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Westin and Oracle
Aug. 31st, 2010 10:32 pmThe drive to Melbourne across country was pleasant edging on bucolic - and fairly swift. Once we reached Melbourne however, a full hour before it was time to return the car, it took us twenty minutes to find the hotel to drop Kent and the luggage, and then thirty minutes to go around the block to get back to it. Managed to drop the car at Avis on Franklin Street just in the nick of time and get a taxi back to our hotels - the Marriott for Don and the Westin for me.
The Westin in Melbourne is hidden in an alley. They've made the alley VERY elegant with plants and mirrored walls, but it is still an alley. The address is on Collins Street (very upscale address) but the actual entrance to the one way alley is off a different street and then another alley three blocks away. The taxis all know how to do this, mere mortals do not. Our room at the Westin is a mix of elegance and lack of utility. It's very large with a nice bed and a comfortable chair. But the bedside clock must also be designed to function as a bright nightlight, and the mirrored doors of the wardrobe are placed exactly right to catch and reflect that light. There are no fewer than four (count them! four!) wall plugs near the desk - what wealth! Until of course you realize that they are set in the baseboard and set the wrong way (all are grounded so you can only plug things one way) to plug in anything (like a phone charger, or a computer charger) that has a lip. Kent fixed this with a $3.99 mini power strip, but the original design was very poor.
The bathroom is also spacious and elegant with big inset wall buttons to flush the toilet (takes about six tries per time to get the angle and pressure just right to get them to function) and a lovely tile and glass enclosed shower (with a glassy slick polished marble floor) that is located exactly wrong to be able to reach a towel placed anywhere in the room when opening the shower door. The nearest you can get is the edge of the vanity a dripping step and a half away. Kent fell into one of his bits of profound wisdom in commenting, "This is what happens when the room is set up by designers how care only how it looks, not how it works."
We are staying here mostly on Starwood points, so it's very inexpensive for us, but the hotel itself is a study in conspicuous consumption. Internet in your room is $25 per day. The Chinese restaurant the concierge pointed us to the first night had prices starting at $50 per plate (rice and tea were extra). I had a cup of tea in the lobby the first night we arrived, and the bill came up the next day as $25.50. This was beyond believability, and I wended my way to the reception desk the next morning to enquire. Tea in the lobby costs a reasonable $6.50 - the desk guy found the tab, it had our room number but someone else's name, and he took it off our bill. He didn't even charge me the original $6.50 for the tea! What class!
Monday morning I took a taxi out to the Oracle building where the center manager met me and chatted while he got me set up in a vacant office with a borrowed computer. I then delved into my spreadsheets, surfacing briefly to walk down to the corner for a sandwich at lunch, and then returned. Now I did find that I was missing one critical file and Ted in Colorado was kind enough to go over to my house and email it to me off my computer. It wasn't even Oracle confidential (so don't get your back up, Liz!) it was just a set of macro programs I had written to process specifically formatted data, and it would have taken me more than my two days at the Melbourne office to recreate those macros.
Kent and I went out to Greektown on Lonsdale Avenue Monday night and had a nice meal at Dion and then picked up two gooey greek pastries at the International Cafe next door. Mine was a short crust pie with chocolate and hazelnuts and honey, and Kent's was a little fruit pastry topped with honey glazed pecans. Mmmmmm!!!
Back to work on Tuesday to finish all the spreadsheets and revel in the fast internet to check mail and Facebook. I got my project files finished and posted about 5pm and headed back to the hotel. The weather here is damp and a bit chilly. Standing outside the Oracle building trying to flag down a taxi reminded me suddenly of Sacramento at Christmas time - that same wet bite to the air without being really cold.
Kent and Don had scored half price tickets to the Tuesday evening performance of West Side Story at the Regent Theatre (just next door to our hotel - but actually on Collins Street rather than opening off the alley). The Regent is violently roccoco. I don't think there's a smooth, unembelished surface on any wall in the theatre. But the seats are reasonably wide, fairly comfortable, and not shoved cheek-to-jowl next to each other. The production was well done, but not standard. They did the intermission after Tony kills Bernardo and moved two early numbers (Officer Krupke and I Feel Pretty) up from the beginning of the show to the end of the show. Tony's voice was nice, but had not quite enough depth of range for all the songs, while Maria probably sings opera and overpowered every number she sang in. The real star of the performance was Anita with an excellent voice, lots of verve, and exceptional dancing talent. I had never seen West Side Story performed on stage, and enjoyed the whole thing very much. It made a great finale to this bit of our vacation - tomorrow starts the convention!
The Westin in Melbourne is hidden in an alley. They've made the alley VERY elegant with plants and mirrored walls, but it is still an alley. The address is on Collins Street (very upscale address) but the actual entrance to the one way alley is off a different street and then another alley three blocks away. The taxis all know how to do this, mere mortals do not. Our room at the Westin is a mix of elegance and lack of utility. It's very large with a nice bed and a comfortable chair. But the bedside clock must also be designed to function as a bright nightlight, and the mirrored doors of the wardrobe are placed exactly right to catch and reflect that light. There are no fewer than four (count them! four!) wall plugs near the desk - what wealth! Until of course you realize that they are set in the baseboard and set the wrong way (all are grounded so you can only plug things one way) to plug in anything (like a phone charger, or a computer charger) that has a lip. Kent fixed this with a $3.99 mini power strip, but the original design was very poor.
The bathroom is also spacious and elegant with big inset wall buttons to flush the toilet (takes about six tries per time to get the angle and pressure just right to get them to function) and a lovely tile and glass enclosed shower (with a glassy slick polished marble floor) that is located exactly wrong to be able to reach a towel placed anywhere in the room when opening the shower door. The nearest you can get is the edge of the vanity a dripping step and a half away. Kent fell into one of his bits of profound wisdom in commenting, "This is what happens when the room is set up by designers how care only how it looks, not how it works."
We are staying here mostly on Starwood points, so it's very inexpensive for us, but the hotel itself is a study in conspicuous consumption. Internet in your room is $25 per day. The Chinese restaurant the concierge pointed us to the first night had prices starting at $50 per plate (rice and tea were extra). I had a cup of tea in the lobby the first night we arrived, and the bill came up the next day as $25.50. This was beyond believability, and I wended my way to the reception desk the next morning to enquire. Tea in the lobby costs a reasonable $6.50 - the desk guy found the tab, it had our room number but someone else's name, and he took it off our bill. He didn't even charge me the original $6.50 for the tea! What class!
Monday morning I took a taxi out to the Oracle building where the center manager met me and chatted while he got me set up in a vacant office with a borrowed computer. I then delved into my spreadsheets, surfacing briefly to walk down to the corner for a sandwich at lunch, and then returned. Now I did find that I was missing one critical file and Ted in Colorado was kind enough to go over to my house and email it to me off my computer. It wasn't even Oracle confidential (so don't get your back up, Liz!) it was just a set of macro programs I had written to process specifically formatted data, and it would have taken me more than my two days at the Melbourne office to recreate those macros.
Kent and I went out to Greektown on Lonsdale Avenue Monday night and had a nice meal at Dion and then picked up two gooey greek pastries at the International Cafe next door. Mine was a short crust pie with chocolate and hazelnuts and honey, and Kent's was a little fruit pastry topped with honey glazed pecans. Mmmmmm!!!
Back to work on Tuesday to finish all the spreadsheets and revel in the fast internet to check mail and Facebook. I got my project files finished and posted about 5pm and headed back to the hotel. The weather here is damp and a bit chilly. Standing outside the Oracle building trying to flag down a taxi reminded me suddenly of Sacramento at Christmas time - that same wet bite to the air without being really cold.
Kent and Don had scored half price tickets to the Tuesday evening performance of West Side Story at the Regent Theatre (just next door to our hotel - but actually on Collins Street rather than opening off the alley). The Regent is violently roccoco. I don't think there's a smooth, unembelished surface on any wall in the theatre. But the seats are reasonably wide, fairly comfortable, and not shoved cheek-to-jowl next to each other. The production was well done, but not standard. They did the intermission after Tony kills Bernardo and moved two early numbers (Officer Krupke and I Feel Pretty) up from the beginning of the show to the end of the show. Tony's voice was nice, but had not quite enough depth of range for all the songs, while Maria probably sings opera and overpowered every number she sang in. The real star of the performance was Anita with an excellent voice, lots of verve, and exceptional dancing talent. I had never seen West Side Story performed on stage, and enjoyed the whole thing very much. It made a great finale to this bit of our vacation - tomorrow starts the convention!
