Life is so good, it gets better every day

Owen In Addis Ababa

Although I only had a vague recollection that he was leaving to live somewhere else, I got a great email from Owen the other day about his adventures in Addis. It seems Lu and himself are settling well into life in Ethiopia. It’s amazing to think I have friends completely scattered around the world now, all able to communicate within seconds. Hrm, I guess I should figure out where next year will bring me – for the first time today I started thinking about a year around San Francisco. I think it might not be the best option to stay in New Zealand, as it’s infinitely harder to meet people if you’re working away from an office environment. Who knows, perhaps I’ll end up in Dublin afterall.

Climber Girls in Bikinis

Okay, so Christian wanted more climber girls in bikinis. Dude, while I have a few photos I’d get totally lynched for putting them online.

GUADEC.no

I booked my flights for GUADEC yesterday. I arrive in Stavanger on Thursday 24th June, and leave on Friday 2nd July. Looking forward to the conference, although realize it’s quite a long way away still. Two other interesting things to note – it’s a return back to New Zealand and I have 8 days in Dublin after the conference. I’m pretty psyched.

I See Monsters

As it turns out I didn’t have to stay in Singapore for a week, which was quite possibly the biggest relief I’ve had for a while. The people at the Quantas information desk were wonderful, and got me on the first set of flights out of Singapore and home to New Zealand. When I was asked to turn left into Business Class by the stewards it was hard to disguise the grin on my face. I’ve never traveled business class before, and at that stage it was greatly welcomed. 50+ hours after I woke up cursing that I had missed my flight, I arrived home…and man, it was good to be home.

I had to spend the day in Singapore. My first impressions of the place were improved, but I can’t imagine what it would have been like to spend a week there. It’s a nice place, but it’s getting hugely expensive and at times feels over crowded. I decided to bite the bullet and bought a Canon 300D Rebel – it’s hard to know if I was being ripped off, but I seemed to have gotten a good enough deal [compared to Irish prices in any case]. It’s a nice camera, although the software that comes with it isn’t so hot. It’ll take me a few weeks to figure everything out, but I’m glad to be back with an SLR again.

After a small water fight, Maeve, Sam and myself headed up to Canterbury University for their orientation week set of bands. Goldenhorse were playing as a supporting act to LMNOP [who truly sucked], and they played some new songs – I’m really looking forward to their new album. Yesterday we headed to Castle Hill, and I had my best session out there so far, climbing a few V3’s, V2’s, V1’s and V0’s. The top outs still scare the crap out of me, feeling harder than any of the Font ones, but I guess confidence will come with time. Much slapping power is needed.

Back to work this week, and huge amounts of stuff to get through. It will be hard keeping on top of it all.

Just To Make Things Complicated

It’s hard to not use the term ‘fucking idiot’ when you describe me. Just realised that I missed my flight out of Bangalore. It was supposed to be on ‘Monday 16th Feb 0005’, which of course means Sunday night in my book. This is why they don’t let me code in Sun. Anyway, after some phone calls I’ve managed to get another set of flights organized, flying out tonight, but this time I get to stop over in Singapore for a week, unless I can organize to be on some sort of waiting list [which seems unlikely at this stage]. It goes to show, the more travel you do, the more chance you are likely to fuck up.

Final Days In Bangalore

Had a pretty quiet weekend, all in all. Went out to a place called 1912 with Bala, Hema and her husband, Venky. It was a pretty exclusive place, with some sister of a famous woman singing a retro/jazz set. It was a nice place, very moody, sitting beneath the bangalore skies. All the food and drink was free, after an initial entrance fee..and we made good use of that. I’m not sure if I thought the same the morning after – the hangover was pretty bad. Excellent night, and I think I remember most of it.

I had arranged with Ram to take me to MG road for some shopping, and decided that I should probably try and do a little bit more. We headed off to the Botanic Gardens [Lal Bagh], which proved to be a good ‘clearing the head’ style of walk, by way of Cubbon Park. Afterwards we finally headed to the mobs of MG and Brigade road, by way of a temple with a large bull in it. I didn’t do much shopping, apart from trying to answer the requests of my housemates. Today we headed off to the wildlife reserve up in Bannerghatta and also managed to find myself at the ISKCON temple. For a place apparently so spiritual, it had an amazing number of neon signs, donation boxes, restaurants, book shops and people hassling you. I respect someone’s religion and spirituality, but I have to say I was glad to see the ‘exit’ signs around the place.

The wildlife reserve, by contrast, was wonderful although a little sad to see some of the animals in the zoo part being so enclosed. Interestingly enough they have a ‘tourist’ entrance fee which is about 4 or 5 times the normal fee. As it turns out, I didn’t mind paying this because I got to jump the 50+ person queue and got to sit in the front seat of the bus [and the best camera view] as we went through the various lion and tiger country.

Getting back to the hotel was nice, and the swimming pool was too inviting to refuse. I think I’ll miss this place a little, but glad to get home.

What A Week

This week has been one of the best I’ve had for some time. Okay, so I’ve been involved with meetings and some presentations for most of the time, but unlike the usual Sun ones, there’s been lots of positive discussion and open feedback coming from them. All very productive. My hosts, Wipro, have been fantastic – I’ve had a lot of fun being in the office, and out and about at the various pubs in Bangalore. I have Hema, the social secretary, Kalpesh and Arvind ‘Fruit Punch’ Samptur to thank for that.

We’ve been looking at the various processes that Sun has pushed into the partnership, and where they’ve been breaking down. I’ve always thought that the Wipro guys have had to deal with a lot of uneccessary crap and it’s nice to see that in reality. I’m very much hoping that the relevant people in Sun take notice of my trip reports and that some solutions to the various issues are forthcoming – there’s a hell of a lot of low hanging fruit, aside from the huge ‘Let’s use one bug tracker’ obstacles. Yesterday I gave a talk on JDS – lots of interest, especially in the Looking Glass stuff. It’s pretty staggering to think of the amount of work we still have to do in JDS though, just based on the endless list of future plans in the slides I created.

Mysore was a pretty cool place – my first trip outside Bangalore. Bala, Arvind, Anand and Kalpesh took me around the various temples, palaces, and gardens. Hoping to get down to MG Road at the weekend and see a few more sights before I leave on Monday evening. The traffic still scares me, especially at night. It’s been a wonderful trip. Wipro dudes, thank you.

Travelling The Globe

This week has me in Bangalore visiting the Wipro folks. It’s good to be here, and the trip has been full of wonderfully vivid sights and sounds. The journey didn’t drag as much as I expected [Christchurch > Auckland > Sydney > Singapore > Bangalore], although I’ll admit it was nice to be able to split up the journey with a night over in Singapore.

Singapore didn’t really live up to my expectations, although I was only there for about 24 hours. The heat, humidity and crowds were overwhelming and I probably didn’t catch the best parts of the place. I’ll head back there for about 16 hours on the way back, so it will be a good opportunity to change my mind.

By contrast, Bangalore has been amazing so far, even if I haven’t stepped much outside the hotel since I arrived. I stepped off the plane to a pretty quiet badly lit airport with very little concern over security. It was a refreshing change. Outside the building, things changed rapidly and I was confronted with a huge whirlwind of sights, sounds and smells – a gallery of taxi drivers all waiting on their passengers, people brushing the dust off the pavements, a woman begging, children playing, rickshaws dodging pedestrians with a constant blur of various horns. The traffic is insane here – it seems like there is some sort of spatial tetris game being played, while respecting the fact that some vehicles are bigger than others.

Tommorrow is an early start at about 6am to go down to Mysore for the day – looking forward to meeting old and new faces.

^5’ing With Bastien

I think I know how Bastien feels about trying to keep up with GNOME. I work on it full time, and I’m still blown away. I have no clue how so many other people do it. They are all my heroes.

Useless

The VISA for India finally arrived this morning, which I’m pretty pleased about. I wasn’t really looking forward to telling my manager that I didn’t get on the flights because I didn’t have my passport. I feel so amazingly unprepared for the trip. Yesterday I went into town to have a brief look at the India Lonely Planet – I didn’t really see the need to buy the thing, given that it was $69 and it contained about 10 pages for Bangalore. Fortunately Arvind has been great and has offered to be around while I’m over there. It’s fun travelling to new places, but that sometimes wears out when you don’t have connections at that end. I’m looking forward to meeting the Wipro guys and hanging out with them – I just wonder whether my trip will be of any noticeable benefit to them or not.

Justin, a guy over on holiday from Oz that we met down in Greymouth, took us up on the offer of some floor space. We headed out to a Mexican for some burittos and frozen Margarittas. Washed down with a few pints of Guinness, it proved to be a pretty enjoyable night. Nathan and Rachel come back for a night this week before heading off, and how knows who will be the next visitor to arrive at our door. Next weekend is Watangi weekend, a public holiday in New Zealand. Patrick and Maeve are planning to head up to Nelson to catch up with Kristen, and maybe check out a bit of climbing at Payne’s Ford.

Work has been ultra-frustrating this week, and looks set to continue. I’m slightly glad that I can leave some of it behind while in India, but really quite disappointed in the little progress we’ve made over the last month or so. I’m not sure what I can do to change things, and that’s the most frustrating bit about it. I just feel so fucking useless.