Colin Charles Agenda

I was in in the Singapore Changi Airport yesterday, and thought I should pull some mail while in the terminal, so as to be more productive on the plane ride home. Opening my laptop, I saw the following:

Pretty nifty right? This is what you get with the new Skype beta for Mac OS X 2.8 – access to roam on many wireless networks, via Boingo, in a new service called Skype Access. It comes out of your Skype credit, so you don’t need no stinkin’ credit card.

Over on Flickr I was asked if the €0.14 made sense per minute. I’m here to give you a resounding no.

Wireless@SG is free to access. Just roam with Singtel, and dial *186. I wrote about this previously. Access until midnight, and when you need it again, don’t hesitate to ask.

Found a postcard, and decided that I should send it along to her. Called up the wonderful reception, and they said I should bring along the postcard to the concierge.

At the concierge, I was told that I would need to pay 20 THB for postage. I asked if they could charge it to my room, and they declined. I waved a USD$1 note, and they said I’d have to change it at the reception.

Walk along to the reception, and I ask if they can give me cash out, and charge it to my room. Highly obliging, the receptionist, starts processing to give me my 20 THB. Its taking far too long, and I think to myself, maybe its easier to do a FOREX conversion. Without realising, I was thinking aloud, and the receptionist insisted that it was no hassle at all.

Two paw prints later, I had a crisp 20 THB note in my hand. I walked back towards the concierge, and handed it over to them.

What’s ironic about this whole transaction? In a couple of hours, I will be going down to settle my hotel bill. It will cost a magical sum of only 20 THB, and I will settle it with my credit card :-)

And here’s why flying Thai Airways might make business sense. Their planes reach Thailand early in the morning (9am, had my flight made it previously, or about 3am when coming back earlier). Their planes leave Thailand for other destinations pretty late – generally, the layover is about ten to eleven hours. They provide you a hotel (the Novotel Suvarnabhumi), at a cost to them.

So lets say I have a ten hour layover. I might need sleep for about 4-4.5 hours. It still allows me to have business meetings in Bangkok for about 3 hours, without any issue. Maybe even more, if the meetings are held at the Novotel Suvarnabhumi!

Their flights are pretty cheap. So cheap, that the next time I fly them, and if I’m going to India, its business class, or no flight at all. And when planned properly, maybe have many a meeting at the Novotel.

Internet access isn’t cheap, but its typical of a hotel: 150 THB for half an hour, 200 THB for an hour, 500 THB for 12 hours, 700 THB for 24 hours.

I ask myself though, why bother? When I’m done, I can head over to the airport, check in early, and visit the beautiful Royal Silk Lounge in the airport. Emphasis, on beautiful – its much better, IMHO, than the Singapore Airlines Lounge, in Changi. The food (and magazine/newspaper selection) doesn’t seem to be, but the ambience, the chairs/sofas/couches, definitely are.

All this thinking, reminds me of the shrewd startup style thinking that business travellers in startups should have.

I’ve been on what I consider, a blogging break. In reality, I’ve been working, and then having a modicum of a social life, finding less and less time to write blog entries. I have morsels of half-baked ramblings saved, so expect a load of posts to show up soon…

luna:toblog ccharles$ ls |wc -l
29

For a comeback…

I have been checking in my photographic equipment. I already carry a backpack with 2 laptops and various other tech gear (it probably weighs in at around 10KG, which airlines can frown at). Of late, I’ve also started carrying a briefcase. Where does my camera gear fit? In checked-in luggage of course!

This can be anywhere in the reigns of 3 Canon bodies, a 30/1.4, 50/1.4, 24-70/2.8, 70-200/2.8, 17-40/4, and a couple of flash units. Not exactly the cheapest of equipment, as I’m into good glass (read: L).

However, the one place I don’t tend to check equipment in, is when I fly to and from the US. The TSA have a silly rule that says your bags must be unlocked, or else they will break the lock for you. This has naturally led the paranoid me, not want to carry any professional camera gear into the US.

And today, my paranoia proves right. I found out that Matt (WordPress fame) lost his camera gear, as did another blogger.

Yes, this is on a certain particular American airline, but I wonder if its just baggage handlers that are dishonest with them, or baggage handlers that are dishonest in general? Also note that insurance tends not to pay (afaik, anyway) if your camera equipment or laptop gear is checked-in.

What are options for the technophiles in us, that fly a lot?

MySQL will be in Beijing, China, this week. Well, not MySQL per se, but I will be there. As will Kaj Arno. I arrive on 21 April 2008 and depart on 24 April 2008. I expect to be busy during the days, but my nights should be free. Drop me email at colinATmysqlDOTcom if you’d like to catch up.

There’s an event, on the 23rd of April as well. Its part of the Sun-MySQL World Tour. You definitely should be there, I’m sure there will be some nice schwag involved as well :)

Sitting in San Francisco, getting a little bored before my flight to Beijing. And Twitter is down, for 1.5 hours, for what they seem to call database maintenance. Wonder why. At least there’s IRC…

Technorati Tags: beijing, mysql, world tour, sun

An interesting morning for me. I woke up, had breakfast at the Hilton Concierge Lounge (complimentary, seeing that I’m on the Executive floor), and decided to find my way, by public transport, to downtown San Francisco, from Santa Clara. Boy was I surprised as to how inane everything was: I spent about 2.5 hours travelling on a light rail (VTA), then a Caltrain, and finally a BART. I almost finished a book I was reading, all on public transport. Talk about a commute.

Anyway, arrived at LugRadio Live USA, registered (paid my paltry $10 in cash, since their credit card provider was wonky), and started the day with great talks. Some quick notes about the conference itself, and then my notes shall follow soon.

• Turns out its very hard to see the screen, because of all the sunlight that was coming in. The Metreon is a great place, but the light hitting the projector screen was a real issue.
• Lack of power everywhere, was a bit of a bummer. Tech conferences, laptops, one must charge one’s laptop!
• When they recorded an episode of LugRadio Live and Unleashed, they looked for the folk that came the farthest – at first, it seemed like only Stewart (Melbourne) and I (Kuala Lumpur) were standing. Then two others from Kiev and Moscow stood up. Turns out we all walked away with a copy of The Ubuntu Book as a prize. Nice :)
• Google was a major sponsor of the entire event. Kudos to them, the stuff was great.
• Saw a PostgreSQL booth (and caught up with Josh Berkus). Saw an OpenSolaris booth, and learnt a bit more about IPS. Even managed to sneak a chat with Ian Murdock, about IPS, Sun, and so on. Most interesting. Wished for a OpenOffice.org, MySQL, and even Fedora booth, which were nowhere to be seen.
• Lunch was at the food court. MySQL’er JD Duncan introduced me to some amazing pizza.
• We saw a streaker, during the Gong-A-Thong. OK, not a streaker, just a guy, in his underwear hitting the gong. I’m sure pictures of this will be online soon enough.
• Dinner? Cha-Ya. 16th and Mission (BART stop), probably closer to 18th and Valencia (by memory). Vegan Japanese food. Interesting, even the ice cream was made of soy.

All in all, great networking event. Whole day spent meeting new folk, speaking to old friends, and so on. Definitely worth the trip.

Remember the problem with public transport in San Francisco/Santa Clara? The BART/Caltrain/VTA all stop at midnight. Useless. Your only options are an expensive cab ride back, or sleeping on the street (don’t even dream of a hotel in downtown SF, they’re all booked out).

Technorati Tags: lugradio, lugradio live usa, public transport, san francisco, santa clara, california

So, I’m leaving on a jet plane, to head to the MySQL Conference & Expo 2008. Normally, this is a flight I make via Auckland or Sydney, but this time its via Singapore.

Singapore is a hub in Asia, so let me share a few tips:

• The airport is huge. Terminal 3 reminds me of being in one of Heathrow’s terminals. Leave plenty of time to walk from gate to gate (up to 20 minutes).
• US flights probably always leave from Terminal 3, around gates A16-A20. The gates are speculation, mainly because of the extra security available out there. (A18, for Los Angeles, A16 for San Francisco, I’m pretty sure I’m right).
• Within A16-A20, you’ll not notice any power sockets available for your laptop. Clearly, very negative for the business traveller.
• You can get free wireless, via the Wireless@SG access point. Just get your mobile phone to roam to SingTel, and enter *186. You’ll be sent an SMS back, with a username and password. Happy surfing (IMAPS/SMTPS/HTTP/HTTPS/SSH all work).

Well, that’s about it. If you have more tips about flying via Singapore, don’t hesitate to share them.