I have just bought a ticket to YAPC::Asia which is taking place in Tokyo from the 27th to the 29th of September.  I would suggest that if you want to attend that you buy your ticket as soon as possible.  Last year, I completely forget to do this and had to write to the organisers and ask for a ticket after the conference had sold out.  And since it sells out every year, I imagine that it will sell out this year too.

YAPC::NA is quickly approaching and I am experiencing my usual mixed-up feelings of trepidation and excitement.  The thought of speaking always fills me with dread. I know I will be fine once I start but thinking about starting does something odd to my brain and I fear I won’t remember any words. I spoke on Wednesday night at the Windy City Perl Mongers and they would never believe that I could be without words.  I easily spoke for over an hour on The Perl Foundation.  I only have 20 minutes at YAPC so I will need to be less loquacious.  I really enjoyed meeting the Mongers in Chicago.  They were incredibly welcoming, appeared to be interested in what I was saying, and asked lots of questions that allowed me to babble at length.  There is no doubt that I can be passionate about the work we are doing at The Perl Foundation.

And I’m excited because JT and his team have put so much effort into YAPC::NA that it’s going to be an amazing conference.  There is so much happening that I have no idea where I’ll get the energy to fit everything in, but I’m certainly willing to give it a go. I have been in America for over a week so at least I won’t be jet lagged at this conference.

This is my 24th YAPC and over the years I have made many good friends in the Perl community. I love the hallway track and I’m looking forward to the conversations.  There are some regular attendees who can’t make it and I know I will miss Jesse Vincent and Yaakov Sloman.   But soon I will get to see Shawn, Casey, Matt, Rik, Jacinta, brian, and so many others that I’d be here for some time if I tried to list them all!

 

Things lately in my personal life have been overwhelming and unfortunately this has caused problems with the volunteering work that I do.  I am, however, still planning on attending YAPC::NA and I hope to catch up on my todo list in the next couple of weeks.  I will also be going to the Windy City Perl Mongers on Wednesday night to talk about The Perl Foundation.

I did read a guide book before coming to Seoul but I didn’t know what I wanted to do yesterday. Marty had no strong opinion either but I gave him the guide book and asked him to decide. After a long lazy breakfast in our room we headed out for the day.  The first stop was Samsung D’Light.  Marty started raving about new phones and tablets, and well, what was I expecting when I handed him the guidebook?

I’m not overly excited by Samsung products, but it wasn’t a bad a way to spend an hour or so.  I spent much of my time there playing Angry Birds on a variety of devices but I did look at some other things.  There was a large LED display that looked really impressive.  It played music when you touched the glass and Marty had a lot of fun moving around quickly making a lot of racket  I was more excited by the interesting photographs that could be taken but I didn’t think it would be appropriate to spend too long taking pictures.

There were also an exhibit that allowed you to put a picture of yourself into an old painting.  It was using LCD technology, which in itself is nothing new, but it was on the front of a display cabinet containing cameras.  Once you took the pictures you could email them or post them to twitter.  The place was mostly empty so we did spend a bit of time messing around with this.

Once we left we decided to walk to the main bus station.  Things didn’t go quite as planned as I got tired walking in the sun after about an hour. Thankfully Seoul is like Tokyo with a great public transport system and we were able to hop on a train.  We had plans to go and see the Cathedral and to maybe do a bit of shopping.  I wanted to stop walking for a while so we decided to try to find the shops first.  We messed up.  When we arrived at the shops we appeared to be in a hardware store district.  I have no desire to buy a new set of ladders and at least four shops had displays of these.  We gave up on shopping and starting walking again and did find the Cathedral.  We also found the shopping area that had been recommended to Marty but then so had thousands of other people.  In the end we just walked through the streets trying not to get crushed.

 

I woke up and the road with seven lanes on one side wasn’t a dream, no matter how dream-like the view from our hotel room is.

When we moved to Tokyo we had great plans to go and visit the neighbouring countries.  Great plans, but very little action.  It’s Golden Week in Japan and instead of staying at home for the holiday we decided to escape the crowds in Tokyo to go and see the crowds in Seoul.  We didn’t know anything much about the city apart from the fact that it’s very large, close to North Korea, and contains lots of spicy food. In my head Seoul was going to look something like Tokyo, but I was wrong.

We arrived at Incheon airport, which is about 40 kilometers outside the city, late last night.  We did consider getting a bus but our plane had been delayed and it seemed easier to get a taxi.  We got a bit confused as there were a number of different types of taxis but without too much hassle we were soon on our way to the city.  Our driver had quite a bit of trouble understanding where we wanted to go but we had a map in our guide book.  We should really have had the name and address of the hotel printed out in Korean, but we’ll know for next time.

It took no time at all to see the lights of the city, probably because the taxi flew along the wide empty roads.  From the back seat I could see the speedometer.  I asked Marty if he knew what unit of measurement they used for speed – miles or kilometers.  He thankfully said kilometers as the car was moving at nearly 150 of these.  When we got to the city we slowed down to about 90. Our driver wasn’t overly concerned about speed limits as the ones I glanced at the side of the road were for much lower speeds.

I could smell the river before I saw it.  I do think that we crossed it but in the dark I couldn’t see if the bridge was anything other than long.  Gazing across the river the city appeared to be full of very tall buildings.  As well as the lights of the skyscrapers I spotted at least six large Christian crosses decorated with lights.  Coming from Northern Ireland I have certainly seen crosses but those were mostly made out of wood or stone and do not glow in the dark.  They also aren’t stuck on the roofs of what must be incredibly large churches.

As we got closer to the hotel I stopped gazing into the distance and focused on the roads as now there was a lot of traffic.  In Tokyo they have built roads in the air but here there are wide roads on the ground.  I counted seven lanes on our side of the road, four for going forward and three for turning.  I tried to count the lanes on the other side of the road but there were too many cars and I was having difficulty believing that there could be seven lanes on any side of a road.

I have finally booked flights for my summer travel.  I start travelling next week and will be away from home for 14 out of the next 21 weeks.  I have booked 20 flights and plan to be in Seoul, Pittsburgh, Rome, Chicago, Madison, Amsterdam, Belfast, Frankfurt, London, Tallinn, and Sydney.  I’m a bit apprehensive about the amount of travel I’ll be doing, but I will get to catch up with a lot of people.  As well as a number of family events I’ll be attending YAPC::NA in Madison and YAPC::EU in Frankfurt.  I’ll also be back home in time to attend YAPC::Asia in Tokyo.  As always when I travel I will try to meet up with local Perl Mongers.

Attending and speaking at the Perl conferences is important to me but I haven’t managed to come up with an interesting talk this year.  I will be speaking about The Perl Foundation at YAPC::NA and I may do this as well at YAPC::EU.  But I had really wanted to create a lightning talk based around the number 25 as YAPC::EU will be my 25th YAPC and this year marks the 25th anniversary of Perl.  I still have time to get inspired, but I have so many Perl related things that I’m working on that I don’t know if I’ll manage to make the talk a priority.

I love spring in Japan.  The summers are hot and humid, but spring feels like a good Irish summer.  Yesterday, I finally felt well enough to venture outside to see the cherry blossoms.  It’s one of the most talked about seasons in Japan, but it is fleeting.  I feared that I would miss it, but there are still many flowering trees in this area.

I’m not sure how much longer the flowers will last.  The streets are covered in petals and when the wind picks it snows cherry blossoms.

I’ve had a dull week.  It had the potential to be fun, my wedding anniversary was on Monday, but I’m still ill.  I’m finding it hard to concentrate, I have no energy, and I’m sure there are many things I would like to be doing other than sleeping.  I don’t understand what is going on in my head but I’m driving myself mad.  When I’m healthy curling up with a book in the afternoon and having a nap is such a luxury yet when I’m ill it seems like such a waste of time.

I was reading somewhere* recently that one of the central tenants of the Western worldview is that we should always be engaged in some sort of outward task.  The author talked about the Swahili word for “Westerner” which translates to something like “one who moves around” or “who wanders aimlessly”.  There is no doubt that when I’m sitting at home I feel as if I should be doing something, that I should achieve something every single day.  Today I managed to make dinner, which is more than I managed yesterday, but it still feels like I’ve wasted a day.  Of course it would be idiotic to do too much when I’m ill, but I have not found the balance between listening to my body and fighting illness.

*I’m not entirely sure which book I was reading but it was probably “Hide and Seek – The Psychology of Self-Deception” by Neel Burton.

The wind is screaming around the apartment and I have been watching the lights sway as the building moves.  We knew the storm was coming so I’ve been inside most of the day and Marty left work before lunch time.  We won’t be going out tonight.