27th - 88

“88th floor”. It’s not every day you hear an elevator say that. 9 m/s. 88 floors in 38 seconds. Takes almost 16 floors to slow down to a full stop. Tallest residential building in the world. Tallest building in Australia. Tallest publically accessible floor in the world.

The Heureka Tower in Melbourne is an awesome tower, towering over the other buildings in the surrounding area. You get a great view from the top, but unfortunately it was warm enough to ruin the visibility on the long distances. And a lot of kids. Noisy kids. Very kick-tempting noisy kids. Both when I was up during the day, but also during the night. Despite that it was great getting another perspective to the city.

I went to the Queen Elizabeth market – probably the largest market I have been at for a very long time, and complete chaos. But it was fun walking around the booths, and the building containing butchers, fish shops and delicatessen.

My Visa is screwing up – thank God for Mastercard backup.

I am going home on Saturday. Amazing how time flies. I am leaving for Alice Spring tomorrow morning, but I fear that I will feel that I need more time in the middle.

26th - The waddlers

I picked up my car for the next couple of days this morning. I had made a reservation for a compact (the smallest car they had with an automatic transmission). Something had apparently gone wrong during the transmission from my computer to their system, as they had logged it as a car in the group above the Camry. And not only that –they upgraded me to the group above that for free, as I then would have the GPS unit implemented. Dimensions are more or less the same as the last car, but it’s filled with lovely small features; keyless, GPS unit much better than the previous, better engine and transmission, a small rear camera that get’s activated when reversing – parking the monster just got much easier… Too bad I’m not going to use it much more.

Went a little east before going south down to Phillip Island. I went to the koala conservation center to see their koalas in the open (but still within fences). I think I am getting overloaded with those teddy bears, as I don’t as fascinated by them anymore. Now they almost need to do the tango in front of me to get my attention. It would actually be quite cool if they did that…

I ended the day at the penguin parade; seeing hundreds of Little Penguins come up from the ocean at dusk to get back to their burrows on land was actually quite fun. Small penguins not taller than 30 cm waddle across land and trying to get past the rocks and stones on the beach as fast as possible was more entertaining than expected. Too bad it was chilly and windy as hell. I knew they were small (the world’s smallest penguin race) but they looked even smaller when they waddled past the boardwalk we were standing on just next to their path. We weren't allowed to photograph at the event so no documentation, unfortunately.

25th - Size does matter!

I went to Melbourne’s aquarium today. Pretty average, if it hadn’t been because of their king penguins. I don’t recall having seen them before, but my dad could probably tell you of several occasions where I have seen them. Oh well, never mind about that now. They were pretty majestic (hence the name…), but they weren’t moving much. Flapping their wings, making sounds and just looking good.

I went to watch The Dark Knight at Melbourne’s IMAX theater. That was pretty amazing. It wasn’t the entire film that was in the IMAX format, but the parts that were (mostly aerial shots, the intro, and the action sequence when transporting Dent) looked amazing. The screen was huge, I was sitting on the second row from the back (there where only app. 20 rows) and it was just possible for me to see the entire screen when looking forward.

A normal non-digital movie is filmed on a 35mm film, whereas an IMAX movie is filmed on a 70mm. The surface area of a 70mm can hold 10 of the 35mm film which says a little of the increased resolution and therefore also the possible detail. Because of the size of the reel you can only film 3 minutes of IMAX at a time before you have to enter a new reel. The time it takes to change reels? A couple of hours… 45 minutes of IMAX video results in 4,5 km long filmstrip. No wonder it isn’t many movies that are filmed in this format. The screen here in Melbourne is only the 3rd largest in the world (the one in Sydney being the largest); 32x23 meters (compare that to the one in Imperial in Copenhagen; 15,7x7,4 meters!). The projector is run using two water cooled xenon 15000 Watt light bulbs. Ah, the lovely techno-babble!

And the price for the ticket was less than 100 DKR. Compare that to a ticket at Imperial for a movie that lasts for more than 2 hours. As far as I recall, if you want a good seat, you can easily end up paying 110-120 DKR.

Watching movies will never be quite the same.

24th - The Olympics

I took a walk in Melbourne today to get a look of the near surroundings (I took a short walk yesterday after arriving to get a loose impression of the center of the city). I went south along the Yarra river which has a row club (or more in the one building) which meant that there was pretty intense traffic on the river with 2-8 (+pilot) person rowboats, including their trainers biking along the pathways parallel with the river giving orders in their intercoms. It was actually a little entertaining to look at.

At the point on the river where several chose to turn around and go back.

Following the river it brought me down through the botanic garden, and going through this I came down to Albert Park Lake & Reserve. It is a park with a lake used by a sailing club, so you could see several small boats sailing along in the water. Also quite a lot of birds, especially black swans. To my surprise they were far from as territorial as the swans we have at home; they pet you come close when walking around (less than a meter) without giving a care, even if they have kids (swanlings?) from this year.

Going back I came through the Olympic park with all the arenas and stadiums. Looking at them I thought of all those people who wanted the Olympics to Denmark. Not one of the stadiums where smaller than Parken in Copenhagen, some significantly larger, and there are 5-7 of them. And the Olympics have not gotten smaller since 1956 when Melbourne had it. You guys are fucking naive if you think we will have the space, resources and infrastructure to hold such an event.

The gold winners at the Olympics in '56. Denmark is represented! Sweden is too, but they don't really matter....

I continued on and I came by the city’s IMAX cinema. I expect to go in to watch The Dark Knight there tomorrow. That’s going to be cool…

I think he took the wrong turn somewhere... But he came sailing by in the early evening