24 hrs journey home to a deep comma

Dunedin, NZ is about 21hrs ahead of CA, USA time, which allowed me a bit of luxury of loggin on to work machines and stay in touch with folks back in the office while seated at some conference sessions. It was almost like when I visit NYC, where midnight eastern time is only 9pm pacific time and everyone else around me are dead asleep while i'm wide awake and call to california bored, and can't get up at 10am when everybody else is done with breakfast and busy playing every-so-busy new yorker.

dedicated linux geeks poured into the town last sunday, even before official 'early registration' on monday to enroll early and meet the ones they worship. and almost 500 attendee crowd stayed on until the close of official conference late on saturday afternoon, and crowded local restaurants and bars on otherwise quiet summer saturday evening, still talking about how they want to move from cvs to another source control system, or to git, or how to incorporate what's discussed in one of session into their current design schema, ...

it seemed these geeks hardly noticed that they are only a few blocks away from downtown where Chinese New Year's parade was held on saturday evening followed by spectacular fireworks. as a non-drinker, i did get excused around 11pm, came back to the room for packing and stuffs.

waking up 7:30am for quick breakfast, going to campus for a ride to airport for 11:30am flight was pretty tough one. i'd gladly skip breakfast in favour of extra 10min sleep, and would've robbed a bank to fund for $60 taxi ride to the airport; though volunteer organizers at Otago University were just too nice to drive back and forth between university and airport all morning to get most of us to airport safely and for free.

half asleep in minivan, first thing acquired at the airport was a large 'not so de-caf' mocha, gulped down before noticing other attendees of LCA ready to leave. it was pretty shocking to learn that Marc Merlin (& few others) got up so early to go helicopter tour before getting to the airport at the same time as we did; guess i can't whine too much about tiredness and lost sleep.

having gotten least expensive flight, flight from Dunedin to Auckland wasn't non-stop, thus making 2hr flight into 3hr one, not that I minded knowing flight out from Auckland wasn't due for another 5-6hrs anyways.

it seems flight between Auckland, NZ and SFO from Air New Zealand is offered 1 per day, meaning if I somehow didn't make it to Auckland for the evening flight, I'd be staying a night over. NZ is nice and warm and all, but the thought was a bit scary, especially with airlines advertising so many non-stops between cities in US. A cold water poured over my head, to wake me up and make me realize the reality of distance. Our technology is advanced a lot, and makes what would have been 6months on ship into 12hr flight, but we are not at 'beep me Scottie' in Star Trek age yet.

Poor DaveM, with his beard & moustached donated over penguin dinner, and with such an early wakeup call after nightly beer sessions, he lost his fleece jacket at Dunedin airport just as we were boarding airplane.

Flying from the southern (east) part of the south island to the south tip of the north island, wellington was the first destination. Heavy fog surrounding the city didn't help much with landing.

Arriving at Auckland, moving from domestic terminal to international, ..., it was hectic. Not having to pickup luggates at Auckland to re-checkin was one of nicer part of the journey.

Attempt at data structure, playing with linked lists and sort algorithms, while killing 4hrs before boarding was a challenge.

after learning some of delegates caught some stomache flu/food poison sort of virus going on in Christchurch caused some major pain for those who caught the bug, I guess I can't complain too much about spending a whole day chasing planes.