With no jet lag to battle, this week so far has been a lot better than I expected. On one hand, it is good to see familiar faces again, and on the other, I really miss the hustle of the places that I have visited while in North America. Each city has its own charms and really depends on what you feel like. For example, Vancouver has really nice hiking trails and outdoor-sy stuff, San Fran has nice suburban houses, New York has a certain bustle that just cannot be placed into words that I like and Chicago is a nice town with a lot of potential.
There is a lot that I have experienced during the month that I was away, mostly was good and something that I would encourage people to try the same because there is nothing quite like it when you travel alone. For example, eating and drinking solo. You can somehow be in a conversation with a completely random stranger and learning how to start the conversation with others usually brings you to unexpected areas. And I think one of the things that I learned from travelling alone is that while you strike a conversation with strangers and generally having a good time then, it gives you a renewed sense of gratitude towards your own friends.
Other times, you learn that sometimes the strangest things happen to you and even stranger still are the ways in which these things end up resolving. The one thing that will definitely be a story that is worth telling over and over again (we are talking grandkids story telling worthy here) is the time that I lost my wallet at the airport and the utterly extraordinary way in which I got back my wallet with everything intact. I have contemplated whether I should spill the beans here but I think I have decided against that. It's a bit lengthy but more importantly, it is the delivery that matters and gives a much bigger impact to the listener. Detailing every thing here makes it look very sterile and somewhat less extraordinary than it actually is (seriously, this one's a doozy). So, to those out there reading this and really want to find out, let's do it over coffee (or better yet, cocktails and/or bourbon). This story will now supersede the story of how I was mugged (albeit rather noobishly). Actually the mugging story has now been relegated to third place because of the story of the lost wallet and another somewhat embarrassing story that also took place while I was touring around.
I've had a good long self reflection time while waiting on the plane to get back to Melbourne and I can clearly see that God has been protecting me for the entire trip and even taught me a lesson or two about how God has everything under control. About 3 months back, the pastor of my church asked the congregation to secretly write out our rants about God and the cards that we wrote on will be mailed back to us after 3 months for us to look back about what God has done during those 3 months. I've mostly forgotten what I've written but when I came back home, I got the card back. I mainly wrote about how I don't know where God is leading me and what the future holds and that I have to fend for myself, that I feel the absence of God. I think just looking back at the past month itself has been a testament that God has definitely shown himself and that he has shown that he is working in all things. While I still worry about the future, I think much has been given to me to have full confidence that God is not absent nor lazy.
Wanderlust
Sunday, June 8, 2014
at
4:52 PM
TL;DR
Canada is freaking beautiful, San Fran is quaint but weird weather, WWDC was a blast.
***
I was kinda upset that I couldn't get to go to Vancouver to see my sister on Saturday and that there was nothing that I can do about it, even though the whole passport approval came in the nick of time. Not to mention the short term panic that I caused at work in trying to be able to get to the airport and to Sydney in 3 hours. I felt super bad about it considering that I really want to spend more time with the sister. But I think on hindsight, it worked out better than I thought. Instead of 6 days, I got 4 days when initially I thought it was going to be 3. And it turned out that it was just nice to cover a lot of things in those short 4 days, though I wish that I could do more hikes in Vancouver. Damn, the hikes in Canada are spectacular and there is nothing quite like it anywhere in Australia or at least the ones I have been so far. Not to mention eating a lot, drinking lots of cocktails (seriously, they are like at least 2 times cheaper than what you get in Australia, even as extreme as 4 times cheaper) and exploring the area. Vancouver has got some really nice spots though some areas get pretty dodgy pretty quickly.
San Fran is also a really nice place though again there are some parts that dodgy. Plus some areas smells like pot. And there are a lot of homeless people around here. I didn't remember that the last time that I was here. But the northern area of San Fran is really nice, the houses are just so nice and the apartments with all the fire escape ladders outside. Also there is a reason that most of the inhabitants of this city is so healthy, the amount of hills that you have to climb is just nuts. And not only that, but the steep incline on most of these hills are a killer. You can have your strength training and cardio done all at the same time just walking up and down the hills of San Fran.
It is also the first time that I rode a Segway. They say that these things are supposed to be very intuitive to ride and I have to say that it was easier than I expected. In fact I really like it. I think that when we eventually move out of the current office that we have into an even larger office, we all should have Segways to roam around and maybe perhaps yell at a tester or a designer.
San Fran is a strange place in terms of weather. During the day it is nice and warm and sunny but once it hits late afternoon, temperature drops and the wind starts kicking in. All of a sudden, it feels like winter again.
And now for the meaty bit, WWDC. Get to be roommates with one of my colleagues, decide to wait in line for the keynote at 5:30 in the morning (we wanted to wake up at 3 am but apparently we didn't hear the alarm go off) and of course get our heads blown off by the bombshell that was just dropped on us developers. Frankly speaking, I have picked the best time to go for WWDC and by accident too.
We are of course talking about the new programming language on the block, Swift. No one saw that coming, not by a long shot. And what we saw, we liked it instantly. It does all the things that we want to be able to do as far as the Objective-C language is concerned and a whole lot more awesomeness. Granted that the language is still incomplete but it's enough for everyone to immediately jump in and try and see if we can write apps faster, better, safer and more concise. For the first time more than 20+ years of Objective-C, now everyone is one a level playing field. Everybody became beginners. And it is amazing what you can do with the language now. It's just crazy.
WWDC itself was already crazy, with about 6000 devs in one roof and so many sessions with most of them frequently being packed out, we are just trying to get out of the talks as much as we can. But I think the one that is of the most help are the Apple engineers that are on site ready to be able to answer all questions thrown at them. I've got a couple of questions and some more from my colleagues back in the office, and they just chewed it up straight away. There is one question that we thought was a bug in one of the classes that we were using from Apple, and after some very 1337-ish debugging in a span of a minute, gave the answer straight away and even tested to see that it works normally with a fix. That was the most magical thing I have ever seen.
The other thing that was good during that week was that there were all these big companies that organises after hour drinks and some even opened up their offices for people to join in the fun. Some of these guys have really cool offices and it is cool to meet the different people in the company and out of the company. I met people who were working for Apple, Pinterest, Optimizely, Twitter, Crashlytics, Yelp and many more. Lots of them are just excited about meeting the devs in WWDC as well.
Now that the conference is over and more exploring, eating and drinking is in order, I think that I am reaching the point where I would want to start getting back to work. But then again, New York might change everything or even Chicago. Because there is all these stuff that you just want to be able to use it straight in work and you just can't wait for that. That and also I'm getting poor. Maybe more of the latter.
Happy birthday man, happy birthday.
|
0
comments
|
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
