Certainly, I am not a good writer of blogs, but just giving a try for the first time. I successfully finished my trip to Kiwiland, ohh NewZealand, one of the rarest countries that people ever talk of.. I attended a software engineering conference over there. For the first time, I haven’t bored of the conference may be because of many familiar faces, and may be location of the conference also makes it more exciting..:).
I left United States on 16th Nov, 2009 heading to Newzealand. I should say, one of the terrible mistake I made of forgetting to reserve the aisle seat on my onward flight. So, ended up in a window with two old ladies, not to mention that they never got up during the 13 hour long flight. Ofcourse, I managed to kill lot of time with movies, which I am usually mad at anyway..
After reaching Newzealand, I shared a taxi with another professor attending the same colleague. The taxi driver certainly utilized our lack of knowledge about the customs in Newzealand that there are no tips. Unknowingly, we managed to pay 15 dollors of tip..:-P. I shared the room with an old buddy Mithun from our ASE group, which certainly a great addition to my excited trip.
There is nothing so special to mention about conference except two boring key notes. Ohh, I forgot, the last keynote is really interesting, where they showed how they made Lord of the Rings movie. Trust me, it is awesome how they converted parking lots into astounding castle Menas thirit. They also showed the secrets behind making KingKong. Certainly, those people have more job satisfaction than us.
Not to mention about the variety of people I met in the conference: a half Indian, a Norwegian, and a german. With no second thought, I release my weirdest expression when I met the person names “Daniel Balasubrahmanium”. I met many ABCDs, but he is my first half Indian. Good that he is already used to such expressions. By the end, he turned out to be a best company for me for the rest of the conference. I met this Norwegian guy, called Andreas, who seem to have better knowledge about bollywood movies than me..:-P. His cute way of saying movies names like “Hum Dilde Chuke Sanam” is worth listening. The german origin guy, who has a Belgian mother and a resident of Canada can serve as a nice example for globalization. He has a nice obsession for Indian women and I ended up giving some tips (which never worked for me) of how to catch an Indian girl. Surprisingly, he got an adjacent seat in my return flight and certainly a good company to fly with, don’t forget to play chess if you happen to meet him. Not to mention, he is a daring guy who did sky jump from 300 meter tower. This still seem to be a better option compared to the bungee jump located right to the sky jump.
On Saturday, we had a trip to an island wahiki near to Auckland. We were five people (2.5 indians, 2 vietnamese, and 0.5 american). I should say that real newzealand is in these islands rather than the main land. We had a rough start of not able to get breakfast at our favorite place “Ronnie Café” in downtown Auckland. We boarded the ferry in the last minute and ended up having a stupid cheese croissant on the ferry. The ferry ride is exciting with glimpses of volcanic island Rotorua and the place of birds Tiritiri. The best part of our trip is the scooter ride of about 100 km in total around the island. We explored the deepest parts of the islands and tasted the finest ocean water of southern hemisphere with a bath in the ocean. The beautiful landscapes decorated with vast vineyards are more than worth of the entire price of the trip. The return ride from one of the island to the ferry place was terrifying and exciting. With a low visibility from scooters, and cars with no respect to scooters, we lost our way and ended up circling in a loop. We ended up getting onto ferry again 3 minutes before the ferry departed.
The next day, Sunday, the last of my trip turned out to be a bad day with not many things to do because of misty cloudy weather. Unfortunately, I wasn’t even able to go to the top of sky tower because of no chances of good visibility. So, spend the time in exploring couple of places in downtown and buying souvenirs.
By this time, you are surely tired and wondering what the hell the title is.. It has significance because I wrote this blog after being stuck in Philadelphia airport for the whole night after missing the last minute departing to Raleigh in 4 minutes. Of course, spending the whole night here extended my path coverage (geeky)… Okie, I am already sleepy but scared of my stuff.. need to manage with a half sleep..:).
