I’m wrapping up my first full day in Melbourne. The weather was absolutely perfect today. It would have been a great day to wander about. Too bad I had work to do!
The main event in Melbourne now is the Commonwealth Games. The Games are athletic competition between the British commonwealth countries. It’s like a mini-Olympics, and its very big here. Throngs and throngs of people are here for the games, which makes it difficult to find a decent hotel (I’m at the beautiful, exotic “Best Western“). Ironicallly, this also makes it easy to find a table at restaurants, as most of these tourists are at the stadiums until late.
Most local papers like The Age have huge portions devoted to the Games. Aussie newspapers, by the way, are as wide as the continent itself, perhaps fifty percent wider than typical American papers. It makes them difficult to fit on the table when one is eating breakfast. Anyhow, I mention it because this city (and country) is paying rapt attention to it now. You can’t go anywhere without hearing of it.
So today was our partner certification training day. We had a nice hotel meeting room set up for our presentation and twenty-two partners attended for the full day. My Aussie counterparts presented some introductory information, after which I had the floor to demonstrate the product. I began with a joke, telling them that like the Games, they, too, would be competing today. Their race was the “ten meter dash” and the finish line was the hotel bar. It was admittedly a lame joke but I got laughs everytime things slowed down and I mentioned the “race.”
The demo and training went well, the partners were engaged and excited, and the local boss complemented us on the professional way the day was presented. To top it off, even more orders rolled in as a result of our earlier Sydney presentation!
Even though I didn’t get out to see the city until after sundown, I had a wonderful day. Here I am at the bottom of the world and I feel like I’m on top of it.