I.e., we’re now in Australia.  Brisbane, Australia, to be exact. Chris was invited to give the opening plenary address at the AVML 2016 conference here – whoohoo! He also was invited to give a talk today as part of the workshop, something that got arranged just last week, so he’s actually giving two invited talks this week. Congratulations, Chris!

Anyway, we’ll be here in Brisbane until the end of this week, then we head to Sydney for a few days and then to Melbourne — the one in Australia, not Florida ;-). Then it’s on to Auckland, New Zealand (we flew through there on the way to Brisbane, but didn’t leave the airport then). We head back to the States in mid-October.

For today here are a couple of quick pics taken in scenic places we’ve stopped in during the past week:

Golden Gate Bridge, San Francisco

The Friendly Tourist and our friend Will walking along San Francisco Bay in Emeryville

Auckland Airport, New Zealand

Brisbane, Australia

BTW, the timing of our trip was dictated by conference schedule, of course. We arrived this past Friday and the conference started today. However, unbeknownst to us, it turned out that Saturday was the last day of the 2016 Brisbane Festival, an annual celebration in the South Bank area, which is where we’re staying. On the evening of the last day of this festival they always have the biggest fireworks display in all of Australia. The crowds that turn out to see the display from the river bank are formidable. But, it turned out that from the pool area on the second floor of our hotel we had very good (albeit partially obstructed) view of the fireworks.  It was an impressively large and extremely well-synchronized display:

2016 Brisbane Festival Fireworks spectacular (partially obstructed, but still impressive!)

What fun coincidence of timing and location to get something like that welcome us here in Brisbane – we’re off to a good start.