while. I was lucky to find some cute, and reasonably priced local curios, so I bought a little koala bear for Quinn and a Kangaroo for Griffin. After a walk and browse I went back to the hotel and decided that an early night would be wise. I had no sooner changed into pyjamas when the phone rang. I answered, and heard ' oh good you're here, we're coming to get you.'. I scampered around trying to get back into my clothes before the knock at the door. It was Kiko and some of the other Brazilian. I had thought Morgan and I were the only one's to arrive that day, and that the others were only getting in after lunch on Sunday... but after hasty introductions and with laptop clutched under my arm I was propelled towards the 'Vibe Out' conference room, where I found Mark Shuttleworth, Matt Zimmerman (who I report to) and pretty much the entire management team. They had been at the LCA (Linux Conference of Australia) in Canberra and had just flown in on Mark's private jet. We started discussing the scheduling and how the conference was going to work etc. After a while we all seemed to agree that we'd rather do the scheduling the next day, so I offered to fetch my bottle of Amarula, which was met with nods of agreement, so I did. It was quite fun and almost surreal sitting chatting and joking over large glasses of Amarula with Mark and his management team. :)
As usual I am going on and on, funny how I could never write essays at school, and use to write BIG just to fill a page - clearly I had no experiences to draw from yet... ;) Here's a link of a picture taken of the whole team on the last day. http://gallery.linuxguru.net/UbuntuDownUnder-4-2005/img_0338?full=1 Charles did not make the flight with us and had to get a second visa application through for approval on the Monday, so he joined us in Sydney on the Tuesday. He however was more thoroughly grilled by customs and was detained for well over an hour, being asked to display the contents of his luggage and power up his laptop so they could go through his e-mail etc. As far as I am concerned this borders on harassment, and racism (Charles being black) which I find appaulling. The irony being that Australia was a penal colony, and now they thought we wouldn't want to *leave* Pah! ___ So after the Amarula on Saturday night we agreed to meet again at 9am, on Sunday morning to get the conference schedule buttoned down. I thought it would take a few hours and then we could do the bit of site seeing I had planned to do... However we ended up working solidly, stopping only for a 30 min lunch break, and then dinner at 9 pm, by which time nearly the whole 70 strong crowd had arrived. It was nice to start putting faces (and bodies) to the names, and nick names I had been corresponding with, although it took a good few days to really figure out which face went with which name AND nick name... and what a motley crew it is (see pictures in links below for more). The conference kicked off on Monday morning, with a bit of embarrassment for me. Mark needed a laptop to connect to the data projector. I volunteered mine, and as we were about to connect it up, we realised that I was running windows still. Not good. As he was about to hand it back I said, ' wait I have Ubuntu installed on the other partition'. So I skillfully booted up into my Ubuntu partition, only to realise that since I haven't used it since it was installed I couldn't remember my login! *blush* So Mark gave me the key to his room and told me to fetch his laptop pronto. Interestingly Mark always shares a room during these conferences, just like everyone else. He makes a point of being one of the guys, and not getting special treatment... His laptop is an IBM X40. They are tiny and very cute... You would think that after making it big Mark would have kicked back and ridden out his life being really hedonistic. This could not be further from the truth. He is extremely hands on in the company - almost too much so - evidenced by the fact that it took us 4-5 days to convince him that we could be trusted to schedule the next day of the conference without him... he also works hard than anyone I have ever known. He is relentless. he also manages to stay motivated and driven, but stays clam and doesn't appear hyper or manic. Still it's practically impossible to keep up with him... by the end of the week we all looked tired and haggard, while he looked fresh and strong... Also he is not just a manager he is intricately involved in the development, and sits coding whenever he gets a chance. By Thursday night we were pretty much finished. I had been inside the hotel ALL the time, and had even eaten dinner in the conference rooms over the scheduling twice, having not had enough time to go down to dinner. We had not been to bed fore 2am once yet either. Claire (Mark's new PA) was helping with scheduling that night, and I managed to get away finally. *YAY*
A couple of guys invited me to join them for a curry. This turned into a group of about 20, and we marched off towards King's Cross in search of curry. The chosen spot was the tiniest dodgiest place you have ever seen, so while about 4 of the front crowd squeezed into it, I was carried along in the wave that walked on. we found another curry place, but there seemed to be too much goat on the menu for our liking, so we finally settled on the dubious sounding 'Japanese Steakhouse'. Where not a word of english was spoken. Still we managed to communicate the need for copious amounts of beer, and secured 2 terriyake chefs who proceeded to make more food than we could eat, right in front of us. It also included the chefs throwing things at us - like eggs, which we had to catch. It was quite an experience! For which we each had to cough up $35Aus (R175). On returning to the hotel we found a group of guys playing the card game 'Mao' aka 'Cambridge Standard 5 Card Mao'. They were keen to initiate me into the game, as they take great glee in finding and torturing Mao 'virgins'. You are not told anything about the game and have to figure it out as you go along. It's basically a version of the game Uno, but very mutated, and with increasingly complex and made up rules as the game progresses. So you have to figure out the standard rules, and then work out which rules have been added and how they work. You also get penalised for doing anything wrong, including talking, or asking about rules etc etc etc. Being the strange and contrary person that I am, I actually love challenges like this. So I was determined to prove myself to them. Which I think I managed to do because after a few rounds one of the guys said (during an authorised point of order) 'I wish my (some or other program he uses) had such advanced pattern matching capabilities'. *grin* Note: Dave, I think you'd love the game too, I'll have to initiate you next time we get together. On Friday I had to address the whole group in the morning at the introduction to the day. I had been involved in formulating a better process for the 'conference', which we decided was a bad word for what we were doing, because it was really a summit, where the goal was to discuss as many topics as possible and turn them into documented specs to be used to assist the development of the next release. So I was asked to describe the process and get everyone to start following it. I quite enjoyed the chance to have centre stage for a few minutes. I think it also helped some of the gang to understand who I was, and what my role is. Because it's now my job to whip them all, and makes sure those specs are implemented as far as possible by October.
On Friday night we all decided it was pubbing night. So after dinner we caught a taxi to a better part of town. I was with Claire and Jane (another Jane, who is the COO of Canonical) etc. It was good to see her kick back and relax a little because between her and Mark I was fearing there would be no fun at all in this company, and was anticipating burnout in about 2 weeks... anyway we had a nice social time and Matt and I got a chance to talk, which is good because he is my direct report officially. he is far less shy when he's had a drink or 2, and he is quite interesting to talk to. Very bright as well. After a while Mako who is a complete lunatic insisted we go to the cool place down the road which they'd been to before. Thinking the whole crowd was going I was buoyed along with them, only to find myself in the wrong trouser leg again ...(*aside* it's a terry Pratchet reference - I wasn't actually in anybody's trousers - figure it out!). Anyway the place down the block ended up being MILES away and we walked and walked and finally got there... it was Stonewall Hotel (or something like that) which is a seething gay bar. COOL. However that's where things went a bit pear shaped. It was close to midnight, which would mark my birthday, and one of the guys ordered a round of champagne, very sweet of him. So everything was festive and fun. Then this creepy Chinese guy came over and started dancing against me. He said he was going to get drinks and I thought great, that meant he'd go away. He came back, gave me a drink and then did go away. I stupidly didn't think more of it and drank the drink. I started feeling odd afterwards, and even though I was no longer drinking I kept feeling more and more dizzy. Thinking I had just drunk too much, and feeling like an idiot, I slunk away to the ladies'. But I kept feeling worse and worse. After having to throw up I just stayed in the loos leaning on the basin. After a while one of the staff members came in and was talking to me. She shined a torch in my eyes, and asked if I wanted to go to hospital. I told her I thought I was fine, and really just wanted to go back to the hotel. I thought that was the safest option especially while I still knew who and where I was! She was very sweet and helped me get down to the street and got me into a taxi. Still thinking I was just drunk I went up to our room and went to bed, thinking I was going to pay the next morning. But I woke up feeling 100% fine. I told Claire all about it, and she said it sounded like my drink was spiked. So there you go, lesson well learned, and luckily it wasn't worse! But now after not wanting the guys I was with seeing me drunk and sick, when I disappeared never to be seen again, they just assumed I had chosen to go home with somebody - so much for saving face. So I made sure everyone found out what REALLY happened. *blush*
On Saturday, which was my Birthday proper, the whole crowd sand happy birthday to me, and presented me with a birthday card. We then wrapped up the conference. Afterwards we were then treated with a bus drive around Sydney, so that we at least did get a brief look at what it's like, followed by being taken to see 'Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy' which had just opened in Sydney, at Fox Studios. Afterwards we went to the Arena restaurant for dinner, which was delicious! I sat at the same table as Mark and Matt. I think there are one or 2 photos of this floating around, but I haven't seen them yet. I rode the bus back to the hotel sitting next to Mark. There were invites to go out clubbing that night again, as Mark was intending to stay up through the night as they were leaving the hotel at 5am to fly out of Sydney at 6am. I declined, and decided to stay safely inside the hotel. We left at 8am the next morning. There was more rushing because I over slept and then the airport was packed, and we nearly missed our Cape Town flight and had to run through JHB airport... then our bags didn't arrive back on the flight. But still I made it home, more or less in once piece. Rather dazed and confused, but wow what and experience! It was great to be back home and to see the kids, and to SLEEP. But now the real work starts...
My pictures are here: http://community.webshots.com/album/338849189afiQFQ
and there are more here: http://www.grawert.net/udu-gallery/index.html and
http://tseng.ath.cx/photos/index.php?galerie=udu
and a pic of me in Colin's blog: http://www.bytebot.net/blog/
THE END
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