Long weekend in Sydney

P. and I got home last night after spending the long weekend (Canberra Day) in Sydney. I actually went up early, on Thursday morning, to do some PhD stuff first.

I met my supervisor on Thursday afternoon and had a good meeting. She managed to give me heaps of feedback - what to change, what to keep, what to update, etc... without ever being negative about it. An amazing skill really, when there are some people who can manage to tell you what they like and still make you feel as though they are criticising you.

Friday was a very surreal day. I felt as though I was living someone else's life and couldn't even work out what I thought of it. I attended a seminar and masterclass on 'reviewing the reviewers' at the University of Sydney. To start with, I have only really been to the University of Sydney before in order to use their climbing wall at night (and once to start the Walk Against Want), so the campus was very unfamiliar. Added to this was the fact that I had assumed (for reasons I cannot justify) that this was a seminar and class about submitting articles to peer reviewed journals, when it was actually about writing reviews on books for newspapers and magazines.



So I arrived over an hour early by mistake (had the time wrong too) and wandered around an unfamililar campus trying to find a decent coffee. Then I spend the whole day in a room full of people that I didn't know, learning about something that I had never attempted to do (until being asked to for this course) and had never actually paid any attention to until 5 days earlier when I realised what the course was actually about.

There was a lot of discussion about the importance of literature and Australian literature in particular, about the role of the reviewer, and about finding new talent. It was all very interesting in a detached kind of way, but I felt quite odd being present for it. It really seemed as though I should have been reading about it instead. It just wasn't my scene. The final thing that made the day feel even more surreal is that I found out that I did actually know one person in the room in a manner of speaking - one of the presenters, in fact. She was familiar to me online, as a blogger and commenter and knew who I was too. As I said, it was an odd day.

Our weekend was far more familiar and normal. We were cat sitting at my Dad and step-Mother's place and spent plenty of time hanging out with the munchkin cat. We went across to Newtown to browse in second hand bookshops and see a film at Dendy. We met some friends for brunch at Bodhi and spent an entire afternoon in Books Kinokuniya browsing their books and taking down the ISBNs of those that we wanted to order somewhere cheaper. I found a discounted book on craft elsewhere and bought it (more on that issue later). And, we had lunch at the ever delicious and friendly Cafe Mint on Crown Street before getting the bus home. It was so nice, but I was also glad to get back to Canberra. So I think that we have found a good balance.

Finally, this morning I went into the Bike Shed and got my new bike fitted before bringing it home! Now I finally have some transport (other than the bus) and something to play with on the weekends etc... Very exciting!