Back from Rome

St. Peters in the Vatican

As you must have suspected I'm now back in Australia after the Rome conference. I somehow managed to take only about four photos in Italy and so I've been waiting for copies from the other guys. Now we're back and working so hard again, we've just not got around to it!

Top conference venue!

The conference was quite pleasant despite a couple of problems. The heat and lack of air-conditioning at the venue were a struggle and Paul and myself were also put up in a brothel which contained a dead person one day and a mugger, who had to be fought off, one evening. That wasn't so great but at least our room did have air-conditioning! The people, except the muggers of course, are very pleasant, obviously the sights are pretty spectacular (you'll have to take my word for that!) and as you'd expect, the pizza was smashing! We also managed to catch the world cup semi-final between Italy and Germany on a big screen in the Circus Maximus which was awesome especially as the Italians managed to win in the dying moments of the game. It was back to Scotland for the final the day after the conference and then back down here the next day. The weather since I got back has been pretty atrocious which means I've not been out to the bush so don't panic, you've not missed out on any top bird action!

At least the Romans have a fine taste in beer (?!)