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On Sunday morning, I breakfasted at Riverside with the 'rentals (who were also in Brisbane, my family likes to follow me interstate) and then had a browse through the Riverside markets. I love exploring new markets. There are new stalls to browse, new clothes to consider, new jewellery to admire and new bargains to be had. After the markets I headed off to King of Kings Seafood Restaurant in the Myer Centre to meet up with the other BookCrossers for Yum Cha.
If I'd have known how much food there was going to be at Yum Cha, I probably would have skipped breakfast (and dinner the day before). There was enough food to feed an army... an army of sumo wrestlers breaking the fast after a week of the cabbage soup diet. Unfortunately, at the end, there was a lot of food left over and with Live8 so close, we felt guilty about the starving children in Africa. We're a bunch of greedy, materialistic Westerners!
After Yum Cha I made my farewells with the BookCrossing bunch. They were sad goodbyes, because I only get to see many of my BookCrossing friends once a year at the conference. I walked back to the Backpackers where I lounged in the common room, and alternately read and snoozed. I had booked a late flight home to try and save some money. When I booked my flights the $30 difference in the price between a 2pm flight and an 8pm flight seemed like a lot of money. On Sunday afternoon, as I twiddled my thumbs and watched the clock, I wondered why I'd bothered.
The Brisbane Conference Committee put on a fantastic weekend. Congratulations and well done! I'm already looking forward to attending next year's conference. The voting process has already started, with Adelaide and Canberra putting in bids to be the host city. It's a close competition at the moment with Adelaide slightly in front. Adelaide has the Haigh's Chocolates visitor centre and Canberra has little Johnny Howard. Which city do you think I voted for?Photos from Day 3:
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Conference Lesson 3: Happy Pride Day
On Saturday morning, the three M-skteers, the Divine Ms Em, the lovely Ms Michelle and me, Ms Mess had a very early breakfast in Brunswick and squeezed in a quick browse through Brunswick St. markets (Brunswick is Brisbane's Newtown equivalent). It was far too early in the morning, and neither Michelle nor I had had a good night's sleep. We were staying in the Palace Backpackers and seemed to be the only people who were interested in sleeping during the night. The other guests preferred to sleep when the sun was out. (We BookCrossers were the crotchety, old people who grumpily yelled "You kids keep it down! Some of us are trying to sleep!")
After breakfast, Michelle, Emma and I headed off to meet the other BXers at King George Square. Andrew has always said that BookCrossing is just a front for my lesbian activities (Apparently, all women are either lesbians or bisexuals). Andrew has always been suspicious of BookCrossing meetups which are mostly attended by women, and my weekends away to visit Tash and Michelle in Melbourne. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that not only was I in Brisbane for Pride Day (Brisbane's equivalent of Mardi Gras) but the conference meeting place for the morning, King George Square, was also the meeting place for the Pride Day march. A coincidence, which both Andrew and I found hilarious.
Our morning event was a flash mob. I've defined flash mob before so you should know what it is, but just in case you've forgotten: flash mob v: A large group of people who gather in a predetermined location, perform some brief action, and then quickly disperse. We were directed to make our way over to the Energex Arbor at Southbank. At 10am, we were to walk single file through the archway. When our fearless leader, Neesy, released her book on the ground, we were instructed to follow suit and place our books in line along the ground. We were to disperse and head over the way to a coffee shop which had a good view of our books, lined up and awaiting new owners.
So how did it go? I think it went off without a hitch. We generated a lot of interest with many people stopping to browse the books that were lined up on the grass. I don't think there were any books left over by the time we'd finished our morning tea.
Conference Lesson 4: Winning isn't everything
Saturday evening, we were back at Con the Fruiterer's for an evening of trivia fun. Our team, Passion Palace, had been boasting about trivia prowess throughout the course of the day. Unfortunately we didn't manage to come up with the goods on the evening; we tied for last place. However, if there had been a trophy for the "loudest and rowdiest" team I think we would have won that prize hands down. Congratulations to the winning team, The Honeymooners!
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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.
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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.
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