I was in Heathrow a couple of times in March and I cannot understand why it is such a horrible airport. At first I thought it was because it was so busy - but I’ve been in busier airports which are serene in comparison. I still haven’t worked out what is happening but I can only assume it’s a combination of being overcrowded, under staffed and having insane security precautions.

I spent some time in Terminal 3 before flying back to Tokyo. This looks as if it’s recently been refurbished but that doesn’t mean that they put in enough seats for people to sit in just that there are now around 15 shops to buy a new pair of sunglasses or a ridiculously expensive handbag. But the thing that summed it all for me was the notice taped in each toilet cubicle:

    BAA Heathrow is committed to providing excellent services across our terminals.

    Please help us by leaving the toilets as you wish to find them.

As well as expecting me to spend over an hour getting through security they also want me to clean the toilets before I get on the plane.

Marty was concerned about speaking at YAPC::Asia this year as last year both his talks were too short. This must have been a one off thing though as this year, true to form, he ran over. He spoke about three things that he considers to be the main culprits for making Perl code ugly and hard to maintain: variables; regular expressions; and object orientation.

The audience responded well to his talk and I was surprised that they even clapped at one of his jokes. The part that I liked best was his use of an acronym for Perl Object Orientation. He went on at length about POO! Hopefully he will decide to do some work on this talk and give it at one of the other conferences this year.