izard

I have not been to San Jose city center for almost 20 years. Now as I come to Cupertino quite often, and San Jose is just few minutes away...


I was surprised to discover the European feel of it. The pic above looks like a street in Barcelona!
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I love London!

Wroclaw is a city of contrasts :) There are three rings: in the center it demonstrates old european architecture, one of the best in its kind, then there is a ring that looks like Russia (much like хрущевка next to a cathederal), and then there is a ring with modern houses.


My customer in Wroclaw is hiring btw, looking to hire several ppl. C/C++, Linux, SIMD, digital signal processing - please PM me for details/contacts.

Another observation: unlike Munich and Germany, there is different demographics in entry level customer facing jobs: receptionists, cashiers, etc. In Wroclaw I only seen beautiful young ladies there, while in Munich it is all mixed. I hope this is a sign of better social mobility in a growing economy, where people can move up, unlike in Munich a catchier in supermarket often works forever at this job.. I can also invent a not so favourable explanation, but I won't put it here, leaving it as an exercise for a reader :)

Tivat has one of the most difficult approaches in Europe. You have to fly lower than mountains on left and right, and make several turns. Must be fun in a simulator too. Our plane was late by 4 hours, and I was lucky to make a few shots at sunset.

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Overall, I liked it more in Montenegro than in Croatia. It was a bit more relaxing and people seemed friendlier. Also almost everyone refused to speak English or German and switched to Russian :)

Last week I was told:
- What a co-incidence, 3 companies in Tel Aviv have urgent software performance issue to solve now, could you please fly in ASAP?
- Of course, I love coming to Israel! I'll get there Saturday evening, can we start on Sunday then?
- No, let's make it on Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday.
- OK.

First company: we quickly found the performance issue was caused by a bug in their software they were already aware about, and it was planned to be fixed this week
Second company: After we found the root cause of their performance issue in the first hour of our workshop, I was told that they found it already last week, and now they just wanted to observe how would I find it using out tools. Then we found their next bottleneck, which we can't fix any way.
Third company: One engineer I was supposed to work with was getting married, another got sick, and with their backup I had to spend ~50% of time installing and configuring tools.

P.S. As a mid-winter holiday it was all great, +27C, warm water in Mediterranean and Dead Sea.

During last ~10 years, as a consultant, I usually fly somewhere ~10 times every year. So I experienced all sorts of minor hiccups with air travel (but nothing too bad so far).

This time it was weird: we were ready to take off, when captain announced that Munich police demands that we get back to the gate, and get off the plane. After we got out of the plane, we were told that someone on the plane skipped security control (how? if they did, why not check him?), so we must all go to security control together with transit passengers, and then get back to the airplane.

I am in Stockholm until Thursday. This time staying right in Kista, so I can avoid commute from Stockholm (wondering now why I only did that now, not in my previous trips)

I had to fly via Riga because it was 2x cheaper, and I noticed that part next to the airport, filled with soviet era fighter jets scrap. I wonder why it takes more than 27 years to recycle these parts..

Too bad I only come there about every other year.

Russian is language #4 there, after Finnish, English and Swedish. (But sometimes #3)

Right in a middle of a customer's campus, I can pick and eat wild lingonberries.
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I am back from Russia. I don't come there often, so each time I notice a visual difference.
For example, advertisements change a lot between my visits. 2 years ago, there were many
grafitti tags "dial 8-9xxxx to buy cheap viagra/cialis". Now the very first ad I've seen upon
arriving to Sheremetievo airport was "buy pills ZZZ, to make your male orgasm brighter and
more colorful.". I hope those in double blind controlled clinical trials for this substance had some fun.
And I wonder how they measured. Oh, I guess there was no clinical trials.. The pills are made in Nizhny Novgorod,
it was written in the ad btw. Also this time I seen more tags like "dial 8-9xxxx to buy salt/pepper/nutmeg" (for those who don't know, they don't mean salt/pepper). Sad.

Going to Portland from Munich in winter, I think Denver airport is a very nice hub.

It is my second time there, and this time I even was the only person in a passport control queue :), so everything was quick and smooth. No customs control either this time. And no risk of airport closure due to snow like in midwest or northeast.

Another nice connect option is now Reykjavik - Iceland air flies to Portland, and they have nice price tag recently. Perfect place for a "free" long layover, I guess. Will explore this option next time, better in summer.