I spent a nice week in Sydney… the week before last, actually, it’s taken me a while to get around to posting.

Several views of the Opera House… I went to a reception in the basement, on the left side in this picture, but I’ve still never set foot in the actual concert hall. One of these days.

From among many outrageously expensive choices, I chose a Sheraton hotel where my lifetime platinum status counted. I was greeted with still and sparkling water and a bottle of wine. And free breakfast.

I took this picture as I jumped off the [wonderfully frequent, cheap, comfortable] tram en route to the day’s meeting. I was inspired by the person in the bucket hat who you can just see in the bottom right… he had a serious camera and put some thought into his shot.

This Grace Bros department store, long closed, is not the home of Are You Being Served or even suspected of being an inspiration for the show. But it looks like it could have been.

There was a whole long series of these brass plaques… obviously I’ve started a trend of looking earthwards on my travels. I’d never heard of Xavier Herbert before… his writing sounds like tough sledding but I might give one a try.

There was a whole separate Sydney Heritage Walk with more nice plaques.

There’s a lot to see… here’s more street shots.

I wanted a picture of this cool building going up… the way it bulges outwards is more dramatic than it looks here, and noticed a sky writer. I hung around long enough to see IRIS GRAD ❤️ but don’t know if that was the whole message or not. Congrats Iris!

A wind came along and toppled all the e-bikes. There’s a message about the fragility of our constantly-disruptive tech economy in there somewhere…

And of course I was there for a reason… a standards meeting! It was this same conference ten years ago that launched my move to New Zealand. Here I am with some of the Mongolian delegates. And after hearing their presentations, I was not the only person to say “I wish we were doing as well as Mongolia.”

And here I am with my mentor Stan, who I had just seen a few weeks ago in DC. The “I agree with Stan” t-shirts are a hot item.

We had opening remarks from an indigenous leader, who told us a bit about the land we were on, and what it looked like before becoming the city it is now. All Australian and NZ meetings of any consequence start with with at least a nod to the local people.

He was warm and humorous, and then just at the end he asked if we’d seen the ibises who roam the streets, especially early mornings. They’re disparagingly referred to as “bin chickens” because they use their long beaks to grab food from the rubbish bins. They didn’t always live on garbage, he said, but you see their land was stolen and everything they knew how to do was yanked away practically overnight, and this is how they’ve learned to survive. Think about that as you walk these streets. Think about what’s come before, what you are part of, and what you are building today. Enjoy your meeting.