Throughout the Ubuntu/Canonical conferences I've become used to hearing
some Aussies speaking, and learned a bit about their funny accent (yeah,
don't comment about my English accent, that is out of the question). I still
have trouble understanding a few words due to the difference in vowel
pronunciation, but I thought I was more or less used to the accent.
This morning I went to an Information Desk as soon as the customes dudes
let me out, to ask what would be the best way of reaching this hotel at that
time. When suggested taking a taxi, the woman said that there would be very
little traffic today, as they were celebrating a National Holiday called
Insect Day. "Wow, you've got a holiday called 'Insect day', that's
cool!", I told her, thinking it's a day these Aussies dedicate to their
wildlife, and wandered off to the taxi area. Just before getting there,
I thought "good, at least until now I haven't had any problem with
understanding their accent"...
During the taxi drive from the airport to the hotel, the taxi driver again
started talking about Insect Day, and that many areas in Sydney would
be closed for the parade. I asked him why the holiday was called like this,
and he said he didn't know the details, but was something related to
WWWII (while it's really related to WWWI). This was puzzling: they have a
big parade for Insect Day, which is something related to the World War?
A bit before arriving to the hotel I finally saw a traffic panel announcing
blocked areas for ANZAC Day, and suddenly everything made a bit more sense
(still didn't know what Anzac was, but it obviously wasn't about ants and
bees).
I had this great plan to minimise the impact of jetlag for this trip to
Australia. Anyone at UDU will read on my face that it didn't work out that
well...
I, partially on purpose, partially because the night got a bit more
complicated than what I planned, slept just four hours or so on Friday. This
was cool, as it would help sleeping during the long flight.
But of course, the flight from València to Heathrow was 3 hours late, and
completely fucked up my plan to take a nap while I waited for the Sydney plane.
No worries, I had plenty of hours to sleep on board. That's not so easy.
When I discovered the passenger sitting next to me also came from València,
we started chatting and, after dinner, I tried to get some sleep, but was
mostly unsuccessful.
After our stop in Singapore we faced our second night in just a few hours,
and I wasn't sleepy at all. At 2:30AM I found myself still reading my book
Quina lenta agonía... and could get 1h of sleep before breakfast time
and landing.
The silly guys at the airport's customs service were kind enough to trigger
a "passport alert" on me, scan my passport, search all my baggage and ask me
questions about my possibly evil plans for my stay in .au. That made me waste
one hour that I could have used having a short nap at the hotel, but no
luck.
As soon as the conference started, Daniel Silverstone said I would be
collapsing by 11. Well, it's past 12 but I can't say I'm being able to
concentrate too much in the BOFs... running a BOF this evening with
Carlos will be interesting in this condition... :)
Oh, to follow the trend on my movie choice of the night before, last night
I saw Sandra Bullock's
Miss Congeniality, which
was decidedly worse than
Blade Trinity. I wonder
how people actually go to the cinema to watch this kind of stuff.
