My So-Called Blog

Hej hej from Stockholm where I arrived about two weeks ago for a fun-filled two four six weeks of meetings and face-to-face contact with the MySQL Cluster developers. And the chance to check things out when it’s not 2°C and raining, all the time, as it was when I was here in November and December of 2005. (This week, it’s 12°C and kind of misty.)

The last five or six weeks have been pretty hectic, and this evening (it’s just after 10 PM local time as I write this) represents the first time in that span that I’ve actually had time that’s not been planned out for me in one way or another. At the end of April, I moved out of my place in Brisbane and stuffed all my gear into storage in Coffs Harbour, New South Wales, where I rented a post office box that now constitutes my sole legal address for the duration.

That last sentence is actually shorthand for “Two 1,000-km round trips between Brisbane and Coffs in a rented truck loaded with furniture (and unloaded again), mostly by me, costing me about 2 grand and not inconsiderable wear and tear on and protestations from portions of my anatomy whose existence I’d been hitherto unaware of”. When I arrived in Australia just shy of five years ago, I had a rucksack and a couple of carry bags. Where did all that crap come from? By the time I got it all hauled and stored, I found myself wishing that I’d just set it all out in the street and taken a match to the whole lot. I then went back to my empty townhouse and spent a few days cleaning up the place. On the 8th of May, I turned in the keys and headed south to spend a few days with Elly before zipping off overseas. I took my first ever ride in a propellor-driven plane on a rainy and foggy Friday morning (11 May); we took off just before dawn, and I was hoping fervently that the pilot could tell which way was up, since I myself couldn’t really tell. I was pleasantly surprised to land alive and unscathed in Sydney a couple of hours later for my overseas connection. Five years and about a thousand exchanges of “You live in Australia? What’s Sydney like?”–”Dunno, never been there” after coming to Oz, I can now instead say, “Well… It’s a big bloody city with a big bloody airport”. I was there for about 3 hours.

My first post-Australia stop was Hong Kong, where I spent a few days on holiday, in the company of my friend Mei Ching, who acted as my guide and translator. It was nice to see her again. Fortunately, she place she picked for me to stay was in Kowloon and not downtown, where the air pollution was just ghastly. One day, we went up to The Peak and spent the day walking through the park, which wraps around the mountain just below the top. We also visited the temple and gardens at Nan Liang, which is quite a nice place, as well as the Temple of Wong Sai Tin (I will not reveal here what I wished for there, but I’ll be quite surprised if it comes to pass).

Of course, I couldn’t visit Hong Kong and not see the Big Buddha, all (nearly) 100 metres of it. The theme park village and religious prsentations were a little on the commercial/cheesy side; on the other hand, I can’t knock the proprietors for trying to spread the good word of the Lord Buddha. I nearly had my hand squeezed right off during the skycar ride up to the site; Mei hadn’t told me beforehand that she’s quite afraid of heights. I got the chance to pay my respects in the temple at Po Lin Monastery, and we also got some excellent vegetarian fare afterwards in the monastery’s cafeteria.

I made a couple of interesting acquaintances while I was there, including a cab driver who claimed that (over the course of a 30-minute taxi ride, yet) I’d taught him something new about the teachings of the Lord Buddha, and who insisted on giving me a book I’ll likely not be able to learn how to read if I live to be a hundred and fifty. I’m still figuring that one out.

On the 16th, I bade Mei and the Hong Kong Special Autonomous region farewell. I quite enjoyed my stay there — I might have to stop over again on my way back to Oz. I’ll post some photos soon.

[To be continued…]

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…have been posted in the gallery section. Fans everywhere of the Divine Miss “E” will rejoice. :)

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Two weeks into the New Year, and four weeks since I got back from Thailand, I finally get round to updating this thing. By “updating”, I don’t just mean posting. Gojira the One-Lung Webserver has had an overhaul as well: I’ve added some more RAM, caught up with the last couple of months’ worth of Windows 2000 patches, updated to the latest versions of PHP, MySQL, WordPress, and Cygwin. (Tip: If you’re running PHP and MySQL on Windows, be sure to get rid of the libMySQL.dll that comes with PHP — because it’s crap — and to use the version that comes with MySQL instead.)

So… 2006 was a pretty decent year, with a number of positive changes:

(Read the article)

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I’ve just uploaded some more pictures to the Gallery. I’ve taken these over the last three or four weeks at the hotel where I’ve been staying (The Bedrooms on Sukhumvit 77 Soi On-Nut) and its immediate environs. This is a really nice place, and if you’re looking for accomodation for the medium to long term, I highly recommend it.

Here’s a direct link that opens in a new window, and without the inline frame, because I made the reductions too … well, not quite reduced enough to fit in the frameset very well.

The photo on the right is Wat Tai, just down the street from here, as seen from a bridge over Soi On-Nut.

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The first batch of photos from the current visit can now be viewed in the Gallery (direct link). These are from a boat ride down the Chao Phraya River, stopping at Wat Pho (home of the Reclining Buddha), Wat Phra Kaeo, Wat Arun, and the Grand Royal Palace, that we made on 15th September.

I’ve some more — from last week’s visit to Krabi Province and Koh Lanta Island, as well as from just around the neighbourhood here on Sukhumvit 77 on Bangkok’s Lower East Side — that I’ll try to finish editing and to post sometime in the next couple of days or so.

Practically everything and everybody that I’ve seen in this city has been worth photographing. It’s probably a good thing that I’ve only two memory cards and two sets of batteries for the camera, or I’d get nothing else done.

Oh, if I only I hadn’t had to go back to work this week… Mike, where’s that tripod?

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I arrived Friday night in Bangkok, where I’ll be spending the next 10 weeks or so. It’s still much as I remember it — hot, humid, and alive in a way I’ve seen nowhere else.

One thing that was quite different about my landing this time — as opposed to my two previous visits — was the reception I received at the airport, which was quite personal and enthusiastic, thanks very much.

Following his side trip to Singapore, my co-worker Morgan arrived Saturday. We originally had reserved rooms at the Gold Orchid Hotel on Vibhaphavadi Rangsit Road, not far from the Chatuchak Weekend Market, but we soon discovered that the WiFi was not only not free, but was also hideously expensive (about 10 times more than what would be considered reasonable back in Oz) and wasn’t very reliable. After a couple of calls to our travel agent and a fortuitous chance meeting with a Thai limo driver who got us in to see the right people at the right apartment-rental office, we decided to bug out, and today moved to The Bedrooms on Sukhumvit 77, not far from On Nut Station. (Don’t let their website fool you, it looks like a good place if you’re looking for somewhere to stay in Bangkok for longer than just a couple of days. Most important for us, the WiFi here is gratis and appears to work quite well.)

Between dealing with the accomodation situation and trying to get a bit of work done despite being stuck offline, I’ve not had a lot of time for getting out and adventuring just yet, but Morgan and I did have some fun whilst wandering about in search of a better place to stay. In fact, if this photo’s any indicator, I think that he might even be considering a career change… ;)

I’ll get out and take in some major sites soon, but for now I’d best turn my thoughts back to more mundane matters — such as slogging through the 500+ emails I’ve just downloaded, and figuring out where I’m going to do laundry, which needs to happen Real Soon Now®.

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I’m headed to Thailand in September (along with my friend and MySQL colleague Morgan) for an extended working holiday. It’ll be my third time there, and each time I visit, I fall more in love with the place. The culture is fascinating, the food is marvelous, and the people are some of the nicest I’ve met anywhere.

Since we’re planning to be there for a while, we figure that we can take a little time out from work and play to do some Open Source evangelising and networking. We’ve already contacted Open Source Thailand about the possibility of participating in any events they’ve got planned for Software Freedom Day. (Actually, Morgan got the ball rolling on that.)

However, we’re not limited to that particular event. Either one of us (or even both of us) would be glad to meet up with and speak to your group about MySQL, Linux, or Open Source Software in general. We’ll be staying in Bangkok for the most part, but may be able to travel to other places in Thailand. (I’m supposed to be going to Krabi for a week at some point, but I don’t yet know exactly when that will be.) So if you’d like to get together, just get in touch with one of us through the mailing list, and we’ll see what we can arrange.

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