Time for Vacation

Sitting in the international departures lounge of the Auckland International Terminal, waiting for my gate to be assigned.  With boarding set to commence in 45 minutes, I find it a bit silly that the board says they won’t be announcing the gate for another 55 minutes.

After I wrote yesterday afternoon, I enjoyed the welcome break of afternoon tea before the final session of the day.  Forgoing the traditional paper sessions, many of us selected to go to a workshop led by a Unitec professor.  He spoke for about 45 minutes on the background of the concept of open architecture, and then the second 45 minutes was a presentation and quasi-review of work that some undergraduates at the Uni had done during the day looking at how open precedents could be applied to the tortured architecture school we were in. It prompted some discussion, but I had forgotten just how painful it can be to sit through an undergraduate review session.

At 6:00, we all headed back to the lobby for drinks and canapés before a keynote address.  Admittedly, a majority of SAHANZ participants ducked out following the drinks, but I stayed to watch the lecture by Branko Mitrovič, entitled Leon Battista Alberti and the Origins of 3D Computer Modelling.  There was a certain level of appreciation among the audience of the events that preceded the lecture.

The majority of the SAHANZ delegates had headed over to Viaduct Harbour to grab dinner, and Ari, Ashley and I headed that way following the bus’s arrival back at the hotel.  Everyone was at a restaurant on the water called Foodstore. With the restaurant pretty crowded, we ended up at our own little table, which worked out very nicely.  We all decided we wanted to try a lot of things, so we got lots of small plates to share.

We started out with raw oysters from the south island, which the waiter described as “the best oysters in the world.”  They were unlike any oysters I had ever had – very mild, no salty flavor, quite buttery and rich. The rest of the plates came, and we had quite the selection, including a salmon with vanilla yogurt, a braised pork in broth with local Maori vegetables, seared venison on quinoa, a spinach and pear salad, and marinated green beans.  It was a very good dinner.

 

After dinner a few of us struck out to Vulcan Lane to finish up the night.

This morning a large contingent of us opted out of the conference proceedings (for a myriad or reasons). I slept in a bit, met up with Ashley (and a group of his friends from Brissie who had come in to do a road trip following the conference), Diana and Ed and the seven of us had brekkie at Imperial Lane (the place we have gone to every morning).  After breakfast I went to the hotel and checked out, meeting up with the group for a bit of a walk around the Britomart Precinct before I headed to the airport.

While in the Britomart Station complex, a security guard approached us, noting that we had been wandering around, pointing at things and taking pictures.  He proceeded to spend fifteen minutes showing us around the building and talking about many of its features and influences (the building won many international design awards).

At 11:45, we headed back down the street to the Mercure, where I grabbed my things and trekked back down the street to Britomart to catch the bus to the airport.  I am looking forward to the start of the vacation portion of my trip (not that the conference was all that taxing); I’m off to Melbourne and then on to Launceston.

I was lucky enough that when I checked in I was able to snag an exit row seat, so I should have a nice bit of legroom.  To depart NZ, I used the electronic border control system like I did when I entered.  While I was tempted to join the queue to go about it the old fashioned way, I am glad I didn’t, as I have discovered that they no longer use stamps – everything is digital.