In my attempt to write some amusing observations about Australian culture, I neglected to mention the day’s activities.

I met Naomi from the corporate office here at 8:30 this morning. We drove over to a place she said served the best coffee in Melbourne, a worthy coffee indeed in light of the large Italian contingent which lives in the city. We then walked over to our first (and, it turns out, only) customer meeting of the day.

I was there to provide technical resources to this particular customer. It turns out this happy customer really didn’t need any. He figured out things himself and couldn’t have been more pleased with the product. We left him after a half hour of pleasant conversation and headed back to our office.

The customer meetings planned for this afternoon didn’t pan out, as the short notice of my arrival here didn’t allow for much certainty. Instead I spent the afternoon at the office, configuring my VoIP client and answering emails.

The office here is a small thing. Only three employees work out of it. Two of those employees were away today. You would think this would have made it a nice quiet refuge today. Of course, you would be wrong.

The telephone literally rang off the hook! Naomi took one call after another, most of them orders for our new product. Her lunch was actually cold by the time she got around to eating it! It was absolutely crazy. I couldn’t stop chuckling at the response. I’ve been doing this for three years now and this response beats all I’ve ever seen.

To say the presentations of this week were wildly successful would be an understatement. The response has far exceeded my expectations. I’m really excited at the momentum that I helped build for the product, though all the credit goes to the great team here in Australia. I’m glad to have been here and to have helped get things going.

One thing about Australia is that it takes a long time for things to get here. To just visit takes fourteen hours by air and weeks by sea. Indeed, its one of the most remote places on earth.

One thing that surprised me is that, due to Australia’s position below the equator (or some other phenomenon not well understood), entire decades have simply disappeared. You see, the 1990s and 2000s never made it to the Land Down Undah. Here it is still the Eighties.

You get a taste for this right away on the radio. Men At Work, a band that flew to the top of the American pop charts before quickly boomeranging back to Oz, can be heard every hour on any station of your choosing. This will be followed by one by Kylie Minogue [Warning: annoying Flash music] or even the Bee Gees. It’s nothing short of scary.

The craft brewing craze of the 1990s never arrived, either. I’ve been in a half-dozen drinking establishments and not once have I had a decent craft beer. I did enjoy a Guinness, but that’s as foreign to these shores as I am. Aussies are quick to say they don’t drink Fosters, but what they do drink isn’t much better.

That wonder of modern navigation and one of mankind’s greatest inventions, the Global Positioning System (GPS), is just now appearing on store shelves, only thirty years after it was first implemented. Not that it matters, though. There are no electronic maps of the cities here, anyway. No Mapquest nor Google Maps. The closest thing is Street Directory and it doesn’t even give directions.

Australia is home to supermodels like Elle MacPherson, yet fashion is stuck in the 80s. Young men walk around with their shirt collars flipped up. Women walk around with oversized sunglasses. I saw no parachute pants, thank goodness. Perhaps they got stopped at customs.

The Internet made it to Australia but most hotels provide their guests the retro 80s experience of dialup speeds. The idea of flat-rate access never arrived here, either. In fact, internet access in Australia may actually be regressing. Aussies call telephone poles “telegraph poles,” after all.

The biggest Eighties flashback came on my way back from dinner tonight. I walked up to a group of Asian teenagers kicking out the jams with a ghetto blaster. Getting closer, I couldn’t believe my eyes. They were breakdancing! For a moment I truly was back the Eighties. I even looked around for time-traveling DeLoreans or shrimp tossed on barbies.

So next time you think of Australia, think of Crocodile Dundee, the Bee Gees, and all that goes with them. That’s what life is still like here because the Eighties live on in the Land Down Undah.

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.

I’m in Melbourne tonight, ready to do training here tomorrow. I flew in from Sydney this morning, a 90 minute flight, and immediately went on sales calls. I got to visit the official company office here in Australia, which was nice. I also met the rest of the team here. We’ve got very good people here, that’s for sure. They’ve got a handle on things. It doesn’t bode well for me returning any time soon. 🙂

We ate dinner at one of the many riverside restaurants. I had a decent pasta dish, served by a waiter from Green Bay, Wisconsin. It was kind of nice to hear a proper accent, really, even if it was a Midwestern one.

I didn’t get a chance to see much of the city, though I’m told it was a planned city, rather than the jumbled mess that Sydney became. Melbourne is surrounded by large parks. Beautiful parks from what I’m told. I’m hoping I can carve out enough time to visit them.

On the photography front, I took a few shots from the 767 as it flew into Melbourne, but not enough to qualify for uploading now.

My day starts early tomorrow as the certification training goes all day. I’ve been promised that tomorrow night we’ll go out to dinner at a place off the beaten path. I look forward to that.

G’day and g’night for now!

Day three in Sydney is “in the bag” now. It’s been all business but fun all the same. I awoke and got dressed to go to our meeting at 8 AM. After last night’s successful navigation of the Sydney train system, I confidently rode the train over to the meeting’s hotel. I didn’t expect it to be raining this morning, though luckily I had a hooded jacket and the walk to the train station wasn’t far.

Warm, humid, rainy days make for a fun ride on a crowded subway train. Uh, not. Fortunately I had one stop to go.

Our company’s invited partners were all there, so we began promptly at 8:30. Clinton led off with an overview of the company’s traditional products before turning the meeting over to me. Then for the next two hours I animatedly explained the product and how to sell it, first going into some history of the product and its previous companies. I spoke for about four hours total today. By the end of the day, the room was buzzing with questions, there was excitement on their faces: I really think I succeeded in “lighting the fire” I set out to light.

We had drinks at the hotel bar after the formal presentation, during which I heard how well the partners received the message. I was told once again how good a presenter I am, which of course thrilled me to no end. Now our New Zealand partners want me to do this in their country next month! While I’ve always wanted to visit New Zealand, I don’t think I could do another hop across the Pacific so soon, certainly not without Kelly going with me (though that may be a possibility).

Clinton did a fine job with his part, too, and got high marks for his presentation. The product’s success here is directly related to his skills. He is more than capable of doing what I’ve done here. The big attraction of my visit, though, is simply that I’m an American representative of the company. Partners consider it a big deal if someone from the company’s headquarters (or close to it, as is the case) comes out to this part of the world for a presentation. Should my travel requests become too tiring maybe I can teach Clinton to speak ‘Merican and he can pass as someone from the home office. I have my work cut out for me as my attempt to explain the Andy Griffith Show was met with blank stares!

We headed out to the Darling Harbour area for dinner at Nick’s Seafood, where I had a plate full of fried jumbo shrimp (here they call ’em “prawns.”). The guys told me that in the two hours since our presentation five more products were sold! Whatever we did today apparently caught on! We helped ourselves to a bottle of wine to celebrate.

Tomorrow morning we hop a plane to Melbourne, which I’m told is more laid back than Sydney. I’m interested to see how the two compare. On the schedule is a tour of the office and customer meetings, among other things. I’ll finish off the week in Melbourne before flying back to Sydney Sunday night. Look for more pictures once I get to check out Melbourne.

G’day!

Day two was a bit uneventful for me. I went to a customer meeting, though we got lost on the way and were late for it. Other meetings did not happen, so I spent the rest of the workday answering email and doing conference calls at the office.

I did venture out alone, which was something I was looking forward to doing. I walked the six blocks or so from the office to my hotel, finally learning to find my way around the city. After relaxing a bit in the hotel, I ventured out again, this time taking a cab to The Rocks for dinner. After a nice (if bony) snapper dinner, I walked around this historical area before making my way to the train station. I took a short tram ride back to the hotel which cost me $2.20AUD. It was simple and cheap: a great way to see the city. Now I’m confident I can navigate this place alone, which opens up many possiblities.

I took no pictures yesterday as I spent it working, though I did ride across the famous Harbour Bridge one time (not the photographic event I expected, actually). The weather was cloudy and cooler, too, accounting for Cyclone Larry which hit well north of here. If I go out tonight, I’ll take some pictures of the downtown area at night as it really is enchanting. I couldn’t help but imagine seeing this place through the eyes of someone stepping off a boat after an eight month voyage.

I’ve got a busy day with training today, followed by drinks with the partners. It should be both fun and exhausting. It’s the beginning of day three for me here and I’m still going strong.

My Sydney pictures are in the gallery. They’re painfully slow to upload (11 kB/s) and to render, so check back frequently for new additions.