My presentation was on the first day, right after the keynote, and following my habit of reviewing the slides before the show, I spent this keynote hour one-to-one with my MacBook. I could never underestimate the importance of this review following one fiasco I had in the past when I neglected to thoroughly review the existing slides of my older presentation before presenting it.

At the beginning of the session, once again I realized that DBA audience at AUSOUG conference is relatively small percentage. On the other hand it might be Tim Hall who has stolen my DBA audience to his session about PL/SQL 11g new features. Yeah… it must have been Tim as it turned out later he is the number two speaker in Australia. ;-)

My few jokes on the initial slides were not as good as they would be with larger audience but, at least, resulted in smiles so I guess I can call it success to a certain degree. The presentation itself went well I think but I wasn’t too trilled about it and there are few places I want to change before I present it at Gold Coast. Well, live and learn. I’ve got some positive responses afterward and even a piece of photography art tagged by “excellent” courtesy to Francisco Munoz Alvarez:

I managed to fit comfortably within 45 minutes with few question during and after the presentation. It’s been traditionally very difficult for me to manage 45 minutes slot but I guess I’m getting better at it.
(more…)

Last year, I had very pleasant experience presenting at AUSOUG Conference 2007 in Melbourne. It was a long way from Canada but no regrets. Since I moved to Sydney more than a month ago, it’s much closer to travel and this year I will be presenting on both AUSOUG conferences — in Perth and at Gold Coast.

I arrived to Perth late Friday night and Saturday evening we had a very nice dinner with the bunch of Oracle ACE’s (and some of them ACE Directors). Local ACE’s were presented by Chris Muir, Connor McDonald and Penny Cookson. Tim Hall represented UK ACE’s while me being semi-local ACE from Sydney. Two of us were double agents — me and Connor are also members of OakTable Network. Seven is definitely a better number than 5 so my family brought number of lunch guests to 7. It’s been great to catch up with everyone before the start of the conference. Food was also very nice. Unfortunately, I had to hurry up at the end — my junior was falling asleep on the table as it was already close to midnight in Sydney timezone.
(more…)

Connor McDonald picked me up at the hotel and took me to some local lake to see the local fauna and flora. Lots and lots of tour buses stop there because they have black swans there and lots of tourists want to see them. There is a whole flock of ducks on the shore that are used to humans and were in no hurry to rush off when we got close.

After a quick detour, we headed to Cotteslow beach. It is one of the nicest of the “Western Beaches”. We got changed in the public change rooms and then went swimming in absolutely gorgeous aquamarine water, with lots of waves. Today I learned that if the wave is about to break, you go underwater and INTO the wave. The bigger the wave, the lower you go! If you stay at the top you will get picked up and tossed around. Yup….that happened to me!!

Afterwards, we sat on the beach and chatted for a while soaking up sun. It was sur-real. It felt like I was at a tropical paradise on some warm tropical island. It was hard to believe we were there sitting on the sand, just a few hours away from my having to fly away. I don’t think I had ever before actually done an activity on the same say I fly out…I am always busy rushing and buzzing about. It was amazing. I could definitely live like this !!!

We swung by Connor’s place after where Gillian made me an awesome avacado, ham, cheese and tomato sandwich on fresh home-made bread. Totally scrumptious. The famous Max McDonald decided he would like to see me off at the airport and he came for the drive. Max LOVES construction equipment and pointed out every crane on the way. Max also really enjoyed the tunnel and was practically squealing in delight.

The Perth Airport, is kinda like the old Ottawa airport used to be…only smaller. It was warm and muggy ( 37C in Perth ) and the air conditioning was not working. Would not have been so bad if the plane had not been three hours late. There was a fluid spill in our original plane and we had to have a replacement plane provided.

I decided to do Rottsnest Island after all. I stood beside the captain on the cruise over there, so I could both see on both sides of the ship AND hear his “little bit of commentary”. If you were outside, you did not hear and if you were inside, you could only see one side of the ship. Ended up being a bonus as I could ask him different questions about some of the sites.

The captain pointed out a few of the yacht clubs, restaurants, and home between Perth and Freemantle. Perth is actually NOT on the ocean, but inland slightly on the Swan river (and one other). There was a section of homes known as “millionaire alley” as they were at one time either the most expensive homes in the world, or the most in all of Australia, I forget. There were gorgeous homes along the shoreline the entire trip. One house was recently built for $50M.

I “hired a bike” once I got to Rottsnest as the island is really too big to do by foot, unless I just plan on staying near the jetty or shopping mall. Single speeds were $20 and Multiple Speed bikes were $25. I asked and they recommended the multi-speed biked. So off I went, with a broken helmet ( Helmets are mandatory and you have to have one on by law, but it does not have to be effective…NONE of them had a hard shell coating and all were down to the styrofoam), riding around.

(more…)

Man you can tell I’m a geek when my first inclination is to title this “Site Seeing”!

Boy was it hot today. 34C! I nearly melted–not used to the big temperature difference. When I left Ottawa it was snowing. Today was my first “off” day where I could spend time dong the tourist thing. I was going to go to Rottsnest Island, but did not get up and get going early enough.

Instead I took the “Blue CATS” to “Woolys”. “Woolys” is the nickname for Woolworths, where you get groceries for the same price as in the suburbs. They also have a liquor store in them, so you can get all your essentials at one place. “Blue CATS” is the blue route for the “CATS”, the Central Authority Transit System, I think. I know they told me about 5 times, but that was at the end of two days of technical sessions and things were not registering by them. The CATS are free buses operating in the “downtown core” of Perth (or at least the central area, which I think is downtown). There are three routes, Blue, Red and Yellow. They run about every 10 minutes. The other really cool thing is the regular buses are also free in the central area. Once you are outside the central area, you have to pay.

About 10 minutes from the Pier is the Perth Zoo, where I spent the day. I especially enjoyed the Australian animals on the “Bush Walk” part of the tour. I’m glad I did it first as by the end of the day I was getting pretty tired my feet were sore. The other thing was, because it was so hot, most of the animals were just hiding out and resting in the little bit of shade they could find. The Koala bears moved slightly . . . but they normally sleep about 20 hours/day anyhow!

I did get to see all kinds of Australian water fowl, a HUGE crocodile (man those things are scary!), sleeping kangaroos, giraffes, lots and lots of monkeys (they were the only real active animal), the nocturnal animal exhibit (along with ghost bats flying around), rhinoceros, galapogos turtles, koalas, a sun bear, a red panda, and most other stuff I have since forgotten.

I’m not sure what I will be doing tomorrow . . . because at this point, my feet are “knackered.”