I've been in Melbourne for a few days so far attending MIFF, the Melbourne International Film Festival. I arrived on the morning of July 31st and here's some pics from that first day.

Spent over 24 hours in this baby. The flight wasn't actually too bad from LA to Melbourne, because I took a benadryl and conked out.

Ride back from the airport.

Beautiful crisp fall weather with sunny, blue skies, (although the Aussies call it "winter", aww so cute.)

View from the hotel. Took a little nap.

After my nap, I had dinner with my cousin Ben, then went to the first event at MIFF, called Pixel Playground, which was held at the festival lounge, featuring original Super Nintendo games on the big screen, like Pac Man, Mario Cart, and Street Fighter. The festival held a mini tournament for games that no one had played these games in 20 years.

I was in the lead, but unfortunately, my Mario Cart run was cut painfully short by constant red turtle shells from the competition... Why do I always get the green ones?

I sat down with the guy who beat me in Mario Cart afterwards in order to make peace. One of his girl friends asked me jokingly why they should let a "loser" sit down with them and I had no response, lol. But they were a cool group of Australians, Asian Australians and a girl from the UK. They showed me the famous graffiti alleyways on Flinders Lane just outside the venue.

This alleyway is apparently organized by the city, and they let graffiti go up and then every now and then they paint over it completely to let artists start a new.

But the funny thing is that the city accidentally painted over a Banksy without knowing it (not shown here), and lost millions in potential tourism revenue. Ha! 

Then I went bar hopping with the Australians into the wee hours of the night.