slovakia | The ORACLE-BASE Blog

Slovakia Day 2

I’m not nervous about flying, but I am nervous about being late for flights, so day 2 was a complex day for me. The plan was to teach from 9:00-17:00 then go straight to the airport and leave. Having the deadline for the airport in the back of my mind all day meant I was a little on edge. Even so, it all went pretty well.

Anyone who’s seen my conference talks knows I do quite a lot of demos. Well the 2 day workshops are crammed full of them. I more or less try to prove every sentence I say with a demo. Of course, this means things inevitably go wrong from time to time. I had one demo hang, and Enterprise Manager decided not to work, so I had to miss out another demo. Overall though, things went pretty smooth and by the numbers.

I’d like to say thanks to everyone who came to the session and thanks to the people at Oracle that make it possible, especially Stefania Panaite.

So I’m home now and I have 4 days to prepare for the next two conferences (ORCAN and OUGF) that happen back-to-back. I’ve got two new talks to rehearse, one I’ve not even written yet, and one 60 minute talk I’ve got to somehow turn into a 30 minute version. Don’t even mention the paperwork I have to do. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Slovakia Day 1…

That’s day 1 over as far as teaching is concerned. The audience is quite a diverse mix. Everything from 6 months to 10+ years of Oracle experience and from variety of countries too. I’ve even got a member of Oracle staff in the group. I wonder if he’s a spy… 🙂

It’s always dangerous to start getting too analytical about the lessons part way through course, so I will leave that until after I finish tomorrow.

I probably should go out and do some sightseeing now, but I think I’ll probably get some food and come back to the hotel and collapse. 🙂

Cheers

Tim…

Slovakia Day -1

I got to Slovakia with no major trauma. I also had enough time to have a quick look round. As always, I used the shotgun approach. Several shots of each scene in the hope something would come out looking OK. 🙂

Not sure if I’ll have time to do any more looking around. The schedule is pretty tight for the next 2 days and I leave straight after finishing the second day. Better than nothing though.

It’s a Sunday so the streets are pretty quiet except for tourists.

Cheers

Tim…

You know you’ve travelled too much when…

You are asleep in the bath while your taxi is waiting outside to take you to the airport.
At the check in desk you can’t remember where you are going.
You can’t find your flight on the departure board because you’ve forgotten it’s a connecting flight.
The computer equipment in duty free looks tempting.

All of these have happened to me this morning… 🙂

I’m in the airport on my way to Bratislava (Slovakia) to teach a 2 day Oracle University course. In about an hour I have to get on to a flight to Zurich, then on the Vienna, then I have a taxi ride to Bratislava. As it happens, this is much quicker and about a quater of the price of flying to Bratislava from Birmingham…

It’s got to be about 12 years since I was was in Zurich. Pity I can’t have a look round to see how much it’s changed. I was in Vienna last year and I loved it, but once again, I won’t get to see any of it, except through the window of a taxi.

Please let me sleep on the plane…

Cheers

Tim…

Update: I’m in Bratislava now. No sleep yet. 🙂