This is only a handful of the shots taken – see here for the full album (which itself is a relative handful of all the shots taken…)
The trip over was long, but I didn’t feel as absolutely wasted as I did the first time I made the voyage.
Never seen one of these prank stickers in the wild before. 
Real efficient use of space. And note the conveyor belt thing that ferries orders down to ground level.
Spent a couple days wandering around Wellington. It’s small enough that you can walk most anywhere of interest in less than half an hour.
Spotted those books in a used book store on my second day. Just had to buy the lot.
The conference itself was fairly small, about 200 attendees. We each got a hand-knitted star as a conference badge, made by one of the organizers’ mothers.
As it turned out, the conference I had traveled all this way to attend was only a precursor to Kawaiicon, a major ~2000-person event over the next two days. I was luckily able to score a student badge off a student I befriended at the smaller conference.
But the day after the small conference – and the first day of the larger one – was just too sunny a day to pass indoors. So, more exploring.
Came very close to buying this piece from a local art museum. Ended up meeting the artist though – she’s pretty cool. 
I actually do regret not buying this one. 
Later on on Thursday I had a trip out to Weta Workshop, where they did the special effects for Lord of the Rings and many other well-known properties.
On the way up to the Weta workshop, the bus driver pointed out an area where they take people on Lord of the Rings tours, as they filmed a scene from the first film up there – the one where Frodo says to the others, “Get off the road!” So on the way back I had to stop by and wander up there to see if I could find the spot.
After I found where I’m pretty sure the Hobbits were hiding from the ring wraiths, I wandered a bit further up, got a bit lost, and came across a gigantic rope swing with incredible night-time views of the city below.
Conference on Friday, pretty interesting talks, cool hacking stories, etc. That evening I had scheduled a twilight tour of Zealandia, a wildlife reserve. It was fairly drizzly, but I figured what the hey, might as well. I had no idea what exactly this would entail, but it turned out to be a big group of people with three guides, looking for wildlife. As it turns out, this sort of arrangement is not something I really enjoy. There were a few moments when I was separated from the group that I could really take in the wilderness, but then the guides hurried me along to get back with the group.
The tour ticket included general admission to the park the next day, so on Saturday I headed back out to get myself deep into the reserve away from other people.
It was really nice. I went straight from the reserve to the airport, to catch my flight to Melbourne. Dad had already arrived.
The next day, Sunday, we caught a train up to Ballarat, my first area, and got to see a lot of familiar faces. Dinner with the Ivens, my favorite family there.
The absolute best fish & chips. 
Monday was Sunbury, where we caught up with Tiffany.
Loved this thing – wrote so many letters home on it.
Next up was the flight to Sydney, where we spent the rest of our stay.
The best KFC, too. 
To the zoo:
Lunch at Google.
Tour of the Sydney Opera House.
Sydney Harbor bridge climb.
Boat tour after an all-day excursion up to the Blue Mountains, followed by a delicious fish-n-chips dinner.
Lunch at a different Google building, followed by an hour-and-a-half match of Chinese Chess.
Jet boating. This thing is like a souped-up jet ski, and the lack of a propellor allows the boat to perform some pretty crazy maneuvers. There’s even a name for it on the Wikipedia page – “crash stop” and “Hamilton turn”.
The day prior, on the Blue Mountain tour, we had lunch next to a group of older folks who were recounting a concert they’d attended at the Sydney Opera House the day before. I looked up tickets and they weren’t outrageously expensive, so I figured what the hey, we had some free time.
The white specks in that last image are the result of a long-exposure shot of hundreds of seagulls playing around above the bridge.
Rode a pair of e-bikes back to the apartment, and the next day we said our farewells.
