I am currently sitting in my hotel room in Perth: for $5 p/hour I can use their wireless internet, so luckily I brought my laptop - plus a digital camera and leads, so you can see some pics as well. 

So here’s the basics: I’m in Perth, for the first time ever, to participate in the international puppetry festival, UNIMA 2008 (UPDATE 30 July 2009: the site is no longer available). Over the next twelve days I’ll be in workshops, classes, forums, listening to speeches and seeing shows. Hopefully each night I can come back to my room and post something about it. 

Day One: Arrival

Perth time: 7:17pm. Weather: 23 celsius 

My flight to Adelaide was uneventful - my dad had booked me in on a layover flight, so I spent two boring hours in Adelaide airport; and almost didn’t figure out that my gate had been changed. Luckily I couldn’t find an entrance to gate 20, and when I couldn’t I checked the board, and lo and behold, it was now gate 21. Nevertheless, my time in Adelaide wasn’t that bad. I had a fairly nondescript won ton soup for lunch, as I was starving; and ended up foregoing the food on the way to Perth on the flight. (Follow along with photos from my Flickr file. Some have been posted here, but to save space, and to write faster, I’m leaving some on Flickr). For my sister: here’s a pic of my lunch. 

I spent most of my flight to Perth asleep… or at least some semblance of it. I remember dozing off, and being completely aware of everything around me, but I know I was asleep in some sense. Well, that’s insomniacs for you. 

Arriving at Perth airport was confusing: totally messy in terms of signage. Walked outside to get the airport shuttle to my hotel, but then worked out I needed to book. Once that was done, on board with a bunch of teen kayaker guys and a weird discussion (theirs, I was eavesdropping) on how daylights savings works backwards (set your clock forward and you get one hour less of a day??). The trip on the shuttle was pretty quick, about 20 minutes. It was kind of like going through the northern suburbs of Melbourne. Although I’m told that Perth is small, it appears larger than Melbourne: yes the skyscrapers are shorter, but everything, all the buildings, seem so much bigger. Built on a grand scale, rather than squashed into city space like Melbourne central. 

My hotel is fairly recognisable - no pics yet, but I’ll take some tomorrow. My room is up two flights and across the garden terrace. Nicer than it sounds (the terrace, not the room). The room is small, but clean, and private. I splurged, and got myself a private room, so there’s TV, mini bar, room service, plenty of space. And a big bed. 

I got to the hotel and checked in, then went for a walk to orient myself. I wanted to find out how long it would take me to get to the Blue Room, one of Perth’s theatre venues, where most of my classes, etc. will be held. I first stopped off at Woolworths (Safeway to us Victorians), so I could do some simple shopping (snacks), and get some money out. Boy, big mistake. It was packed!!! The lines to all the checkouts went halfway down the store. I know it’s Monday night, and it was at 6pm, but I’ve never seen a Safeway packed like that in Melbourne unless it’s near Christmas Eve. 

Anyway, goodies in hand, I went two blocks down the street to James St. That’s where you will find the Blue Room, plus a whole bunch of arts-related things: library, museum, art gallery, PICA (Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts). I sat down outside the Blue Room and took some photos in all different directions. (More pics at my Flickr set!) 

Gotta go now - my time hasn’t run out yet, but I want to do some email checking. Do come back tomorrow for the next diary entry! UPDATE: Read next day’s post here.