"We're off to see the wizard,
the wonderful wizard of Oz" - Dorothy Gale"We're off to see the wizard,
the wonderful wizard of Oz" - Dorothy Gale
I was invited to be a speaker at Centura Software's
Asia-Pacific users conference in Coolum, Queensland, Australia. I
decided that it would make sense to head out to Australia early,
and visit my friends Jim and Randall (he used to be known as
Randy, but that has special connotations in Australia). It
turned out that several others had also booked their trip early;
Santanu, Raghavan, Mitch, Tom, and Max. We all flew together and
stayed at "The Top Of The Town" hotel in Kings Cross.
If you've never been to Kings Cross, It's very similar to San
Francisco's Tenderloin; full of drugs, strip joints, and
prostitutes. Mitch was quite unawares of the neighborhoods
ill-repute when he booked the reservations; but what the heck, it
makes for an interesting place to people watch.
That morning, I couldn't get a hold of either Randall or Jim, so
I headed out with the guys on a typical Sydney tourists
sightseeing day. We climbed Sydney Tower;
305 Meters above Sydney, to check out the view,
took a harbor cruise, and rode the Monorail. All good fun. That
evening, Max and Tom headed out to visit a friend of a friend of
Toms, and I went to Randall's.
Randall was true to form. His house was filled with geek stuff
(trade show paraphernalia from when we were both working at
Borland) and he had a half-naked girl in his kitchen, cooking
dinner for both of us when I arrived. Ever had Mexican food in
Australia? The tortillas are rectangular, and the meat lamb. Ok;
new twist but what the hell.
After two short days in Sydney, we were all off to
Maroochydore, on the Gold Coast. That's where the conference was.
I won't bore you with the details of the conference; they would
only be of interest to computer geeks, but the resort we stayed
at, Hyatt Coolum Resort was quite nice. Santanu and I shared a 3
room suite. The first morning, we awoke to this horrible
screaming! At first we thought it might be a monkey, but it
turned out to be this Cokybura. Why is
it that whenever I share a room with Santanu, we get woken up at
the crack of dawn? (see La
Ruta Maya) The next morning, I woke up early to catch the
surise pictured here.
Even though this trip started out as simply a speakers
position at Centura Software's
Asia-Pacific Developers conference, it soon ballooned into me
visiting several of our customers in SE Asia.
My first stop from Maroochydore (where the conference was) was
Singapore. Apparently it is impossible to fly from Brisbane
directly to Djakarta, and it would have been good to meet with
Eric (our Systems Engineer in Singapore) before meeting the
customers anyway.
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We're not in Kansas any more!
(Part I) |
