Over the years we have had quite a few Open Source personalities come to stay with us.  But I wasn’t expecting a visit by a famous soft toy.

Someone came up with the idea, as a thank you to Linus Torvalds, that the Linux community should take a Tux (the Linux mascot) on a world tour.  The tour would start in France and end with Tux being given to Linus at his home in America.  Tux ended up staying with one of my friends in Tokyo who took it with him to the YAPC::Asia conference and also brought it to our apartment for dinner.

I haven’t been out cycling since I got back to Japan.  Something happened to my bike whilst I was away.  It’s missing the caps and valves on both tires.  Hopefully I’ll get this fixed soon.  I miss cycling.  I’m also a bit surprised that someone deliberately damaged it.

I realised this afternoon that this time next week YAPC::Asia will be under way.   Last year I was much more aware of the conference as I volunteered to help out.  This year I’m not planning to do anything other than attend.  The spare room is ready for the guests we know about and I do have another futon or so just in case some of the other foreign visitors decide they want to stay with us.  (With only a week to go it’s possible to imagine that everyone has sorted out things like accommodation but I know from experience that this isn’t always the case in the Perl community.)

Last year YAPC::Asia had more attendees than any other dedicated Perl conference.  With 524 people it was the biggest YAPC ever.  This year the numbers appear to be down (378 the last time I checked) but this may simply be because the other 100 or so who have registered their interest haven’t gotten round to paying for their tickets yet.

As always I’m looking forward to catching up with friends more than attending the actual talks.  But, since the hallway / bar track might be in Japanese, I’ll probably attend more technical talks at this conference than the number I attended at YAPC::EU and YAPC::NA combined.

I’ve been really tired the past few days.  I don’t seem to have very much energy.  I’m hoping it’s just a side-effect of the travel with some jet-lag thrown in and not my thyroid medication.

Now that I’m home again it’s time to start back into my exercise program.  I did consider continuing this whilst travelling but it was too awkward.  At home I use quite a few exercise DVDs which I didn’t want to bring with me.  This doesn’t mean I didn’t exercise at all but it did lack structure.

Marty has been going to the gym regularly and has been trying to convince me to join.  I find the gym boring.  Why would I want to sit on a bike that goes nowhere when I can go out and cycle around the river?  He has, unfortunately, come up with a valid reason.  Most of the exercise I do is aerobic.  I like to dance, cycle, and hit things.  I don’t really do any sort of strength training.  As thyroid disease causes muscle weakness I need to do something about this.

Yesterday I added strength training to my daily routine.  I have a set of dumbbells and a book on how to use them.  Day 1 focused on the top part of the body, which was fine, but today was all about the legs and lower back.  My legs don’t want to exercise.  I have enlarged calf muscles, as I walk strangely, but the muscles in the top of my legs are wussy things that like to hide behind layers of fat.  I’m not even going to look at what’s coming up in Day 3 in case it frightens my abdominal muscles into finding a way to prevent me exercising.

Tomorrow I might go the gym with Marty.  I suppose it can’t hurt to give it a go (though I have a feeling that those words may be poorly chosen.)

I have finally gotten round to signing up to the Perl Iron Man blogging challenge.  I’m hoping that this will motivate me to write more about my involvement in the Perl community.  Someone, probably Schwern, pointed out that since I joined The Perl Foundation that I don’t really write about Perl anymore.  This isn’t a deliberate choice it’s just that lots of my spare time now goes into working on a variety of Perl projects instead of blogging about them.

I have lots of draft posts about the conferences I have attended this year.  It would be good to have these finished before I attend YAPC::Asia in September.

I have been spending more time in the sun than I like.   A week in Lisbon, Portugal, a week in Yalikavak, Turkey, and now a week in Aalsmeer, Holland.  I always joke that I was born for the winter months.  I like the dark, shade, and shadows.  I like the winter sun,  the bright blue skies and the biting cold.  The summer sun and my skin are in constant battle.  Long clothes and sunblock may protect it but leave me feeling hot and uncomfortable.

People in Europe make fun of me because I’m pale – vampire, ghost, Morticia.  Strangers normally don’t make comments but the Turkish can be quite vocal.  Walking through the market I was described as a snowflake.  When I went swimming in the sea a Turkish woman stroked my arm and exclaimed at the colour as I was so white.  What I wasn’t expecting was to be surprised by the colour myself.

I was wearing a black and white bikini and my little sister was asking me if my skin ever got as pale as the white material.  I lifted my arm to show her that it’s a completely different shade and noticed that I was sparkling in the sun.  Like the vampires in Twilight who can’t go into the sun because their skin sparkles I realised that my skin was glittering gold and silver.  I always wear sunblock but not usually so much of it.  It’s good to know that my Japanese sunblock is going to help me look like a modern, friendlier type of vampire.

I was really hoping to get the opportunity at the airport to catch up with my huge backlog of email.  I have my laptop, power, free wifi, and a desk.  My flight doesn’t leave for another two hours.  It should be perfect.  But I can’t manage to not overhear the conversations going on around me.  I’ve always had problems blocking out background noise but today the English conversations are driving me mad.

I’m surrounded by agitated people.  I don’t mean to overhear the conversations but something about the volume of the voices and the fact that I can understand the language makes it hard for me not to hear them.

The people look miserable.  It doesn’t seem to matter if they are passengers or airport staff.  Everyone looks like they wish they were somewhere else.  I’ve just glanced up from my computer and the guy working in WHSmith is scowling  at me.  It’s probably just the look he constantly has on his face working here.  I’ve no idea what sort of look I have on my face and thankfully there are no mirrors about to show me.

I’m in Manchester airport this morning and it’s really horrible.

When I arrived I couldn’t work out what terminal I needed to go to.  It didn’t tell me on my flight details and there were no obvious signs inside the airport.  I tried looking at the departure board but this was terminal specific and I appeared to be in the wrong terminal.  I ended up walking around for 20 minutes until I found a board that told me which terminal I was meant to be in.

To get to Terminal 3 I needed to walk between buildings.  This wasn’t a long walk but it nearly ended up being a dangerous one.  There are holes in the pavement on the pedestrian walkway!  The wheels of my suitcase got stuck in a hole and I nearly fell over.

Now that I’m in the right place I can’t check in for hours.  There are very few seats but I have been lucky enough to find one in a coffee shop.  I know that part of my horror is culture shock.  The floor is filthy and I’m expected to set my laptop bag and handbag on it.  I’m used to everything being so clean in Tokyo and even when it’s clean there are places to set your  handbag.

I’m also not in great form because I am going to have to put my handbag in my suitcase as I’m not allowed to carry on a handbag and a laptop bag.   This will put my over the allowed check-in baggage weight costing me 10 GBP per kilo (I hope my books aren’t as heavy as they feel.)