Melbourne

In Melbourne tonight, have met my friend and we're chatting pretty well.

Caught the train down rather than fly, 12 hours travelling from door to door rather than 4 hours, but it was environmentally friendly and I've never done it before. Plus, it was interesting to watch the shift from the Sydney downpour to the light sprinkles in the southern highlands with attendant green shoots, to the dry, dry fields of the northern Victorian tablelands.

A few highlights of the trip:

• chatted with the guy in the seat next to me, he's a physio from Adelaide getting off at Cootamundra to work at Temora Hospital. Some good discussion around jobs and careers, IT, health, socialism and government, privatisation, health services and all services
• the train down is pretty busy: people getting on and off at all stations, weirdly a few of the ones going through the melbourne seem to have been set on the aisle seat instead of at the window seat
• next guy in the seat got in the one behind, then was corrected and moved by the conductor. Made lots of hacking and coughing and snorting noises. Makes lots of grunting noises, too. Not a quiet travelling companion. And doesn’t respect the personal space of the armrest – I’m getting lots of elbows in the arm.
• apparently my travelling companion got interrogated by immigration because they were suspicious about her coming to travel with someone she’d never met before

I arrived, we went and had dinner in Hardware St (lots of cafes) and now we're chatting about movies and stuff.