Day 4 - To See or Not To See

To see, or not to see: that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to offer
The drafts and glasses of outrageous prices,
Or to take arms against a sea of bottles,
And by consuming end them? To drink: to sleep;
No more; and by a sleep to say we end
The head-ache and the thousand natural toxins
That flesh is heir to, 'tis a consumption
Devoutly to be wish'd. To drink, to sleep;
To sleep: perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub;
For in that sleep of drinks what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal toil,
Must give us pause: there's the respect
That makes calamity of such long days;
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
The employer's wrong, the proud man's contumely,
The pangs of distant love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office and the spurns
That patient merit of the unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a beer beaker? who would laptops bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary day,
But that the drink of something after dinner,
The undiscover'd country from whose brews
No traveler returns, puzzles the will
And makes us rather beer whose grails we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all;
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of draft,
And enterprises of great sip and libation
With this regard our currents turn dry,
And lose the name of action. - Something dark now!
The far bartenders! Mates, in thy invoices
Be all my selections remember'd.

<<<>>>

It was on Tuesday that my fellow consultant and two of the employees of the utility went out drinking together. Well, actually, my fellow consultant doesn't drink. He had an Aussie variety of a Bacardi mixer, not realizing that it was in fact an alcoholic drink. I had sampled two of the beers off of the display of taps. I had yet to look beyond the obvious eight choices into what else might be available. Matt from the utility ordered us a round of Carlton Draughts (watch the slide show on their web page here: http://www.carltondraught.com.au/CarltonDraught.aspx its pretty funny, as is the flash beer video itself). The beer was OK, drinkable, but nothing particularly memorable for me, plus it violates the rule of not drinking anything you can see through. I asked Matt if any of the selections were dark beers and he returned for our second round with Carlton Black. That was a good beer. Very drinkable. Thicker in flavor and aroma; very tasty; not too bitter; a good malt balance. All in all, it was a very good choice, so we stuck with that for the next round, too, before calling it a night. It actually reminded me of 1554, one of my all time favorites.

We had a good time, just the four of us chatting about all sorts of fun stuff. Matt and Rob from the utility both (and to the dislike of their wives) purchase and build gas powered airplane replicas and fly them around. Discussion touched on work, and industry, but for the most part avoided such topics, favoring sports, culture, etc. It was a good night and my first good non-tourist like social type activity with the locals. All of my other time had been spent sight seeing and hanging out with Brian the consultant (from New Zealand).

The only other truly noteworthy activity of the evening was dinner at the Chinese restaurant down the block. The meals were pretty good (we shared our orders). I found it interesting that white rice had to be asked for separately and cost extra. We also had a sampling of appetizers, all items that I can't identify for you, but can say that they aren't found in buffets in the States.

The work part of the day was typical. We found a slight issue with some fiber optic cable and otherwise completed the standard startup check list.

Easily the coolest part of the day, but not in an overshadowing sort of way, was the fact that not five minutes after I had returned to my room after dinner, there was a knock at the door. I opened it to see the two guys from the utility who simply asked, "Well, mate, are we going out for a drink or not?"

[No pictures today, sorry]