If you ever find yourself on King St, Newtown, parched, the furthest you’ll have to walk for a beer is 250 metres.^[1] If you happen to be in this particular dead zone — the corner of St John and King — go with gravity and walk downhill towards the Union. The uphill option, the Sandringham, is decidedly seedy.

The news is better elsewhere. The average trip to a watering hole is only 170 metres.^[2] That’s 13 pubs over a stretch of just over 2 km.

Of course, if you’re after coffee, or Thai food, the average walk is about 3 metres.

[2] Including said dry section, and not including walking off to visit pubs not on King St.↩

My vastly-qualified grandfather has just published a book he’s co-edited. He sent me a copy today. Surprisingly it’s something I’m keen to have a look through (normally, the nitrogen cycle in agriculture doesn’t really do much for me). I’ve started on an article about the Tibetan plateau, and how it effects the atmosphere and the monsoon cycles. Interesting stuff.

Given that the articles within all concern the monsoon system of East Asia, the picture on the back cover is of a crowded street in Varanasi, India.

Taken by my dad, of me, on a rickshaw.

Compare and contrast to the original.

Calvin reading… check.

Hebrew translation… check.

Greek translation… check (well almost, but will be by tomorrow).

Time for a holiday. See you all in a week.

Canberra and Melbourne.

Two conferences in two weeks: National Training Event (AFES), and an Engineering Education conference (AAEE).

The difference in tone was really remarkable. The theme of NTE was God’s word to God’s world, and was consistently and thoroughly marked by a dependence on hearing and receiving God’s words. One of the speakers, Peter Adam, had a consistent refrain in his talks: Hearing God is Receiving God’s words, written for his people, by his Spirit, about his Son. There was a real understanding that God has spoken clearly in the Scriptures in a way that is both accessible and applicable to those who hear now. In short, there was truth, and truth recognised and taken on board as determinative for life.

The Education conference, on the other hand, was a little like the blind leading the blind. I went down on behalf of the team I worked with at UNSW, to present a paper on the way we had structured and taught a particular Electrical Engineering subject this year. All the people at this conference were educators in some way, mostly lecturers/faculty at various universities, and many of them really passionate about teaching their students the profession they know and love. The content of the presentations, however, were almost universally along the lines of ‘this is what we tried, it seemed to work (or, alternatively, it really didn’t), you might like to try it yourself’. Even those with massive experience and expertise in education philosophy and techniques were reluctant to make broad sweeping statements.

For good reason.

There is no reason to expect any particular educational philosophy is canonically good and true. There is, however, every reason to expect that God’s word is truth for his people, to be accepted as such.

The tone of the conferences was actually a great encouragement. Christians are confident that God speaks to his world by his word. Other endeavours are trying to feel their way towards something that works perhaps a little better than other systems tried to date. In reading the Bible, this is a great comfort.

God’s words, written for his people, by his Spirit, about his Son.

Truth indeed.

I saw an ad on a Melbourne tram for the Harold Holt Swim Centre, which tickled my dark sense of the ridiculous.

Melbourne doesn’t seem to have as many pubs as Sydney, which is surprising – popular folklore (at least that which I have heard) has it that the nightlife scene and pub music scene in Melbourne is much better than Sydney.

These results are based on an informal walking tour of a reasonable section of Melbourne city on Tuesday night, as I was after a dinner and a beer. My requirements were relatively simple, yet a little restrictive (as I found out).

I wanted somewhere that had food that wasn’t terribly expensive, a beer that I liked, and had lighting sufficient for me to read a book. The last bit was the kicker – I was in Melbourne by myself, I was sick with a nasty cold, I was a little lonely and bored, so really wanted to read my book over dinner (Quicksilver, by Neal Stevenson, which is a good read). This ended up ruling out about half of the places I found, as they were kind of dark and dingy.

Unfortunately, half of not very many is not a lot. Sydney feels like it has a pub once every couple of blocks, and they’re relatively big – Melbourne seems to have far fewer, and far smaller places.

Eventually I found somewhere. It took some time though.

Bah.