Adelaide conference

Hi ho, been quite a while since I last posted. Just very busy - heaps of marking and other odd things to keep me away from the keyboard.
A big night of sport on TV - cricket, rugby, AFL - just watched the Lions come back from 47 pts down to win in the last few minutes - exciting stuff.
Anyway, last weekend I flew to Adelaide for an Anglican schools conference - a real honour and perk, I guess. Had to be up at 4am on Friday to be at the airport at about 5 and then on the plane to Adelaide via Sydney at about 6. A few strange things happened here and there but I must admit it was nice to fly QANTAS with free food etc, not like last year's trip with Virgin back from Perth, which was a bit painful. Flew with Lizzie there and back - her first time away from the boys, so I expected it to be a bit odd for her, but she stayed calm. Spent a lot of the weekend in the company of other female chaplains Sharon S and Sarah L - great people to hang with.
Stayed in Mercure - not a great experience. I had deliberately booked a cheap room to save the school some cash, but by golly, my room was miles away from the lift - down a long corridor, through a doorway, down some stairs, around a corner and then right down at the end of another very long corridor. My view was scenic to the extent of lots of rusty rooves and back alleys and some other hotel in the distance. After being up at 4 and then a long (but admittedly mainly fun) day, I hit bed at 10 gratefully, looking forward to a long sleep. I was appalled to be woken at 3.30 by a fire alarm going off in the hotel. I made it to the door but noone else was going down, so I went back to bed. There was a rumour later that some party-goers had come back with sparklers to their room, setting off the smoke alarms - sounds right. My room also seemed to be near a nightclub, with thumping bass clearly audible most of the time. Oh well.
Conference itself was described later by Paul B as more interesting than good, which I think is about right. St Peter's College was even more obviously wealthy than I had believed - rolling in cash by the look of it. Amazing grounds and facilities - put shots on Facebook. Huge main oval - huge assembly hall etc. We were all stunned that almost none of the keynote speakers bothered to use PPT slides or visuals when they had a colossal screen to work with behind them. Having them lecture us for about an hour at a time with no visuals was hard going in some cases. Worship services were also very bland indeed - very little imagination, I thought. The up-side of this situation is that it makes our job on the committee for Brisbane 2010 pretty easy in terms of doing better than this one; the downside is that schools may be seriously wondering if it's worth going again, and we'll have to convince them that it is! I was very disappointed that Tim Costello dropped out as a keynote speaker only a few weeks before the conference. There was no explanation of this at all.
Other highlights for me, apart from my first trip to Adelaide, included meeting Tim Cooper, CEO of the Coopers Brewery, who was good enough to autograph a stubbie bottle of Coopers Pale Ale for me - that one went straight to the pool room when I got home.
In other news to hand, Dec got another High Distinction in the UNSW Science Comp - the only kid at KSS to get an HD. Amazing stuff! They also had their 2nd last soccer game today, and I think we're all glad the season is wrapping up soon. They won only narrowly 4-3 against a team they have walloped twice this year - their form has really dropped since the mid-year break and I don't think anyone really knows why. Glad I'm not the main coach!
OK, better head to bed. We are hosting Neville's 50th birthday tomorrow and this will require vast efforts of cleaning etc after church. Talk again soon.