Day 10: Monday, Feb 18, Cairns

We spent most of Monday out on the Great Barrier Reef. Cairns is a jumping-off point for the GBR. I didn’t expect the reef to be as pretty as it is in all the pictures because, well, the only see the best pictures of a place. However, it was more than I expected. It really was like swimming in a giant aquarium tank and the colors were quite vivid. I had only been snorkeling once (off of Thailand) and this was much better. Part of the reason was that we had a great day – it was only partially cloudy and didn’t rain until we were headed back about 4pm. It was our first day in Cairns that hadn’t been totally cloudy and raining by noon.

On the way back we talked to another Texan named Layne. He graduated from UT about ’95 or so, worked for A&M’s Government Relations division under Michael O’Quinn (and quit just prior to the session that I worked), and now works for a pharmaceutical contractor setting up conferences for doctors. That might sound odd, but having interned for a start-up pharmaceutical company myself (Introgen Therapeutics) I can understand. Companies scour the world during clinical testing to find patients that fit the parameters of the study. In Introgen’s case they had to pay doctors and a patient in Russia and then fly someone their monthly to check on the site and collect the data, and they had other patients scattered around the world. Layne organizes conferences at the beginning to educate doctors on the procedure/drug, and it has taken him around the world. He made his first international trip in 2002 and Australia is his 50th country. That’s a lot of jet lag.

Aussie lingo for the day: trolley=shopping cart. Stores talk about their “trolleys,” which are their shopping carts. Most all of the shopping carts over here have four wheels that turn instead of the two that is typical in the U.S. The stores here also have narrower aisles and a more cramped feel and are typically smaller than their U.S. counterparts.