The Barossa

I spent the last few days in the Barossa for work, with a bunch of colleagues - somewhere between a team building exercise and an educational trip. Normally I'm not real keen on these things, but I quite enjoyed the experience this time. A few of the highlights were:

Visiting a lavender farm, and not seeing the sign that said "Please do not throw sticks to the dog. He will encourage you". So while the farm manager was giving everyone a lecture on lavender (which I'm sure was scintillating), I amused myself throwing a stick to the dog (who, like the sign said, did encourage me to do so), until I was told off. Turns out the dog is half blind, and has a habit of running into trees and that while playing fetch.

The food here was interesting too - we started with the traditional scones with jam and cream, but then they started bringing out platters of lavender-infused food - lavender ice cream, lavender chocolate mousse, lavender cupcakes etc. Not really sure how I felt about that.

Although the novelty of getting free food and drink everywhere we went shouldn't be underestimated - a definite plus.

Doing the "Make Your Own Blend" tour at Penfolds, and having the host tell us she could taste a range of things, including "Christmas lollies" in the wine we were sampling. This was a source of great amusement to Matt and I for the next twenty minutes, as we worked on creating our own wines, interspersed with comment like "needs more Allen's Party Mix" or "You can really taste the M&Ms in this one". Also got to wear funny white coats which made you feel like a doctor.

Visiting the Barossa Brewing Company in Greenock, and sampling their beers. I came away with a six pack of their dark ale, according to the brewer it will improve with age and peak in eighteen months or so. It remains to be seen whether it will last past this coming weekend.

The low points included:

Playing golf - I'm not sure why I suck at this sport so much, but I do. Not to get all sexist because that's not my style, but I was worse than almost everyone else there - and about 80% of our group were female. I'm not a world class athlete - or any kind of athlete at all - but I like to think that if you took a random sampling of girls off the street, I'd be better at sport on average than them. Perhaps. But golf I'm just terrible at. To make myself feel better though I'm going to fall back on my previously expressed sentiments that it's not a sport at all - it's a game. Anything you can be amongst the best in the world at and still be eligible to receive a pensioner's discount, isn't a sport.

Sharing a room - I got to share a two bedroom apartment with a colleague, which was fine. Except for some inexplicable reason, he brought his daughter's boyfriend along with him on the trip. (Actually there was a reason - they were going camping together after the trip, and something about a broken down car - it just wasn't a very good one). At the end of the day you just want to get back to your room and chill on your own - not hang out with someone you barely know. Jarrod - or the J-Train as we dubbed him - was quite a character though, constantly hiding behind his sunglasses, even inside dim wineries. Just the ridiculousness of him tagging along everywhere was good for a laugh, so I can't really complain.