Whenever in Melbourne at lunchtime, there’s a sweet little Japanese place right on Federation Square, just across the river from the Arts Centre, with Flinders St. Station in one direction and the Cathedral in another. The food is a mix of traditional and contemporary, presented with vibrant and informal, even feisty, sophistication. We usually love it.

Our first stop, after lunch, was the Australian Centre for the Moving Image where the Melbourne Queer Film Festival was in full swing, as you might say. I went there with my vibrant and informal, even feisty, partner, pictured below.

Then we crossed the river to the refurbished Hamer Hall to hear Ray Chen (and the MSO) conquer the exciting complexities of the Shostakovich First Violin Concerto followed by a rather too relaxed, I thought, offering of Beethoven (the Fifth).

The next day, on the advice of a Seattle Hi review, we went along to the Cinema Nova to see the movie Her. It was, as the reviewer pointed out, actually a rather sensitive reading of the nature of human relationships. Yet the featured human/technology premise, which had sounded a bit wacky, maintained far more credibility than I would have thought possible in a film which was only tangentially of the science fiction genre.

So, that was how two country culture vultures spent their weekend in the Big Smoke. The pleasant buzz should keep us going for a few weeks anyway.