We are now in Sydney. We left a sunny Perth and arrived here during an unusually grey and rainy day.

 The trip was uneventful, so the blog will be short. I cannot say the same thing about the flight across the country of Australia. We flew the width of country.

To give you a sense of the size, I share this map with Australia super-imposed over the continental US.  As you can see, the countries are almost exactly the same size, so we effectively flew from San Diego to Miami.

The travel day was wonderfully different from our previous ones – everyone spoke English. It was pleasant if not odd. Also, we were not on a budget airline, so we had a human level of legroom as well as in-flight entertainment. We felt like kings.

We are especially excited about Sydney as we will get a chance to spend time with several friends.  For example, we are staying at the apartment of two of my favorite business school classmates: Mike Jenner and Maurya Rieder. She manages a company that runs major IT projects. He is a professor at the University of Sydney business school. He teaches a course on leadership that is the most popular course at the business school.

Their family is taking a 2-week cruise around Australia and New Zealand and offered their apartment for us to use, so we will live like Sydney natives for the next week.

We will also spend time people we met while judging a case competition at the University of Texas.   I look forward to telling you more soon.

Steve Sir