.  My wife would have been highly disgusted.  At the end of the meal, we ate the prawn’s legs.  Yeah, just the legs.  They tickled a little bit as they were going down.

After eating, we walked to the cinema to watch the Simpsons movie.  We also learned that “cinema” is what you call going to the movies and “theater” is what you call going to a play.  The cinemas here all have reserved seating, which is nice because you don’t have to worry about finding enough seats all together.

When the movie was done, Matt brought us back to the apartment.  Shane went for his morning status call with the guys at the office (it was just 9:00 a.m. there), and I promptly collapsed on the bed and caught up on the sleep I was so desperately needing.

Now I’m off for a shower and whatever adventures day 2 in Australia brings.  I’ll post more soon.