Colin Charles Agenda

MySQL will be in Beijing, China, this week. Well, not MySQL per se, but I will be there. As will Kaj Arno. I arrive on 21 April 2008 and depart on 24 April 2008. I expect to be busy during the days, but my nights should be free. Drop me email at colinATmysqlDOTcom if you’d like to catch up.

There’s an event, on the 23rd of April as well. Its part of the Sun-MySQL World Tour. You definitely should be there, I’m sure there will be some nice schwag involved as well :)

Sitting in San Francisco, getting a little bored before my flight to Beijing. And Twitter is down, for 1.5 hours, for what they seem to call database maintenance. Wonder why. At least there’s IRC…

Technorati Tags: beijing, mysql, world tour, sun

An interesting morning for me. I woke up, had breakfast at the Hilton Concierge Lounge (complimentary, seeing that I’m on the Executive floor), and decided to find my way, by public transport, to downtown San Francisco, from Santa Clara. Boy was I surprised as to how inane everything was: I spent about 2.5 hours travelling on a light rail (VTA), then a Caltrain, and finally a BART. I almost finished a book I was reading, all on public transport. Talk about a commute.

Anyway, arrived at LugRadio Live USA, registered (paid my paltry $10 in cash, since their credit card provider was wonky), and started the day with great talks. Some quick notes about the conference itself, and then my notes shall follow soon.

• Turns out its very hard to see the screen, because of all the sunlight that was coming in. The Metreon is a great place, but the light hitting the projector screen was a real issue.
• Lack of power everywhere, was a bit of a bummer. Tech conferences, laptops, one must charge one’s laptop!
• When they recorded an episode of LugRadio Live and Unleashed, they looked for the folk that came the farthest - at first, it seemed like only Stewart (Melbourne) and I (Kuala Lumpur) were standing. Then two others from Kiev and Moscow stood up. Turns out we all walked away with a copy of The Ubuntu Book as a prize. Nice :)
• Google was a major sponsor of the entire event. Kudos to them, the stuff was great.
• Saw a PostgreSQL booth (and caught up with Josh Berkus). Saw an OpenSolaris booth, and learnt a bit more about IPS. Even managed to sneak a chat with Ian Murdock, about IPS, Sun, and so on. Most interesting. Wished for a OpenOffice.org, MySQL, and even Fedora booth, which were nowhere to be seen.
• Lunch was at the food court. MySQL’er JD Duncan introduced me to some amazing pizza.
• We saw a streaker, during the Gong-A-Thong. OK, not a streaker, just a guy, in his underwear hitting the gong. I’m sure pictures of this will be online soon enough.
• Dinner? Cha-Ya. 16th and Mission (BART stop), probably closer to 18th and Valencia (by memory). Vegan Japanese food. Interesting, even the ice cream was made of soy.

All in all, great networking event. Whole day spent meeting new folk, speaking to old friends, and so on. Definitely worth the trip.

Remember the problem with public transport in San Francisco/Santa Clara? The BART/Caltrain/VTA all stop at midnight. Useless. Your only options are an expensive cab ride back, or sleeping on the street (don’t even dream of a hotel in downtown SF, they’re all booked out).

Technorati Tags: lugradio, lugradio live usa, public transport, san francisco, santa clara, california

So, I’m leaving on a jet plane, to head to the MySQL Conference & Expo 2008. Normally, this is a flight I make via Auckland or Sydney, but this time its via Singapore.

Singapore is a hub in Asia, so let me share a few tips:

• The airport is huge. Terminal 3 reminds me of being in one of Heathrow’s terminals. Leave plenty of time to walk from gate to gate (up to 20 minutes).
• US flights probably always leave from Terminal 3, around gates A16-A20. The gates are speculation, mainly because of the extra security available out there. (A18, for Los Angeles, A16 for San Francisco, I’m pretty sure I’m right).
• Within A16-A20, you’ll not notice any power sockets available for your laptop. Clearly, very negative for the business traveller.
• You can get free wireless, via the Wireless@SG access point. Just get your mobile phone to roam to SingTel, and enter *186. You’ll be sent an SMS back, with a username and password. Happy surfing (IMAPS/SMTPS/HTTP/HTTPS/SSH all work).

Well, that’s about it. If you have more tips about flying via Singapore, don’t hesitate to share them.

Saw two people meet up, who were thrilled to talk about their travel/flight schedules. Turns out that they don’t travel too much, but chose to focus on “outdoing” one another, in terms of where they’ve been and where they’re going to. I smiled to myself, and chose to move on.

Singapore has a new Terminal 3 airport. I presume that for flights to the US, they’ve reserved A16-A20. Why the presumption? The additional security available there, as they do the scanning.

Everytime I go through security, I always have the pleasure of explaining to the scanners what network cable actually is. I have this really nice network cable, with some kind of holder, that retracts, that I got at one of the LCAs that I have in my backpack all the time. It always, seems to interest security officers (once in Melbourne, they asked me if I had rope to tie folk on the plane up - I candidly replied that I could provide death by network cable ;) )

Today was no different, but explaining it to the two Singaporean officers, was what annoyed me. They’d clearly not known what networking was. And then the male, proceeded to remove my two power supplies, as well as my APC battery, because they were unsure what was “metallic” and turning up on their scanners.

Slowly but surely, he proceeded to look at the “racks” inside my Targus RakGear. Unsatisfied with the network cable explanation, they took it out, and popped it back through the scanner. Miraculously, all was well.

Me: “You’re very clever to take things out, but not so smart in putting them back in, eh?”
Him: “Sorry Sir”

Needless to say, I’ll have to make a note to remove that from my backpack. I’ve had enough “issues” with it from “smart” folk.

I didn’t get to attend many sessions at the Tech Days, as I was mainly meeting with people, or at the PostgreSQL on Solaris booth (figures someone from MySQL should’ve been there too). I had plenty of interesting conversations with Tom Daly; we met by chance since I had a blue MySQL shirt and he figured he’d be cheeky and offer me a PostgreSQL one.

I was going to take a photo with him today, but he called me from the airport last night to say he had to go back. Oh well.

Laurie Wong, and me

Instead, you get a photo of Laurie and me (MySQL cap, PostgreSQL on Solaris t-shirt). I’ll blog later about the sessions that I did attend - I wish I could’ve done so earlier but staying at the Sheraton in Darling Harbour, meant that there was no in-room Internet access. Wireless was available in the lobby or business center, but on the first floor where I was staying, your only options were dialup. In 2008.

The Tech Days is an interesting event. At MySQL, we’d have called this a “structured MySQL Camp”. Or maybe the Japan User Conference. Either way, it was interesting, and I learned a lot about OpenSolaris, Containers, DTrace, NetBeans and Java. So much so, I’m looking into toying with Java again (something I promised myself, I wouldn’t do, in the new millennium).

From a database perspective? Talks on PostgreSQL and MySQL, another on JavaDB, an Oracle booth (giving away a Wii to lucky winners) in the expo hall. Truly, impressive.

Oh, and the Atlassian offices are right next to the Sheraton. Now, that would be a seriously cool place to get an office. I got to peek into the office from the outside, and truly impressed. I actually recognised the Aeron chairs during my walk, and only upon coming back later, realised it was Atlassian.

So, I’ve left Tokyo, and we had an amazing last dinner there at a sushi place, and I think both Kaj and my new favourite dish is crab bowels. Stewart, a friend of his, and I decided we needed to see some bits of Tokyo, so we went out for a few drinks. You haven’t been to a city till you’ve been propositioned, and I guess you can say, we’ve been to Tokyo. Half-price beers at a bar somewhere, were what we settled for. Quick, albeit short sleep, and I was up for my 7am departure from the hotel.

Arrived in Beijing, almost after a whole day of flying, because I had to make a stop over at Shanghai. Was amazed that China Eastern Airlines isn’t as bad as they’re touted to be (wait for my next update about the airline industry, which I typed up on my E61i, in offline mode). Upon landing, they had a banner looking for folk that came from Tokyo. There were like 9 folk, all of whom got a nice un-crowded bus. The rest were put into another bus that was packed full, and they hadn’t even arrived to collect their bags when I’d left the airport!

Beijing hasn’t changed, too much. Memories just started flowing back, the moment I hit the car park in the airport. Traffic is just as bad, drivers probably have gotten worse, there’s way more honking now, and crossing the road is always a death-wish. Arrived at my hotel, which was amazing - I can heartily recommend the JianGuo Hotel to anyone needing a hotel in Beijing. Fairly cheap, very fast Internet access, but of course, filtered. I just noticed that Flickr was disabled as well, which annoyed me. But uploads worked - 300-400KB/s!!!

On Thursday, I caught up with Ken and Michael, for a quick Peking Duck dinner, nearby to the hotel. Ken and I continued on the night with some drinks, at a place opposite my hotel, and we had lots of Chivas, and a late night :P Short sleep later, I was up, awake, and ready for presenting all day. Which I did with no problem, and to good crowds.

Party people, its Friday night. First up, dinner with Grace. Good food, and she even gave me a tiny gift with regards to the Beijing Olympics. Of course, this made me a little worried, and I felt weird, as I had no gift handy. So I promised to send her a print of herself, since I was walking around with my 30/1.4 and SLR then. George, is now officially my new go-to guy for being an excellent party animal. Short stay in the hotel later, and a quick shower, and I was out to Propaganda. This is apparently the new Vics (which has lost its popularity, after apparently the bouncers beating up some foreigners a little after I left Beijing the last time).

Propaganda is amazing. Probably also because I met someone amazing (pre-Propaganda). Haha. Its a watering hole upstairs, and downstairs, is a really crowded and packed dance floor. R&B music, along with some oldies (like Michael Jackson) is what the crowd basically dances to. It got too hot, too quickly, so I had to move back upstairs pretty quickly.

The Chinese don’t understand what a “Chivas and water” is, so I just enjoyed gin tonics. Weird drink, last I remember there were rumours that it made men impotent, but who cares. It was my “China drink”…

Left early, because I was to speak at SFD the next day, crashed at about 3.30am, up again not long after, as I had morning meetings at 9am. Grace came by again, and then with the company driver, we took a quick tour of the upcoming Olympic village, and then headed off to Tsinghua University. Hung out with the cool folk there, bringing me back memories of my BLUG attendance. Lalo was there, and I’ve now scored a small-ish SFD t-shirt, in pink. I’ll wear this soon, and promise to post a photo up I’m sure :)

Spoke, to a large-ish audience. Ensured that I got them to stand up and poke each other first, because while sitting down, I noticed some folk dozing off in the previous talk. I was the only one whom spoke in English, and there was a translator available, so I think they stayed awake, mostly. Plus I had the occasional joke thrown it (I find it amusing that when you mention the joke, some folk laugh first, because they get it, and then the vast majority laughs later, because of the translation :P).

Dinner was very nice, for all the SFD speakers, event organisers and so forth. 15 courses or something, I found it hard to read. Jade, someone we all just met, who works at Via, has offered to do some form of language exchange with me, which she assures me can be done via MSN, so I gladly obliged. Since she was so nice, I gave her a Moo card as well :)

Back to the hotel, and within 15 minutes, I’m out again with George. He’s already picked up Jia Jia, and a friend, and we head to a place near Suzie Wong’s, a sports bar. I play darts with her, something I’ve not done in years. Surprisingly, probably by some stroke of luck, I win several times. The night quickly turns into one of drinking games being played amongst all (Claude joins us too), and all I can say is we have a lot of fun. We then decide that supper is due, and for some reason things like ducks tongue, and random other recycled parts of animals are ordered. They’re all spicy as well. Fair enough, I just drink the egg & tomato soup…

Another late night, that ends at 4.30am or something, and I’m up again to have breakfast, pack quickly, and head off to the airport at 10am. Reminder to self: when leaving Beijing, you clear customs first, then only go and get your boarding pass. Long flight ahead to Munich, cramped up in coach on Lufthansa. I attempt to sleep, eat food, and get work done (consequently, bombarding people later with lots of email). Arrive in Munich and find my connecting to Frankfurt has been cancelled.

Easily fixed, I get a new, albeit delayed flight, and arrive so quickly, they could hardly serve most passengers drinks. Attempt to get a train and actually succeed. There was a persistent beggar in the train station whom only spoke English. I felt bad for him, but at that stage, I could only offer him Yen or Kuai/RMB.

Reached Heidelberg, got a taxi, and the hotel was about to close up the reception. So this was a in the nick of time sort of thing. Apparently I wasn’t booked in till the next day, so I’m glad they just sold me the room outright anyways. Internet is 5 Euros/24hrs here. The room is typically European, something I’d have expected to get in Tokyo (but didn’t).

Looking for food at 11.30pm is hard, but I did find a bar, and hopped in for some local beer on tap. Bunch of Spanish students were watching the basketball match against Russia. Russia won, however, they still danced on the streets later, saying “banana” and “ok”. They got me to stand in the middle and do a dance with them too. I’ve got some form of crappy video from the N73, so I’ll YouTube it soon enough.

Theme of the trip: 4 in the morning by Gwen Stefani, and Cool as well. Oh, I bought headphones at the airport, because I wanted to watch Californication in the plane…

I’ve got boils on my toes, thanks to the heat/sweating in Japan/China. Voltaren cream, and band-aids to the rescue. More to come soon, as I’m about to have dinner (or at least look for some dinner).

See where in the world I am, via my Dopplr profile. Or Facebook’s Dopplr interface.

Technorati Tags: travel germany heidelberg munich frankfurt tokyo japan beijing china