The time is flying here and two days of RMOUG Training Days 2008 have gone. In a nutshell, what a great conference! Well done RMOUG and special thanks to Peggy King!

It was very nice to see a bunch of old friend and meet new ones in person including Jeremiah Wilton and Tim Gorman.

I liked the lunch organization — everyone was seated and nice food served — way better than standing buffet. The area with the tables was also used for the breakfast and this is where the keynote was done — excellent idea to combine those together:

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As you may or may not know, I have been spending time in the Pythian Office in Sydney, Australia. Before I came, family and friends did some research and found that Australia was suffering from several years of drought and desperately needed rain. So I packed nothing but sunny summer clothing. I am not sure if my first mistake was relying on the word of others or not having a contingency plan. This has been the wettest summer in years. It rained practically every day for nearly three weeks in a row when I first arrived. If it wasn’t raining, it was cloudy and threatening to rain.

In a way, I should have known better. As a DBA, I have learned to confirm information and have contingency plans. For instance, when doing a database upgrade, you ensure that you have a backup and can revert back if any issues come up. Of course, in a work environment, you normally make plans, get them checked by co-workers and do one or more “dry runs” whenever possible.

When the sun finally came out and stayed out, I found myself in paradise. The weather is warm and when the wind blows it feels like a tropical breeze. When I meet and speak with Australians, I jokingly refer to “the island” — Australia being the only country that is also a continent and an island. At times I sit by the water and just watch the boats floating in their moorings and feel sad about having to leave here in the near future. Although Sydney is a large city, it has a relaxed pace, a friendly atmosphere, and I have completely fallen in love with her. I will be sad to leave.

There is just so much to see and do in Australia. With limited time, I spent most weekends doing the local Sydney attractions. I did not manage to make it to everything this city has to offer, let alone make side-trips. I can tell you my time here has been magical.

I have had so many wonderful experiences that just make me feel like I am on top of the world! For the first time in my life I tried, and fell in love with, sailing. Tonight is my last night participating in the Twilight Races.

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After landing (link), and a 5 day fiesta of arranging my long term apartment here, Pythian Dubai is now fully operational with me been the first employee here.

Here is a picture of the Pythian Dubai office:

And the view from the window:

Next step, hire more people! We have 4 desks to fill. I feel a bit lonely here.

Greetings from Dubai!

It is indeed a different world here. I have a feeling I’ll like it even more over the next three months I am here on Pythian duties. I will be writing more, so stay tuned.

The photos above and below are, respectively, of Dubai Internet City, and Dubai Marina.

I’ve got up at 6:30 today (it becomes a bad habit) because my phone started to make annoying sounds at 5:45 — it’s way too clever about meeting reminders and timezone-aware. I wish sometime technology is not that smart. Even though I went to bed after 3AM, I couldn’t get back to sleep — either I worry too much (ring-ring, Marco) or it’s that street noise that get through the window — I’m on the first floor and the hotel is next to a busy train station. But good for you — I decided to update the blog with few photos of Melbourne to kill some time and distract me from thoughts about my coming presentations.

Melbourne is a beautiful city! Interesting view from the Yarra River on a part of CBD:

We bought Sunday tickets (just two bucks each) and walked to Bourke Street for lunch. Babette took Chinese and I stopped at Tai chicken dish that supposed to be spicy but for some reason wasn’t at all.
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Monday, 26th of November, 2007.

I set my alarm at 6:30 so that I can finish all my morning procedures on time and register earlier. It wasn’t too difficult to wake up early today as I was in bed before midnight yesterday. Babette has already posted some details about yesterday and I only need to sort out my photos to add some “coloring” to it (at some point I’ll figure out how to do that on time!).

I registered at about 8:30 and went to the speaker prep. room. I was looking for internet there but…

When I first saw the label, I thought it’s some kind of a ba

Quick sum up of my previous post – I’m in Sydney this week and getting ready for my AUSOUG “snoitatneserp” next week. (Note that I wrote it in Sydney last week and only now managed to get the photos sorted out — sorry for the delay).

Thursday evening I was honored with a visit to Noons’ house. We had done a very nice walk around his place through Warriewood Wetlands. It was one of the most amazing walks I had –- a walking path via jungle style swamp (heh… they call it wetlands).

I saw many bird species but couldn’t remember the names – sorry Nuno, I know you tried your best. Actually, I think I do remember at least one – Kukubara Kookaburra (thanks Nuno!). Birds were beautiful and some fellows you can see here courtesy of Noons. I also saw few iguanas “water dragons” lizards (thanks Sarah) on the way and they ran away quickly as soon as they realized that I’m watching them.

It’s amazing that such a magical place can be so close to Sydney –- it took us only 40 minutes by car to get there from Sydney CBD but we had to leave early to get ahead of the traffic and not everyone drives as aggressive as Portuguese do.
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I’m going to present couple sessions at the Australian Oracle User Group Conference in Melbourne next week. It’s the first time I’m presenting Down Under and I’m looking forward to it, although I’m still not sure if I should start from the last slide and proceed backward . . .

Since it’s more than a day of flying only one way, it wouldn’t be smart to go for only two days, so I’m taking the opportunity to spend this week with my Sydney colleagues — Paul Moen and Andrey Goryunov. I should mention that Australia is the first country I ever visited. I fell in love with this country seven years ago when I came from Russia in February. Culture shock and dramatic weather change set the tone for how I feel about Australia for the rest of my life. So hello Sydney — I’m back!

I was supposed to fly Ottawa-Vancouver-Honolulu-Sydney, my flight leaving from Ottawa at 8:00AM on Saturday. I was packing until very late and finished only by 3 AM. No surprise that, although I set my alarm clock to 6:00AM, I forgot to switch it on for the weekend days. The net result: Olga woke my up at 7:30. Anyway, Air Canada was very nice to re-route me through Toronto so that I still could make my connection in Vancouver . . . so $50 for an additional 1.5 hour sleep — not a bad trade at all!

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I didn’t realize that it’s been a month since I got back from Lalandia (it feels like it was yesterday), and I still have something to finish blogging about. Shame on me!

My evening at the Lalandia Waterpark is probably one the most exciting time I had in Denmark. The Waterpark adventures started right after the Gala Dinner. It was a pleasure after dinner to dive into a hot tub and sip cold cocktails. Not only was it it a pleasure for our bodies but for our minds as well. In the photo below, you can see us discussing Tapio Lahdenmäki’s presentation on indexing.

If Jonathan Lewis and Cary Milsap are impressed with Tapio’s work — you can be sure it’s worthwhile to read (twice) his book, take his masterclass, or attend one of his presentations.

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