One Week
In one week I will be on a plane, halfway between Atlanta and Los Angeles, en route to Auckland. Which is hard to believe... Almost as hard to believe as the fact that this time for the past two years I was in Australia (well, that and a lot of the other surrounding days).
Things have finally shifted toward trip-prep in my life, and it's about time. Everything has been more or less booked for some time, but this evening I finally sat down and put it all in my calendar. Which was startling. Because there is A LOT going on! And all of it seems to be happening between the hours of 8:00PM and 6:00AM - alas, a byproduct of heading to the far, far east.
Of course, the situation will be self-rectifying, thanks to technology. When I land in Auckland, 14 hours ahead of Atlanta, my phone will adjust the times and things will be right with the world. Hopefully my internal clock will follow suit. As it stands on my calendar at the moment, the conference opening dinner starts at 2:00AM the day I land. Fingers crossed I sleep on the plane (we all know that's not very likely) so I won't be so out oh whack when I arrive.
In addition to the calendar inputting, I also did a bit of research to prepare myself mentally for the vacation component of the trip. I land in Launceston in the late evening after traveling from Auckland via Melbourne. When I arrive I will be picking up a rental car (SUV - supposedly a Nissan Dualis) at the airport and driving myself into the city (I use the term loosely - the region has a population hovering around 100,000) to meet my friend who I will be road-tripping with. Good news, it is a straight shot up the road into the city, so that doesn't seem too terribly overwhelming... And perusing the airport I discovered that it falls in the size-range of "cute." While it is not the smallest airport I have flown through (that distinction goes to AYQ - Ayers Rock Roundhouse - with its two 'gates'), it will be the second smallest - with FOUR gates. The airport, serviced by three real airlines, and one that I'm pretty sure no one knows exists, proudly proclaims it handled 1.25 million people last year. That number does sound pretty impressive for the size, though it does make it sound precious when you consider that Atlanta's airport handles that many people a year... flying to just Orlando. It would take less than five days at Hartsfield to handle 1.25 million people - just to put it all in perspective.
Anyways, I am going to start into the presentation that I will be giving in a little over a week in Auckland. After all, giving a paper at the SAHANZ conference is the impetus for this trip. The paper is entitled "Translating Historic Vernacular: Can Anyone 'Make it Right'?" - it examines the rebuilding of the Lower Ninth Ward following Hurricane Katrina, and how the vernacular archetypes of traditional housing stock were distorted by the architects who redeployed them, and the resulting consequences. I will be presenting in the session entitled 'Post-Disaster', along with Katrina Simon (Senior Lecturer from the University of New South Wales, as far as I can tell) on Francis Petre's Cathedral for Christchurch and Charmaine 'Ilaiu Talei, a PhD candidate at University of Queensland on Aid Houses in Tonga. It should be a most interesting experience. And at the end of it all, I will officially be a published author, with my paper appearing in an academic journal - I'd say well worth the trip!
So now it's time to get to it. I've got the presentation to create and I must get around to packing sooner rather than later. This week will fly by, and I am spending the weekend in Athens (GA) at a friend's wedding before returning to Atlanta on Sunday, working a half-day Monday, and flying half-way around the world that afternoon.
Should be fun.
Things have finally shifted toward trip-prep in my life, and it's about time. Everything has been more or less booked for some time, but this evening I finally sat down and put it all in my calendar. Which was startling. Because there is A LOT going on! And all of it seems to be happening between the hours of 8:00PM and 6:00AM - alas, a byproduct of heading to the far, far east.
Of course, the situation will be self-rectifying, thanks to technology. When I land in Auckland, 14 hours ahead of Atlanta, my phone will adjust the times and things will be right with the world. Hopefully my internal clock will follow suit. As it stands on my calendar at the moment, the conference opening dinner starts at 2:00AM the day I land. Fingers crossed I sleep on the plane (we all know that's not very likely) so I won't be so out oh whack when I arrive.
In addition to the calendar inputting, I also did a bit of research to prepare myself mentally for the vacation component of the trip. I land in Launceston in the late evening after traveling from Auckland via Melbourne. When I arrive I will be picking up a rental car (SUV - supposedly a Nissan Dualis) at the airport and driving myself into the city (I use the term loosely - the region has a population hovering around 100,000) to meet my friend who I will be road-tripping with. Good news, it is a straight shot up the road into the city, so that doesn't seem too terribly overwhelming... And perusing the airport I discovered that it falls in the size-range of "cute." While it is not the smallest airport I have flown through (that distinction goes to AYQ - Ayers Rock Roundhouse - with its two 'gates'), it will be the second smallest - with FOUR gates. The airport, serviced by three real airlines, and one that I'm pretty sure no one knows exists, proudly proclaims it handled 1.25 million people last year. That number does sound pretty impressive for the size, though it does make it sound precious when you consider that Atlanta's airport handles that many people a year... flying to just Orlando. It would take less than five days at Hartsfield to handle 1.25 million people - just to put it all in perspective.
Anyways, I am going to start into the presentation that I will be giving in a little over a week in Auckland. After all, giving a paper at the SAHANZ conference is the impetus for this trip. The paper is entitled "Translating Historic Vernacular: Can Anyone 'Make it Right'?" - it examines the rebuilding of the Lower Ninth Ward following Hurricane Katrina, and how the vernacular archetypes of traditional housing stock were distorted by the architects who redeployed them, and the resulting consequences. I will be presenting in the session entitled 'Post-Disaster', along with Katrina Simon (Senior Lecturer from the University of New South Wales, as far as I can tell) on Francis Petre's Cathedral for Christchurch and Charmaine 'Ilaiu Talei, a PhD candidate at University of Queensland on Aid Houses in Tonga. It should be a most interesting experience. And at the end of it all, I will officially be a published author, with my paper appearing in an academic journal - I'd say well worth the trip!
So now it's time to get to it. I've got the presentation to create and I must get around to packing sooner rather than later. This week will fly by, and I am spending the weekend in Athens (GA) at a friend's wedding before returning to Atlanta on Sunday, working a half-day Monday, and flying half-way around the world that afternoon.
Should be fun.
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