Jetlag and news…

Well I arrived yesterday’s evening. Time to get to Santa Clara, I met couple of friends in the lobby and then headed to the MySQL/Sun’s party by the pool. By 9pm I was in bed and woke around 5am when a journalist called me to get my thoughts about Oracle/Sun deal. The “WHAT??”, I said. Yes this is to me and to many others a quite big surprises. After the rumors about IBM, even HP,… Oracle comes in and get the whole package.

The conference is not even started, today being tutorials’ day, that it is going to be very promising.

Other than that, well everything is pretty smooth under sunny California. It is really hot out here.

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MySQL conference 2009

Next week will start the MySQL conference 2009. I am flying out to San Francisco in a couple of hours from now. I have joined Yahoo! in Feb 2006. Back then, It was too early or too late to plan such a trip. Since then, I went to every conference. If you have the change to come one day, do not hesitate. I have meet fantastic people over the years that I am proud to call friends. The following week will be very busy and I will keep updating my blog on databases. Sorry it is in French.

This blog was meant to be place to write about my trip. I missed a couple of them:

• 3 days in California at the end of May
• 1 week in Paris for the Solution Linux conference
• and couple of ski trip

Once again, well every time I update the wordpress version… I decide to start writing a post and promise to continue to do so. Hope this time it is the good one.

I have to start packing my luggage, the taxi will pick me up in 8 hours. More to come soon.

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Grenoble - Day 1

Back home The plane was over a hour delayed…something wrong with one brake. I did not complained and prefered let them fix it. I arrived in London this morning around 7am then after passing again the control, I was able to get my second flight to Lyon. The fact I am not flying directly from HK to Lyon forbid me to get anything from the HK duty free. This less then 200ml policy stopped me getting sake… I would be able to carry it from HK to London but would not be able to board from London to Lyon. How weird is that? knowing that I did not leave at any time the airport…

So back in Grenoble, tomorrow back in the new office, all the guys will be already used to them but not me. I started already washing all my clothes, a rough estimation, between 4 to 5 machines…

What can I say to sum up this trip? Well it was fantastic, I saw 3 countries completly different, meet lots of great people,… I love being able to combine my job with my passion of travel and discover different cultures. That is it for now, next destination California, end september. 

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Hong Kong - Day 4 - Final Day

Today was my last day in Hong Kong and last overall in Asia. I am heading back to Grenoble in a couple of minutes after spending over 6 hours in the airport. I left the hotel around noon went to central station and register my suitcases. You can directly leave everything downtown and they take care of everything. You just need to show up for boarding. This done, I finally end up going to the airport by train and took from there the bus. I wanted to visit Lantau Island and mainly see the Tian Tan Buddha.

I took the cable car and 30 min later you end up in the Ngong Ping village. I saw 2 shot movies, well more animation movies, on Buddah and one about a monkey tale. You have then 10 minutes walk to get at the bottom of the stairs. Humm I did not count but under the 2pm sun and the heat, it seems a lot, a lot!!!

After visiting I went back the same way to the airport and since then I have been waiting…

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Hong Kong - Day 2/3

HK was the last stop of this trip. We spend 2 days in the office for architecture training and review on 2 ongoing projects. The office is located in one builing split between different floors. The guys sit on the 21st while most of our meeting were on 12th floor… and to go from one to the other you have to go down and change elevator. That is so weird, well, this is HK. Not a city really spread but quite high! 

Even when you are looking for a restaurant, you have picture on the first floor and you have to pic where to go. From there it could be any floor, and you got to use the elevator. Do not count on stairs. As you can see they use it to store goods. You better not be in a building if a fire starts! This is so secure :) 

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Hong Kong - Day 1

OK! Hong Kong is really amazing! I have never seen such a city. When I passed through 2 weeks and a half ago I was not impressed. Is that the city everybody told me about? Well what I had seen was nothing.

Imagine hills and huge building! Every thing is build on top! Up to now I have only been to places where you had couple of buildings but spread in a huge city. Seoul is impressive as well as you do not see an end but here… everything is concentrated and high so high. My room was on level 43. I took less than 30 seconds to go from the lobby to my floor. This view was taken from that room. In Hong Kong, well it is hot. But because you live in skyscrappers you have air conditionning everywhere…

Also in HK, you can smell the money! Cars, fashions,… everything is there!!

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Seoul - Day 5/6

“Time flies”… this is such a cliché but it’s true. Tomorrow I am already leaving Seoul for Hong Kong. I had once again a great time with the guys. The target if this trips is to give some classes, answer some questions, do some project reviews but also meet people. We work a lot over phone, emails, IM so it is really great to once in a while see the guys face to face. I had the change as well to finally meet Keith, another architect from my group, chief architect for APAC ( Asia, Pasific ). He came a bit less than 2 years in London for the International Architect conference but I was in California at that time. How could I miss the MySQL conference?

I think the almost only had Korean BBQ… famous… yes… for a reason!

Finally I would like to present my buddy Mic All the training I gave were recorded. I had to carry a wireless mic but for the big meeting room we wanted to be sure that everybody could hear me properly. So…

Yes! I use lot of them in Seoul, for karaoke, for training,… it is quite difficult to have to both to give training with all this equipement on you. You are aware that everything you said is taped… is like being on watch… I feel much more confortable when it is not as I can more focus on the audience.

That’s all! Let’s get ready to leave again!

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Seoul - Day 5

Nothing much today! Bruno arrived last night. We went for breakfast then as 2 real geeks back in our hotel rooms to code/hack “what else?” like will say George… I started by the ground foundation of my new project. A tool I am building for the boys in Asia, they requested it. I am guessing it will be wildly used internally, open source yes but distribute only at Y!… for now. Well I started the architecture diagram and the specs. Later on, we go for lunch…

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Seoul - Day 4

The guys in Taipei, already told me about it, Korean like to drink and party. This is so true On my first night here, they took me to dinner and then to a bar. We enjoyed couple of beers in an underground pub. You notice the ‘u’ and not ‘U’ on underground. The pub was 2 floors below. This being done, another collegue joined the party, we ended up in a japanese place having sake.

Friday night, no exception! After the office we went to twotwo chicken, to have well chicken and beers. We went then to something particularly famous in Asia, a karaoke bar. From what I am aware, karaoke is not very famous in France. I am guessing may be a cultural problem. I knew in place back then in Marseille, well over 10 years ago what was providing karaoke services. You could stand up in front of everyone and start singing with the stress that most of the people in the audience will make fun of you. In Asia, it is different. You go to a karaoke bar, they have many separated rooms, and you rent one. You can be sitting, driking and singing with you friends without having to worry about anything. Sure the level of alcool in your blood make you even care less after a while. Bottom line, if you have the chance to be around with local people, never hesitate. GO! You will have so much fun! Thanks you guys, it was a great experience.

Finally, today Saturday, after a nice sleep in the morning, my friend Kyle advise me to visit Insa-dong. So I took a cab and 30 mins later I was in this nice area. It is a very touristic place but also an artistic spot. You can find many galleries, many exhibitions going on, painting, music,… many shops also, told you it was touristic… and finally traditionnal tea houses. I bought myself something very traditional and common for tourists, korean masks. It will complete my collection after the nice elephant I got in India last month. That was all for the day, back to the hotel, couple of emails and reading…

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Seoul - Day 1/2/3

What can I say about Seoul? Humm… it is a very impressive city. Everything looks huge, over 20 million people, you can see many big buildings everywhere. The traffic is awful as well, cars everywhere, so much that to cross the main roads you usually need to use a tunnel. You get the feeling of a very active city, lot’s of things going on.

I tried to find my way to the office by myself, it was not that easy, with the number of towers around here. This being made, I spent some time with my fellow collegues and they are all great First lunch we went to bono bono, a famous restaurant around here, that my friend Alex advise me to go to as well. This place is a seafood buffet with everything you can dream of.

My schedule is different, while in Taipei I was giving class in the morning, consulting the afternoon, here it is the opposite way around. Jinho is in charge here, amoung other things, to organize training even and he is going it very well. All the training rooms are booked for the whole week. You get there, he has prepared the room, the projector is ready, all the needed slides as well. Then, as he is using a sofware to record your voice and the presentation you are giving, he connects you to a wireless mic… you are ready. No camera are used, later on one can replay the recording watching the slides and listening to the voice. This is definitly something we ought to be using everywhere. Now, the cherry on the cake, the poster to advertise the training you can even see the goatee. Sweet!!! I had some bad comments already about the shape of my face being… humm rounder… but hell. This is also use as a cover of a book he made with all the slides. A copy is distribute to all the trainees, in order from them to take notes. Well I was really impressed by the organisation. Well done.

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