Mamma Mia

Went to see this musical at Her Majesty's Theatre on Wednesday night.
A really fun musical - well worth seeing.

RMIT Lifts

To quote a friend after getting out of weird lecture theatre on arty farty level 11 this evening
"there is no way I'm going down the stairs"

Bad idea.

I would recommend avoiding lift #1 in Building 8 at RMIT in the near future. I along with a few others were stuck in it for just over 5 minutes and only got out by forcing the doors open (it was stopped at level 10). The stairs and escalator are quicker.

Australian International Airshow

What a great day to attend the bi-anual Australian International Airshow at Avalon Airport to the south of Melbourne. I went down with 12 other members of the Squadron I command in the Australian Air League. It's an event I always look forward to, there is no other airshow like it in Australia and features hundreds of aircraft military, commercial and private from all over Australia and abroad. Pictured below is a model of the new F-35 joint strike fighter that Australia is looking at purchasing. As you can see it has quite a stealth look about it.

The B-52 bomber. This didn't land at the airshow which was a little disappointing, but did a couple of runs. Apparently it flew down from Darwin for the airshow.

C-17 Galaxy, also from the USAF. This is one massive plane, hard to tell from this shot.

The Chinook, the RAAF has 6 of these, 2 of which were at the airshow, one on display here and the other flying as part of the show.

The Black Hawk, fairly commonly seen military helicopter.

The RAAF's F/A 18 fighter, celebrating 20 years of operation - in other words, it's ageing.

The Global Hawk (model), unmanned aircraft.

The usual suspects at an airshow, the Roulettes, down to four due to an in flight crash between two last year.

Impressive if you haven't seen this before, every airshow at Avalon ends with an F-111 doing a dump and burn, it just wouldn't be quite the same without this display.

Moomba

It's a little disappointing to see what has become of Moomba. I can remember in primary school, probably grade 1 and 2, it was a really big event. The whole school had their own parade and the Moomba festival was the talk of every classroom. Now it's just merely a few rides, a fireworks show and waterskiing, oh and there is an attempt to revive the Birdman Rally. How about they put it on the same weekend as the Grand Prix and make one big event with a huge parade.


I also took the time today to complete the visit to the National Gallery of Victoria but visiting the Ian Potter Centre, which houses all the Australia artworks of the National Gallery in Federation Square. Again it is very well done, and well worth the visit (it is also free entry). Outside it was interesting to watch these people do some ice sculpting.

It was a great day to get out and about in the city. Perhaps just a tad too warm to be hiking around the place (~30C), but I'm certainly not going to complain about the weather, I'd have this any day.

Visual Basic Help

I wasn't sure what this message was, so I clicked help ... (and that really helped!)

National Gallery of Victoria - International

I hadn't been to the National Gallery of Victoria on St. Kilda Rd. since it closed for major renovations a number of years ago. I went today and it has certainly changed, now it's huge, and that doesn't include any Australian Art which is in a separate gallery in Federation Square.
I'm not the biggest fan of art, but the gallery exhibits a lot of ancient artifacts, which makes it more like a museum, which I have always liked. They have done a great job with the renovations, it really is an impressive place.
Well worth a visit, and like all good galleries, it's free entry.

Moonlight Cinema

It wasn't exactly Moonlight, or warm, but it was nice to watch a movie in the Botanic Gardens on a huge inflatable screen atMoonlight Cinema. The movie we saw was Collateral, a thriller that moved slow at times and very quick the next - probably a good thing as I don't think I would be able to concentrate on any complex storylines. We were in a group of 10 friends, and were probably the noisiest lot there. Walking back in the dark through the Botanic Gardens reminded me of the first chapter of the novel The Brush-Off by Shane Maloney, which we had to read as one of our novels in Year 12.

Grand Prix Parade - Melbourne

Went into the city today, this time not for uni, to see the Grand Prix parade. There is still a lot the organisers need to do to make this event successful. If it wasn't for the doughnuts done by the cars on the corner, it would have been a real let down. Great to see the F1 and V8 cars racing around the city. I would have liked to see a few more cars, more regularly.

Pictured here is Mark Skaife's car, just turned from Swanston into Collins Street.