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The conference ended at 2pm today, so I decided to change out of my suit, and into some linen shorts, half shirt and flip/flops, and went to the world famous San Diego Zoo. What a beautiful place. I won't bother writing too much about the Zoo except that it differs from other Zoo's in that in provides animals with their native habitats, and strives to preserve not just wild life, but also plant life. There are over 100k species of plants over here.
I only had 3 hours, so I took the 32$ value package, which allows me to hop on the tour bus, and take the 45 minute tour of the Zoo, which is 18 acres large. This is a good way to get a quick overview of the attractions, and make note of the things you want to see more closely. For me, that was mainly the Great Panda Bears (and their new born baby), the Giraffe's, the Oliphants, and the Rhino's… After the tour, I took the express buses and walked to the different targets, snapping away with my camera.
Got tired after a while, and had seen what I wanted to see within 2 hours. At 6pm, stopped for a Sam Adams, and then headed over to San Diego airport.
San Diego airport has got to be the most boring airport I've had the opportunity to lounge in in the US. It's even worse than San Jose's (which at least has a starbux and free wifi). This airport has a dodgy Sub fast food (not Subway's but somethin' else), and NO WIFI AT ALL. As a result, I'm typing this up in MS OneNote.
In any case, I'm now on vacation again… and we're off to camp in San Mateo county the next few days… so no updates for a bit. Hopefully, when we hike Redwood Memorial Park this weekend, it won't be to our deaths !!!!
Well,
I used to think that the only cities I would choose to live in the US would be
San Francisco, Seattle, and Denver. I now officially add San Diego to the list.
Set on the pacific, it is continuously surrounded by it, with little
peninsula's, coves, bays… it's a bit less charming than Sydney, but the sand is
white, the weather is great, and there's a lot of surf.
This place definitely feels a lot more "Cali" than Northern California… Cali in the television sense if you know what I mean… kinda like LA, but without the glitz, obnoxiousness, and "Did you see me" feel. As I was walking down Mission Beach yesterday after the conference, I saw couples on tandems, rollerbladers, iPod Runners, Horse Shoe throwers, surfers, skateboarders… they were all there… the wind was warm (the santa anna winds ???), but it felt real good.
Had some crab at this joint on the beach, and chilled out with a couple of beers.
Nice. Real Nice.
In
terms of the conference, well it's pretty good quality (check out the confe
rence location on the right !!!!). My colleague's GK
(Director of Industry Vision) and TG (Chief Scientist @ DOX) did well, not
surprisingly. I learned a bit, networked a ton, and got 0 leads as the booth
babe (booth babe is a sexist reference to the ladies that staff the really big
industry forum booths…. Like E3, for example). I guess I ain't cut out for it
;-). In any case, I held the fort, which is what I was here to do.
So ... the 22nd came and went !!!! Max and I have now officially been married for 5 years !!!! And we've known each other for 10 !!!!! That's crazy huh?
We celebrated in true style, we rented a cabin down in Big Sur (central Californian coast, south of Carmel), went hiking, ate tons of cheese and wine (as well as went to a restaurant that served giant baked potatoes with a stunning view of the pacific).
It may be worth mentioning that the hike was super fun, but we
had a few scares !!! I had Poison Oak Phobia, and kept seeing poison oak every where... fell through some drift wood, and Joost nearly slipped off the teeny weeny animal trail looking for the way home. Thank Heavens, Max saved the day, found the trail uphill back to the cabin ! More on this later... but I wanted to post the happiness of being together with the woman that I will always truly love...
It was truly a beautiful place to celebrate our anniversary. The cabin was in the middle of the woods, with a hammock, with the sound of the waterfall nearby, stacks of wine, food, some good friends (Joost ;-) ), and the owners of the cabin (Donna and Doug) were absolutely fantastic. I'll update this post later with their details... for 125$ /night, we could not find a better deal in Big Sur (thank you Craig's List !!!!).
Anyway, signing off for the night,
Shy.
So in a few hours, I'll be flying to San Diego, which is in Southern California. I'll be there for 2 days (1 night), managing an Amdocs booth at a tradeshow... called the IMS Evolution Summit. I'll be staying at the Best Western Blue Sea Lodge on the beach (picture of location on the right)... right across the street from the conference (good thing, as I still don't have my driver's license!!!).
IMS (IP Multimedia Subsystem) is a new network layer that aims to enable service providers (telco's) to rollout a "killer environment" that will facilitate the consumption of data and content services, and enable fixed mobile convergence. It will also reduce the cost and time to market related to launching new telecom services / applications by enabling a shared resource approach (traditionally, new services are siloed across different system stacks... making the TCO of new service launch for Telco's excrutiatingly painful).
IMS will have the following benefits: provide the ability to provide "blended" services. This is pretty abstract, so it's best if I use an example:
Imagine a family: Father, Mother, and daughter (who goes to College)
Basically IMS will allow us to talk, do Videoconferencing, share documents, all at the same time... and
not just mobile to mobile, but VoWIMAX (Voice over Next Gen Wifi), Fixed line telephony, or even Skype. The end device or phone compatibility will not matter any more. If I want to play Doom3 from my cell phone with someone who's playing Doom3 on a PC over high speed LAN this could be a possibility....
Any way... enough with the work stuff.... now off to San Diego. The flight from San Diego is about 1.2 hours... but it is at the other end of the state !!! I'll post more from there (providing I have WIFI access... my card has been acting up lately).
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