Last weekend was the LPW which I sadly only got to attend a part of.
We left Amsterdam on the friday morning, in the middle of the worst storm in a long time. Of course, taxis were impossible to get and we ended up being soaked to the bone before arriving to the airport, where our flight was delayed by quite a bit. But contrary to quite a few other travelers, we did manage to get to London that day, with nowhere nearly a bumpy ride as expected.
We met up with Greg and CLKao for dinner (cooked by cl himself!) and drinks, and the designated pub to meet some fellow LPW-goers later that evening. A good time was had by all.
Until the next morning, where shivers, soar throats, coughing and a hang-over got hold of me, together with the ever vigilant UK street workers, who will start construction with drills at 7:30 in the morning, right outside your hotel window :(
Yes, this was a saturday.
Luckily we were staying close to Kings Cross station, so a pharmacist was nearby for the much needed painkillers. After agreeing with Simon to reschedule my talk for the last slot of the day (rather than the one before lunch), and a snackfest of painkillers, I set out to get some sleep.
I made my way to the venue after lunch time, with a few more painkillers, some taurine and quite a few glasses of fruitjuice in the stomach. It's quite amazing how a few hours of rest and some Good Drugs can pick you up. At least for a while :)
There I found out that actually none of the afternoon-speakers where at the venue in the morning either, to take over my slot and poor Simon was stuck with Fixing It. He was of course too nice to just call me and tell me this, but Mark saved the day and gave some live demos instead. This of course means, I will owe him beer for quite some time. This also means I didn't get to give my "Barely Legal XXX Perl" talk, which is a shame as I was quite looking forward to it. I guess it will have to wait until the next conference.
But this did give me the chance to watch Leon and Leos presentation on mighTyV which was a lot of fun and a great example of JFDI. The last presentation was by MJD and even though I had seen it before, it was still very enjoyable. It also struck me that during presentations like these, there's always a Guy in the Second Row, even if in this case, he didn't actually sit in the second row.
At the end Fotango announced they sponsored the first part of the bar tab and everyone trotted off to a place called "The Peasant" across from the venue. We stayed there for about an hour, enjoying some nice non-alcoholic beverages, before several of us went of to a Japanese restaurant called Aki. The food looked good, but took a while to serve, and sadly, came by once or twice still frozen. The staff seemed to be too busy to cater to a fully packed restaurant, which was a shame. During dinner, the drugs wore off, and we were happy to head back to the hotel with MJD after food.
An early bed and a good nights sleep did some wonders and the sunday flight back wasn't nearly as bad as it could have been. However the physical discomforts stayed, and I'm now trying to get well with lots of tea and fruit juice and those evil lemon drinks that promise to make you feel better...
Re:That talk you wanted to give....
Aragorn on 2005-11-29T13:25:07
I second that!
