Canberra is Cool!

I started to like this town even as my plane was approaching the landing runway. With 300,000 people, Canberra definitely has an urban, sophisticated feel to it. Just walking around looking at all the restaurants (they're everywhere!) I have seen people of many nationalities. The Quest hotel is right in the middle of downtown, so we are walking distance to restaurants and the University (where Linuxconf is).

I stopped at a Thai restaurant for dinner and ordered my usual dish, Basil Chicken. I asked for it "Hot", assuming that their hotness levels are generally pretty weak. It turned out to be perfect. The weird thing is that they don't have Thai Iced Tea. When I ordered it the waiter looked at me like I was speaking another language, and asked if I meant [Insert some kind of beer starting with the letter 'T']. So I slowly said, "Thai. Iced. Tea." He repeated it to the proprietor who just shook her head. They did happen to have a huge beer and wine list though. Who in the hell drinks Wine with spicy thai food? I guess people who drive on the left side of the road. This incident, hereafter known as the "Missing Thai Tea Incident" is so far the first problem I've seen with Canberra.

The conference starts tomorrow, which should be a lot of fun. I've never been to a technical Linux Conference before, and I'm hoping I will learn a lot and meet people with whom I've only dealt with over email. I'll try to walk around and take pictures of stuff during the day. Someone told me that the area where all the Foreign Embassies are is a neat place.

5 whole nights without having to be on a plane, so I'm definitely looking forward to the downtime. My apartment has a kitchen, so I even went and bought some groceries so that it is a bit more like home.