Melbourne

Right now I should only just be returning from the Global Learn conference in Melbourne. I wrote a "brief conference paper" and registered for this jaunt late last year when I wasn't sure about my teaching vs research future. The paper is a teaching and learning (T&L) paper based on my thoughts about a taxonomy for criterion referenced assessment in mathematics (more on that when I write up the proper journal article...which shouldn't be as crap as the conference paper).

Anyway, given the recent Federal government's decision to essentially scrap the Australian Learning and Teaching Council, and hence the possibility for funding to T&L related projects, I've kind of lost a lot of interest in this sort of work. Not entirely - I'm still keen on improving my and others' teaching practices and I'm also looking to branch out to working with people who are actually experts in education (and who might be able to drag me along to ARC grant success!). So I was really only going to this thing because it was already all paid for and to present my talk on the paper I submitted.

I got down to Melbourne last Sunday afternoon. It was pretty good, no troubles, checked in, dumped my bags, headed out to buy some food supplies - Melbourne of course has great baked and smallgoods...yum. Dropped that back at the "hotel", then headed to an awesome pub called the Local Taphouse (20 beers on tap... good beers) The Local Taphouse. I had good beer! All good so far.

That's was where it went downhill. The short of it is that the hotel was essentially booked out by dodgy people including, I'm pretty sure, two different sex workers. They were fairly noisy! But kindly stopped work around 11pm. The domestic argument going on in the room directly next to me though, went for about two days. My door got kicked at a couple of times by the guy - I guess he figured because I had my light on I must have been interested in them... I was not. The room itself was also pretty crappy - broken fittings, lights, railings...that doesn't really bother me though. The broken heater did - it was cold!

Then I realised that there were bed bugs. I thought - hey I know I'll write about this on tripadvisor... there I found that I was not the first to make the bed bug and sex worker discoveries.

Lesson: when someone else at work (who happens to be really awesome at her job by the way - so no disrespect to her) books your accommodation, make sure you still do the same checks of the place that you would if you booked it yourself!

Urgh...anyway, I managed to get a flight out of there on Tuesday morning... I was so let down and disinterested by mid Monday, that I just had to get out. It's been much better back at home anyway - even if I did spend all day washing all the stuff I left outside the house to make sure the bed bugs didn't get inside! :-)