So I was in Catalonia the last week for attending GUADEC. The real fun in such events is that you finally get the chance to actually meet all the people you have been working and chatting for years. The biggest problem in Spain was language. I had a really tough time getting to the GNOME village the first night but i was so happy to find some fellow gnomes on the railway station. Me and Christian paid for the a week of wifi usage but it never worked for us but no worries as after our first night in the village we never needed to use it as we were having parties till late night every day. :) The coolest party was that arranged by fluendo guys. Juhan Dahlin seems turned out to be a very naughty kid. At fluendo party, he started to snatch and swap ID badges of people. So in the end, everyone was looking for his/her badge.
Many of the presentations were nice and informative but many were equally boring. No! i won't say which ones were boring. :) Since i volunteered for some tasks, i was given a nice red t-shirt. Some nice guy took a picture of it but it turned out to be so dark that you can barely recognize anyone in it. :( All the pictures are under the "GUADEC2006" tag on flickr and I managed to find some of mine and i am providing the link here (so my dear fans don't have to search all over again for them :)) :
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=179687318&size=l
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=179041478&size=l
http://www.flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=179009040&size=l
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jav/179763644/
I spent the last three nights in Barcelona, first one at a big night club with Wim, Jemmi, and Tim. Since Christian never joins the late-night fun, I ended-up at Wim's place in the morning. We had party the second night as well but i decided to go back earlier with Christian so i can watch a few BSG episodes. We went to a place (i don't remember the name) to get some fast food. In the queue i saw a very hot chick. I asked her where she was from and she said France. Later I realized that she was looking at me too so i went to her and asked if she would like to come with us to watch BSD episodes. Astonishingly she agreed. I came back to our table and told Christian that but he didn't believe me. After eating we went to her table and started to talk and after she finished eating we started to walk towards Christian's apartment. Turned out that she was much fluent at Catalan or Spanish than English and Christian soon realized that she didn't understand what i actually said to her since she asked him several times if we are going back to the apartment. Christian tried to make things work by suggesting that we should first go to a bar but I quickly rejected it immediately thinking of it as an unneeded step since she is already going with us to our apartment. I wish I knew some Catalan so I could know what was going on. After walking a km, she left us saying that she wants to go to a bar to meet some friends.
Joined on the 4th of July:
So yesterday I got back to the land of the blonde and beautiful and today was the first day at Nokia.