We're MIFFed

The Melbourne International Film Festival finished up last week. It's our second film festival. An American friend said it was strange when you come to your second Melbourne something, like your second Melbourne Cup or your second Melbourne Film Festival. This was our second film festival, and it makes me feel more at home here to have the continuity, to compare this year's film festival with last year's.

We each got 10-movie passes for the two weeks, and we had very different opinions on them. Ten movies in two weeks was a lot, but Leslie really likes movies. Strangely, I liked almost everything we saw more than he did. For someone with so many movies, he's very picky. But he says he sees so many in the hopes that he'll come across one that will punch him in the guts. None of these did that, but I found most of them fairly enjoyable. With the very notable exception of an exceedingly violent campy Japanese Western, which I found so vile I had to close my eyes for most of the duration. But overall, the calibre was pretty good.

A few weeks ago we went hiking in the nearby Dandenong Mountains. Although winter is a rainy season in Melbourne, it never gets that cold, and the snakes are not active in winter, so we think it's probably the best time to go hiking. Leslie brought his big camera bag and lugged 15kg of equipment up and down a mountain for three hours, but he didn't feel "inspired" to take any pictures. So this will have to be a text-only blog. Artists, you know.

Over Christmas this year we're tossing around the idea of going to Tasmania (or Tassie, as the Aussies say - there is nothing they won't abbreviate) and hiking and camping for three days. The website about the trek says it can be done in two days, but a lot of it is along the coast, and a lot of people like to take longer to play at the beach. I know I just said that winter was the best time to be in the woods because of the snakes, and that is true. But Tassie has only three common types of poisonous snakes, and only two of them will kill you. This is far better than Victoria, where there are 27 common types of snakes, and 21 of them are "dangerous" or "potentially fatal." Actually, I should clarify. The white-lipped snake is highly venomous, but there has never been a recorded incident of it killing anyone. The other two, well, they have track records. But I still like our odds in Tasmania over those here in Victoria.

This is also our second winter, and it seems like it's going on forever. We haven't been here long enough to know what months bring what season - we're just hoping for winter to end. I remember it being pleasant on my birthday last year - we went canoeing in the park - so I'm hoping that in the next few weeks it warms up.