Tuesday, November 3, 2009

Trondheim

 

I apparently had this blog post just sitting here. I went to Trondheim in between trips to Bergen. I am posting it now out of order.

Monday/Tuesday I just kind of hung out then I woke up at 4:00 am to head out on the flybussen to Trondheim. I arrived in Trondheim at about 7am and took the flybussen into town. Being up so early I managed to go grab a really good breakfast there then took a nap in the afternoon.

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Lovely Trondheim

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View out of my hotel

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Why put a statue up so high? This is quite common in Norway.

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Cool old church (no idea of the name)

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Band I found at a pub one night singing classic rock.

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In Trondheim they drink Dahl’s (each Norwegian city has their own beer). I had this one at the hotel relaxing and typing out invoices for an hour before I went to bed.

 

Trondheim is weird. You have to bring sunglasses and an umbrella everywhere (and it switches between the two on a seemingly hourly basis). I guess its better than always raining though.

I was only in Trondheim for about 48 hours, Wednesday I went back to the office and did another talk for some of their customers. I then went to sleep and woke up at 4:00am again to head back to Bergen Thursday morning because the class I was teaching started at 9:00 (very long day!).

I missed a great time by 1 day in Trondheim, apparently the day I was leaving was the start of their bi-annual student festival … darn maybe next time!

Thursday, October 22, 2009

SOHO London

Spent a long weekend in SOHO London on my way through to Cape Town. I am sitting on the flight now almost to Cape Town and let me say, it is a long flight!

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On the way!

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Historical strip club right across the street from Seb’s

SOHO was a pretty good time, I just went hand stayed with Sebastien and his partner David. They were both a lot of fun and I got a chance to head out to the pub once or twice with Sebastien.

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Old pub had the smallest stair case ever built!

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Sometimes the iphone really does take good pictures.

It was odd going back through the tubes at rush hour on my way to Victoria station. Seeing how all of those people acted in the subway pushing ahead of each other and just the attitudes in general really made me want nothing to do with that whole life style.

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Victoria station

Friday, October 16, 2009

Bergen – Retrospective

October 15th.

I am currently writing this (and catching up the Bergen posts) on a plane leaving Bergen heading to London (Cape Town is the next stop). I really liked Norway and will probably go back there for a while (maybe 6-12 months) in the future. I am scheduled to be back in Norway in January and possibly in April as well for the ROOTS conference which could be very cool.

Leaving was a bit weird. I stayed an extra day at Tone’s because flights were cheaper. She walked me to the flybussen earlier and said goodbye (who knows maybe our paths will cross again in the future, I am coming back to Norway and she is heading to Cape Town what’s funny is that we are both going to the opposite place at the same time… seriously what are the odds of randomly meeting a girl in Norway with precisely opposite travel schedules from yourself?)

random political note: even the Norwegians seemed amazed that Obama got the peace prize

I have to say that the weekend at the cabin with Tone was the highlight of my trip in and around Norway. It was so peaceful there and I believe we both had a great time.

One thing I learned on this part of the trip was don’t rely too much on things like credit cards. Keep lots of money in many different places (hedge your bets) you never know what can go wrong.

A bonus for me was that I spent 22 days or so in the same hotel which is a large brand in Scandinavia called Scandic Hotels. I joined up their frequent stayer package and already have amassed a few free nights that I can use in the future. I will try my best to stay with them again when I come back through Sweden and Norway in January.

I will be arriving in London in about 45 minutes though I will not be staying very long. I will be staying with Sebastian Lambla in Picadilly Circus (always better to stay with friends right?). the tricky part will be getting from Gatwick to his house but I don’t think it will be too bad. I will also try to pick up a SIM card for the iphone at the airport even though I won’t be in London long.

Leaving Bergen I grabbed a few souvenirs/presents for people. For Sebastian I got a filet of smoked salmon. For me personally I got some caviar and a wine bottle topper with a troll on it (don’t ask). I guess I received another souvenir because I had to buy a sweater while there as I did not bring enough warm clothes (sweater = 1400kr <> $300 US ouch but hey it’s “special”). Leaving I gave Tone a present, a copy of On the Road by Jack Kerouac.

Since I am going to be back a few times I decided to pick up a book on Norwegian. I won’t put too much practice into it as its a language that only 4 million people speak but having some cursory understanding could be a good thing.

I will be doing a talk in London Saturday for their alt.net group then will likely head south on Sunday to Cape Town where I will hopefully be meeting up with Ernst and getting settled down for a few months.

Cabin with Tone

I was invited to go out to Tone’s family’s cabin. This was not something I could turn down. It is quite rural in most areas of Norway and getting to see that side was definitely an experience.

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Tone getting her homework ready to take with us (she didn’t do any)

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Leaving the city!

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This was in fact the sun in Bergen

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Almost there

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Tone at the dock.

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The boat was rather small

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Weird distortion from engine on camera but she wasn’t very good with driving the boat so I drove.

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The cabin

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Fishing! We were only out for about 90 minutes though and didn’t catch anything but that’s ok because it was absolutely gorgeous.

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Just gorgeous.

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You can’t really tell but Tone is taking her turn rowing the boat here (we couldn’t get the engine going for some reason but it worked fine the next day).

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Wine (served finely in plastic cups)

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Tone making breakfast (I made dinner)

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Me on the couch

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Driving back

The weekend was really a great experience. I had so much fun watching the woodstove, being out in the quiet, sitting on the dock at 3:00am talking, driving the boat, and going fishing :)

Bergen – 3

Coming back to Bergen at 4:00 am woohoo. I actually woke up a few minutes late and literally made my plane by minutes but I was well rested!

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Sunrise from plane

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Flying into Bergen

I went right from the airport with Jon Arild to the class for 9:00am. I managed to get in some breakfast at the hotel. The class went pretty well (and on Thursday we decided that there was enough overflow to do a class Mon/Tues as well). I generally teach until 8-9 pm which means my day went from 4-9 it was a very long day!

I taught class again the next day and again it went pretty well. We grabbed some beers for the last part of the class (the 2 hours or so  extra at the end). We couldn’t do this at the hotel so we moved over to Reaktor, I think I will continue doing this as it went pretty well.

I saw Tone a few times in between, we went some interesting (and not so interesting places). She had two cats that *loved* to play with the laser pointer.

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Topsy

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Sofi

 

I did another class Monday and Tuesday then kind of unplugged for a few days. Classes are really exhausting. I was gonna leave on Friday but I received an invitation from Tone to head out to her cabin!

Bergen – 2

Oct 5: Jon Arlid and talked after the user group meeting about perhaps running a class the following week through NNUG (the user group) with the main benefit being that we would be able to offer it much cheaper than otherwise and there were lots of people interested.

I agreed to do the class (we ended up scheduling for Thursday and Friday). It was limited to 10-12 people. I was also invited to come up to Trondheim to speak to a user group there (with costs covered) so I decided to do that as well.

Saturday night I met Tone who was out for her birthday where we were (more on her later). She ended up calling me on Sunday and I went to go meet her for a rather quiet evening hanging out on a terrace.

Jon Arlid and I went to a Norwegian restaurant I believe Tuesday night. I had the …whale. That’s right I ate shamu get over it. It was actually pretty good (tastes like beef). How many chances do you get to eat whale?

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Whale and potatoes au gratin

I left for Trondheim first thing Wednesday morning (4 am wake up!)

Bergen – 1

Sept 27th

Arrive in Bergen. Picked up by Jon Arlid at the airport and went out for geek beers with John St-Claire, Mark Nijof, Oivan, others. Brought some liquor chocolates from Holland for Jon and Mark.

I only made it about 20 minutes into geek beers before some random Norwegian girl was talking to me (and separated me from the group). Apparently I have set the bar high for speakers meeting Norwegian girls.

The conversation was hilarious, she was trying to set me up with one of her 4 friends. By complete random chance she spoke reasonable French so we just sat at her table and she told me everything about her friends at the table with them sitting right there.

She ended up coming with John, Mark, and I for my first experience of a nachtspiel (or drinking after you drink). There is a similar concept called a forespiel (yes in German that’s foreplay) which is drinking before you drink. This is a necessity in Norway as it is not uncommon to pay 80kr (16$USD) for a beer out.

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Mark (The Dutchman) Nijof

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John St-Claire

Of course I was not just here for geek beers though there were many and they were quite interesting. I went to work with Reaktor for a day doing some training on DDD and building systems. I did 2 short classes there that were mainly about the importance of language in building systems.

Wednesday I did my Unleash Your Domain talk for the user group. It seemed to go over very well (more about how well it went over later).

Thursday and Friday I was at Frende which is an insurance company. They have a system that they had been building that they wanted to get some input on in terms of their domain and perhaps some guidance for how to better deal with their domain.

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Parking lot of Frende (quite a pretty area)

I thought Jon Arlid would cry when I told him that I would not actually recommend them to use the domain in the way that they were (it actually simplified many of their problems not to do it). I left him somewhat discouraged to the solace of his wife and child.

The next day at Frende I built up some slides of general things that the development team could use to help improve their system. Examples of this being SRP, DI, Value objects, etc…

I also ended up with a new slide to end the presentation i.e. a “questions” slide as Norwegians are notoriously difficult to get questions out of during presentations (unlike Mark but he’s dutch).

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Click through to read it. It is pretty funny, a few people just started laughing after.

 

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Street

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Typical Bergen street (very small and hard to walk on)

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Sunny in Bergen!

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The harbor (and still sunny!)

I also saw a creole restaurant one day down by the fish market. I just had to go check it out. It was lacking spice but was still quite tasty. The other weird thing about it was they put a langoustine in with the jambalaya, I have never seen a langoustine in jambalaya before. I wasn’t  completely disappointed though it was 274kr (just under $60 just for a jambalaya, Norway is expensive!)

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This takes me to Friday, I was originally intending to head out (well I really had no idea when I would leave but the weekend would have been a good time) …