Melbourne's second calling

The recent Melbourne trip did not seem as wonderful as last year's.

Perhaps because the trip started on a wrong footing, when my overnight flight, which was bad enough already since I hate overnight flights, was delayed due to an engine problem.

I could not quite bring myself to curse the damn engineers for taking so long to fix the problem, as it was far more important for them to have all the time in the world to solve it. I don't want an engine falling off my plane while I'm in mid-air. :(

Then it was also because of the three restless babies onboard who gave me a sound-surround concert throughout the night. I had to plug in my earphones and turn the volume of the TV on high to blanket out the incessant wailings. But that also meant it was too noisy for me to sleep. I was so tired and irritable when I finally arrived in Melbourne at 10am.

Then when I got to my hotel, I was told no rooms were ready since official check-in time was 2pm. "But we'll call you on your mobile once a room is available!" the staff chirped. I bet she was able to chirp because she had a proper bed to sleep last night. Nevermind. I'll wait.



So I found a armchair in the hotel's pretty lobby, slumped into it and waited, while nursing a growing headache. In those two hours of waiting, I saw a number of people checking out, and I increasingly started to wonder why isn't that chirpy staff calling me yet.

So I approached a free staff at the front desk to ask if there was any rooms available already for me to crash. The answer was a chirpy, "Yes, we do have a couple!"

WTF.

But I was too exhausted to scream and make a lunge for her chirpy voicebox.

By the time I got my room, it was past noon. I was sleepy and starving. Room service to the rescue. I ordered a fish and chips - it can't go wrong, right?

Wrong. It can go wrong.



Just look at the damn colour of those three strips of fish fillet. If you think they looked fine, please credit my wonderful Nikon baby. In reality, they looked anaemic. They looked like the chef had taken them out of the fridge and plated them right away without putting them through the fryer.

They tasted just as bad as they looked too. This by the way, costs A$36 or fucking S$46. You know how many sets of far more brilliant fish and chips I could get from Fish & Co?

Anyway, the hotel's only restaurant was a Gordon Ramsay's project. I hope that awful dish of fish and chips did not come from his kitchen.

And because I had my room so late, I spent the afternoon sleeping and missing out on shopping. I had to sleep so that I could survive the evening cocktail the show organisers had put together for the media.

Then there was the room. I guess the designer tried to be fashion-forward when he decided to do away with walls to divide the porcelain throne from the shower stall and the rest of the bathroom. Instead, he used plain curtains that resembled those used in hospital wards. And because there was no shower kerb to keep the water in, the floor around the porcelain throne was wet too.



And I hate wet floors in the bathroom. :(

Then it was all the bad meals I had in Melbourne. Where are the good food in Melbourne?! Nothing that passed my lips was satisfying. It was like the awful fish and chips had set the pace for days of awful meals.

The steak at a media lunch was overcooked. I ended up filling my stomach with wine, which rendered me rather woozy and too happy and chatty throughout the press conferences that followed. Not a bad thing, I realised. Perhaps I should go for future press events half drunk.

Went to a restaurant called the Left Bank (or probably South Bank) along the Yarra River for dinner. I was starving that day, having missed lunch due to a packed schedule of interviews, and was looking forward to some gastronomic orgasm.

Instead, I had a lamb confit that was incredibly dry. It was like I was chewing on strips of bak kwa.



Lunch at a Chinese dim sum restaurant also left much to be desired.

The only time I was fed proper was at a restaurant called Coffee & Biscotti, which Kris and I chanced upon while walking around town on the last evening in search of a place to eat. There, I had one of the best risottos in my life. It was sufficiently moist and flavourful, with a zing of spiciness.



Then it was also the number of assignments and interviews I wanted to accomplish at this show, which exhausted me by the end of every evening. I even ended up alseep over my laptop in my room one evening. I wanted to just rest my head after sending out my last story for the day, but fell into a deep sleep. I was so tired I could not even bring myself to go out and meet my friends for drinks.

So you could say I spent my evenings very quietly on this trip.

Anyway, enough of complaining. I leave you with these two photos of St Kilda's beach, taken in the early evening. For some reason, they made me smile. Must be the lovely shades of blue.