Melbourne has always been one of my favourite cities in Australia. It continues to charm me, and make me feel part of something bigger and better organised than my own small existence.  I love the food, the trams, the trains, even Uber. We were Uber virgins until yesterday.  Had a lovely ride with Vijay, a Singaporean Professor of Film Making. Terrific guy, works 55 hours a week as an Uber Driver.

The next day we had a ride with Ahmet, born in Turkey, came to Australia as a 6 year old, is a father of 4, who borrowed money from the bank for the $300,000 Taxi License, which he is still paying off. He says it’s worth nothing now Uber is here.

I love seeing the people I know in Melbourne – can’t see them all in two days though.

I did see a lot of my favourite parts of the city and an area or two I had not seen before – Yarraville.

In Yarraville we saw the Sun Theatre – Art Deco and had a cuppa in The Vault. Also saw a film crew working in the same street, filming in a cafe.

We walked for about 25 mins to see a friend of mine, with whom I went to school. It was a tad chilly and windy, but we soldiered on. After the visit we Ubered back to our apartment, I then ventured out to see another friend who had travelled from Elstenwick to meet me in town.  Lost all track of time but we were to meet around 4:00pm. Once we had found each other we toddled off to Cookie, which turned out to be a Thai restaurant in a very staid, 6 storey building, called Curtin House, whose interior was anything but.

I was messing around with effects on my camera and took some photos inside using the ‘HDR painting lo’. Here is the result.