25 Sep 2000 (updated 28 Sep 2000 at 15:40 UTC)
»
So. I'm in Canada, and this is my travel diary so far.
I caught the plane from Tullamarine airport at
horrible-o-clock on Sunday
morning. The only way to be up at that hour is to stay up
all night. This
turned out to be a very good idea as it put me on the right
timezone when I
got here. No jetlag! Woo!
The flight was about 24 hours in total, via Honolulu and
Toronto. It was
reasonably comfortable (especially as I had a double seat to
myself to
Honolulu) and the food was OK... much better than on the
domestic flights I've
taken before.
I met Anthony DeBoer from alt.sysadmin.recovery at Toronto
and we had a
drink in the airport bar before I caught a domestic plane to
Ottawa. In
Ottawa I was picked up by some E-Smith people and taken to
dinner, via
the B&B where I'm staying (so I could shower and change).
The B&B is situated about 20-30 minutes' walk away from the
E-Smith offices,
and the walk is right through a very interesting part of
town -- past museums,
art galleries, parliament house, the canal, etc. I spent an
hour doing the
walk this morning, and took a number of photographs along
the way. Apparently
there's a scanner here, so if it's working I might get
photos processed as I
take them, then put them up on infotrope.
Over breakfast the woman who runs the B&B asked me what I
do. I sort of
mumbled "computers" and thought that would be it, but she
asked me what field
I specialised in. I took a deep breath and started my
"linux 101" talk:
"Well, have you heard of an operating system called Linux?"
She replied
"Yes, I'm running Red Hat." Argh. Wow. Even the older
couple staying at
the B&B had heard of it. I was stunned. I don't know
whether this is a
Canadian thing, or whether it's just that the whole world is
starting to know
about open source software.
I got in to the E-Smith offices about 11am and have spent
most of the time
since then meeting people, setting up a workstation, etc.
I'm now poking
around their developers website trying to absorb stuff.
Things which are different in Canada:
- The fire hydrants are yellow and blue (not red)
- The pedestrian traffic lights have a hand for "stop" and
a white man for "walk" (rather than a red man standing for
"stop" and a green man walking for "walk")
- The water level in the toilets is much higher
- They don't include the tax in the listed price of
things, so you have to mentally add 15% on top
- The taxis aren't yellow
- You can't see the Southern Cross in the night sky
- You have to remember to look the *other* way when
crossing the road
The good news is that it isn't cold... yet. The weather
here is not unlike
Melbourne's weather at the moment, so it was no shock to the
system. This
morning was bright and sunny but cool, and this afternoon
it's clouding over
a bit.