Last weekend I headed North to attend the Australian BookCrossing Conference (or the book nerd convention as Andrew likes to call it) in Brisbane.

Conference Lesson 1: Brisbanites are friendly, neat and organised
I was trying to make my weekend away as economical as possible, so my very cheap and very early flight deposited me at Brisbane airport at 9am. The first conference event didn't start until 6pm that evening so I had a whole day to explore and get to know the sunny city.

Who would have thought people whose idea of fashion includes stubbies, wife beaters and thongs could be so neat and organised. I'm not sure that Brisbanians have got Expo 88 out of their system. It would seem they like direction and order. Signs everywhere instruct you where you should walk and how you should do it. Michelle and I were very confused by the queuing system in Woolies. Apparently, they favour the one-to-many system up North, with one queue feeding the open registers.

The layout of Brisbane CBD is well structured and very easy to navigate. The main street of Brisbane is Queen St. All the streets that run parallel to Queen Street are named after the women of the House of Hanover (Ann, Adelaide, Elizabeth, Charlotte, Mary, Margaret and Alice). All the streets that run perpendicular are named after Hanover men (William, George, Albert and Edward). I've already memorised the streets of Brisbane and I spent 3 days there. I've lived in Sydney for more than 25 years, and I still forget the name of Bathurst Street and I get Liverpool and Goulburn Streets mixed up. I guess it's the difference between a planned city and one that grows unchecked.

Conference Lesson 2: You have to know the secret signal to be a cool BXer
Friday evening's event was registration and welcome drinks at Jawin's fruit and veggie stand. It was a chance to catch up with some of the conference regulars (if you can call attending two conferences being a regular) and meet some new BookCrossers. Over the course of the evening, we discussed some of life's important questions like "who is going to win the Amazing Race?", "what is in the toy chest in Desperate Housewives?" and "What's in the jungle in Lost?". For a bunch of book nerds we watch an awful lot of television.

Friday night also saw the beginning of the international gesture for BookCrosser. Emma decided we could use this very hip, cool sign (Emma's students use it) to identify other BookCrossers when shopping in bookstores. If you see another person with a stack of $2 books, you discreetly make the special BookCrossing sign and they'll either subtly nod or stare at you strangely and call security. Over the course of the weekend we added to this sign and developed the BookCrossing secret handshake. Stay tuned to learn the full greeting.

Photos from Day 1:

• FuShMuSh photos

Our final conference event, Yum Cha @ the Marigold, was held on Sunday morning. Yum Cha was a genius idea as it is the perfect antidote for a hangover. Once again I had woken up with a very sore head. I think there is a direct correlation between Natalie's visit and an increase in the number of alcoholic beverages Jess consumes in an evening.

At Yum Cha, we consumed oodles of dumpling goodness: prawn dumplings, scallop dumplings, vegie dumplings. We squeezed in pork buns and munched on vegies in oyster sauce. The trolley would roll up to our table and Sue would point and say "two of those and two of those... wait a sec, two of those as well!". We were hungry!

Tradition dictates (well, Sue's tradition) that a Yum Cha meal must be completed with custard tarts or Dan Tat. When we'd had our fill of savoury delights, we waited patiently for the dessert trolley to arrive, but it did not appear. We asked the waiters, "where is the dan tat?", they'd say "ah, maybe later" (that's what they say to every request). We did the Dan Tat dance (it works for the maxi taxi). In the end we could wait no longer, so we sent Sue out to search for the elusive custard tarts. Her hunt was successful and she bought back a bemused waiter, carrying a tray of dan tats. A hearty cheer arose from the table. Our Yum Cha experience was now completely perfect!
Photos from Day 3:

• FuShMuSH photos
• Nat's photos from Yum Cha

When organising the conference we'd debated between a dinner and karaoke and a trivia night for the Saturday evening event. In the end, a trivia evening won and after the success of my birthday trivia night I volunteered to organise the conference event.

I think the conference trivia evening was a big success. We had five teams of 6-7 people competing for the prize of nerdiest book geeks. The West Christchurch Cats triumphed in the end, coming in first place on 67 points. It was a very close game with only three points separating the top three teams. Obviously, Tania, Catriona and Claire are trivia secret weapons as they were on the winning team for my birthday and, once again, on the winning team on Saturday night.

Here are some sample questions from Saturday evening:

• What is the most common language in Australia after English?
  
  
• In Muriel's Wedding, what seaside resort town did Muriel call home?
  
  
• At Hogwarts, what do the acronyms (1) O.W.L and (2) N.E.W.T stand for?
  
  
• As the crow flies, which mainland Australian state capital is furthest from Uluru?
  
  
• What is the BC name of the BookCrosser who has the most books registered in Australia?

After the trivia I was ready for a drink or too (especially after dealing with so many argumentative BookCrossers!) The Clock was our first point of call. I think Paddy is right; the Clock is full of wankers on a Saturday night. When the Clock closed at midnight, we found ourselves out on the street and not quite ready to call it a night. We brainstormed a list of pubs in the area that were still open and picked Bar Cleveland as the most likely contender. After a few drinks in their fancy, upstairs cocktail bar, I think we may have discovered a potential new favourite cocktail venue! They have a fantastic range of cocktails (mmm, the ying-yang was my favourite) and their upstairs area is very comfy. The most important requirement for a favourite cocktail bar is a happy hour. Bar Cleveland happily fulfils that prerequisite with 4 hours of half price cocktails on a Thursday evening. I'm sure there will be many repeat visits to Bar Cleveland in the near future. We'll have to rigorously test it before we give it "preferred cocktail bar" status.
More Photos from Day 2:

• FuShMuSH photos
• Nat's photos from Trivia

Originally, we'd hoped that we would be able to convince an author to come and speak to the book nerds on Saturday morning. Unfortunately, our negotiations with the very lovely Allison Rushby fell through and we had to scrap the author talk idea. Such a shame, I hope Allison can make next year's conference (*hint hint*). With heavy hearts we replaced the author talk, on the agenda, with a flashmob.

So what is flashmob? It's another nerdy, geeky thing so it fits right in with BookCrossing. WordSpy defines the term flashmobbing as follows: A large group of people who gather in a predetermined location, perform some brief action, and then quickly disperse. Sydney has a very active flashmob group and they gather on the weekends and, for a brief period of time, pretend to be zombies, vampires and werewolves or surf on beach towels in the Strand Arcade, or conga line outside the Opera House singing the oompa loompa song. Sounds like a blast!

Our flashmob was a little less flamboyant; BookCrossers generally aren't huge extroverts. I think Pete explained our flashmob really well, so I'll just borrow his description: "one by one we walked up the steps to Jessica sitting at the top, collected a book and formed a descending row sitting on the steps one behind the other. When we were all there, books were passed down from behind, when the first book reached the first in line, she got up and walked away, leaving the book behind and the process was repeated as everyone in turn became the first in line. At the end, there was a line of released books on the steps of the Sydney Opera House, and a crowd of Bookcrossers rapidly dispersing, most of them with cameras in hand." We actually generated a fair bit of interest and some tourists even took photos of us. Although, tourists generally take photos of anything and everything.

Unfortunately, our sunny weather had turned into gale force winds. The books left on the steps of the Opera House were flapping wildly in the wind and some were even sliding across the steps towards the harbour (those were the books that really wanted to be free!). Next time we'll remember to take heavy books to leave outdoors.

Photos from Day 2:

• FuShMuSH photos
• Nat's photos from Flashmob

Conference Lesson 1: Berocca brings you back your b-b-bounce!
The conference kicked off with an event on Friday morning...very early on Friday morning. A couple of very enthusiastic BookCrossers had decided that they would release some books in Martin Place and try and attract the attention of Sunrise, channel 7's breakfast program. On Thursday, Natalie and I decided (after one too many cosmopolitans) that if the weather was nice on Friday morning we would tag along for the ride. Of course this decision was made while the view from the bar window was something akin to a second Noah's Ark. I rolled out of bed on Friday morning, with a very sore head, and cursed the sun streaming in through our bedroom window. Luckily, after a Berocca and a couple of Nurofen, I was able to overcome my hangover and I headed into Martin Place to meet up with Natalie, Pete and Kevin.

It was surprinsgly easy to identify Pete and Kevin, two people i'd never met before, in the crowd at Martin Place. Natalie, Pete and Kevin quickly got to work releasing books, propping them up outside the studio wall. Although people were more interested in the TV cameras and getting on television than picking up free books. Obviously television is winning the media battle.

Eventually, I had to leave to go to work. Later on, Natalie, Pete and Kevin met and spoke with Kochie and Mel, had a photo with the stars and also got their autographs. We also managed to get a mention about BookCrossing on the show (in the last 5 minutes) so Nat, Pete and Kevin's hard work was not in vain.

Conference Lesson 2: FuShMuSh rhymes with Push
12 hours later, and a very tired jess turned up to the second conference event, Registration and Welcome Drinks @ the Shelbourne Hotel. Event 2 was a meet and greet session that gave us a chance to get to know a bunch of new BookCrossers. It was great to finally get a chance to meet some of the more well known and infamous bookcrossers (hello newk!).

Whenever I was introduced to someone new, I found myself having to instruct them in how to say FuShMuSh. Everyone seems to say FuShMuSh to rhyme with plush when it actually rhymes with push. I'd cry in frustration... "it's fooooooooooooooooshmoooooooooooooosh!". I think by the end of the conference everyone knew how to say it the right way. It's quite amusing to hear the Kiwis say FuShMuSH; I should have got a soundbyte!

Photos from Day 1:

• FuShMuSH photos
• Nat's photos from Sunrise event & Welcome Drinks