So here we are, in the Starbucks just outside our hotel. It's six pm, and we've had our first full day in Atlanta. Well ... sort of. I didn't open my eyes until eleven am, when a lady was hammering on our door wanting to clean the room. I didn't wish for the room to be tidied then, and in fact really wanted someone to simply turn the sun out for another seventeen years. Then the guilty faculties took over in my brain, and I thought of starving people working at five in the morning ... and I followed that up by thinking that here I was on holiday in a strange new country and I was in bed. I don't know which of these thoughts drove me from the safety of the warm blankets, and I'd rather not ponder over it.
We ventured out, and discovered that it really is cold here. Cold that makes your hands and face hurt, and I was huddled in my arctic jacket (thank's dad and Cherie) as we walked around. We went to a "mall" and tried to get internet access for Adam's phone, and were directed to another phone carrier, accessible via the MARTA train system. We decided to try to walk to another AT&T location we saw online, and walked some five kilometres to it, only to discover it was their headquarters, and we certainly couldn't purchase something as mundane as consumer related items.
So we found their train system, and with some trepidation (I've seen too many movies with evil hoodie wearing thugs raping and murdering in the darkness of the rat infested subway system not to feel nervous) purchased their version of a myki card, with one trip value on it. Then down we went, into the depth of the US subway system I'd heard so much. The lack of use, the drug abusing killers, the fetid odours, the ... ah, hell, what a let down. I had to face it. It's better than our train network. Okay, to start with, their Breeze card makes our myki system look even worse than we already thought it was. They too have a large spread out city,so that excuse doesn't fly (when we compare ourselves with Singapore, for instance), so it was almost horrifying to discover that you pay two dollars per trip, however far you travel. So damn simple. So good. The train was clean, and best of all the first station was in this dug out rock cave that should have been called "the bat cave". I'd live there! Oh, and there were no muggers or drug addicts that we could see.
We then trekked into another shiny mall, and wandered around before finding the AT&T consumer shop, but sadly they couldn't give us what we wanted for either of our phones. So after looking around outside further, we took the train back to our "home base", and bought an inferior but workable sim card for Adam's phone, then registered at the pycon hotel (did I say we were five kilometres from it? Try four hundred metres) and I randomly made friends with two people at a nearby mall. They were looking for a grocery store, as was I, so I butted in when they were getting assistance from a guide and we agreed to meet up tomorrow. Anna and Ian, I believe, a young to early middle aged couple
from California, they were.
We followed my scratchings on the map, and surprisingly found the Publix (yes, with an x, how lame) grocery store. It was a lot like Coles or Safeway, other than that they had wine and beer in great big aisles. They also had more diet drinks than I've ever seen before. Yes, they have much in the way of low calorie beverages, but they also have more pizza and fast food on corners than I would like, and very little in the way of healthy food. Despite all this I did not see many fat people, and to my horror I believe that on average I see fatter people in Australia, despite what our stereotyping and marketing suggest. To add further embarrassment and chagrin to this already sad story, the people here have been polite, helpful, and thoroughly lacking in filthy language. And that's before they knew we were Australian, so none of this "of course they were nice to you, you were foreigners".
In the evening, after we staggered home with our grocery load, we went down to Starbucks, from where I began writing this entry, and I sat in front of a gigantic mug of coffee relaxing.
I must somewhat confuse time, and continue this story after we finished those giant coffees and went to the "Max Lagers" pub that was recommended to us by the Pycon crowd. It was a nice place where they brewed their own beer, and we got to look at a series of their brewing vats, which were awesome silver things, that shone in the light and could almost make me think that beer was cool ... except that it isn't, and no matter how shiny you make devices of war they still kill, and my stretched analogy there is indicating that beer tastes damn awful, no matter how cool the glass.
The place was filled with shy looking men with whispey beards, and Adam and I figured they could be nothing but people from Pycon. They were, of course, and we struck up conversation with the director and lead programmer from Clone, a company quite big in the Python community, and spent several enjoyable hours chatting with them. I had an American Merlot, which I judged "unworthy", and in that time Adam sample three of the Max Lager beers, and deemed them mostly good.
Meanwhile I had decided to inform some of these poor nerdy young gentlemen how you talk to attractive young ladies. So I went across and struck up a conversation with a cute young brunette at the bar, using my Australian accent to good effect, I expect.
We chatted away, and then this large chap turned up and told me very politely to "Get the fuck away from my chick, man!" Now I don't know about you, but I don't enjoy being spoken to that way, even if the speaker is a huge red neck son of a bitch. I told him that she was actually her own "chick", and that I'd just been chatting and hadn't meant anything wrong, but that I didn't like the way he'd talked to me.
I hope the lads watching were enjoying my demonstration of how NOT to talk to girls. Well, this guy obviously didn't take to my tone because he hit me right above the chin. Hurt like anything, and I kind of reeled and half fell. My nerdy friends grabbed the guy and pulled us apart, which was a good thing because otherwise I'm sure I would have been turned into a broken pulp.
We're back in our hotel now, and I'm a bit sore, but okay.
Good night to all
Link to the pictures from today before my camera went the way of all flesh (except for me, I'll live forever of course):
Pics 2
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