Melbourne 4/01

Pronounced "Mel-bun" by the locals...

Yarra River walk

We had only a day to spend in Melbourne and we wanted to make the most of it. Melbourne is to Sydney what San Francisco is to Los Angeles. It is more US east coast city-like, smaller and less laid back than Sydney. It was a very appealing place with quaint trams rolling down the center of the streets (first small picture below), the Yarra River running through it and people out and about in city parks. The second small picture below is the central train station, an interesting architecture style. The Melbourne International Comedy Festival was in its second week when we visited.

Friday April 13th - Good Friday

We arrived in Melbourne around 1 pm and took a taxi to the Grand Hyatt downtown. We got a recommendation from the Concierge on a late lunch spot - The River Cafe, just across the Yarra river. The food (seafood), wine list and atmosphere were excellent. The river walk after the meal was fun as well with live groups entertaining along the way. From the restaurant we walked to the Rialto Tower and took the elevator to its observation deck, which (as the AMP Centrepoint in Sydney and the SkyTower in Auckland) claimed to be the tallest spot in the southern hemisphere.

The River Cafe

We captured some good views from the top (third and fourth pictures above) and then walked back to our hotel where the Concierge had researched our request for a show that was part of the Comedy Festival for the evening. It was a challenge to find a late night comedy show that kids were allowed to attend. The first picture below is the view from our hotel room. The second is from our river walk back. The third is a view of the Rialto Tower from the street below.

We got tickets for Adam Spencer at the Capital Theater for that night doing a comedy show entirely about math. It was called Adam 101 and was very unique. He characterized a Math degree or Math profession as a social disease. I captured a couple of his routines which were based on weird or unexpected math and statistics ideas. He did a demo of the old Statistics 101 standby of how many people in a random group are needed to have a 50% probability that two will have the same birthday (23). He also did a routine where an apparently fair coin toss sequence can allow you to win 7/8ths of the time. Here's how it works: Have your victim pick any three sequences of coin toss results, i.e. HTH, TTH, HHH. Bet that your sequences will occur before the victim's in any random set of ten tosses. Pick your three sequences by first taking the first two results from each of the victim's sequences i.e. HT, TT and HH and then add a result before these that does not form a symmetrical (i.e. THT, HTH, TTT or HHH) pattern. Your first choice would be H added to HT to keep it from being symmetrical. Your second choice would be H added to TT and your third choice would be THH. When you or the victim does ten random coin tosses, your choices of HHT, HTT and THH will occur before the victim's HTH, TTH, HHH 7/8ths of the time.

After the show we returned to the hotel at about midnight and took a taxi the next morning after breakfast to the airport and our trip to Auckland.