Author: Hettie D.

My name is Henrietta (Hettie) Dombrovskaya. I was born in Saint-Petersburg, Russian (actually, back then – Leningrad, USSR) in 1963, and immigrated to the United States in 1996. I love Saint Petersburg, the city I was born and raised in, and I think it’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Similarly (but differently) I love Chicago, and can’t imagine myself moving somewhere else in the observable future. I have three children, Igor, Vlad and Anna, all adults living on their own, and one (so far) granddaughter Nadia. I also believe that my children are the best thing that happened in my life. As for my professional life, I am working in the field of Information Technologies. When I was twenty, I’ve declared that the databases are the coolest thing invented and that I want to do them for the rest of my life. Thirty plus years later, I still believe it’s true, and still, believe that the databases are the best. These two statements together imply that I think a person can have it all, and indeed, I think so! Keep reading my journals to find out how I did it.

Flying Back And More Delays

The only flight that was on time for this trip was my flight back from Amsterdam to London. As for the final leg, I saw the announcement that my flight was going to be three hours delayed a day before, and I was only hoping it wouldn’t be another overnight delay.

That time, I had no option of going for a stroll in the city because I had my carry-on with me. Actually, if I had acted a little bit faster, I could have jumped on the previous flight to Chicago, but by the time I checked in with customer service, they were already boarding, so I decided – whatever!

It ended up spending another six hours staying in the lounge because there was already almost an hour gap between flights, but at least I was able to catch up on reading and blogging:)

The flight landed in Chicago at about 9 PM, and the good part of such a late arrival was that there were no lines at the border control, and also, there was no traffic on Sunday night, so I was at home at 10-20. I am proud of myself that I didn’t unpack but went to bed right away 😀

And More Amsterdam

I planned to spend an extra day in Amsterdam just to wander around without any particular plan. It would have been a great idea, except that this extra day was Saturday, and the streets were crowded beyond any imagination. Still, it was a nice and relatively warm day, and the city looked gorgeous. Boris wanted to take a boat tour “if it will work,” so we took the one which departed “in three minutes” from when we reached the boarding place.

Notice.s “seagull scarecrow” similar to the ones I saw in Helsinki
Seven bridges
Continue reading “And More Amsterdam” →

PG Day Lowlands

Friday, September 13 – the Pg Day Lowlands team was brave enough to have their first event scheduled on that day :). And it went really well! I liked a lot of things about it, and I definitely want to use some of them for PG Day Chicago, including the rule that Boriss Mejias mentioned about always leaving a space for a fith person to join a group of four. I also loved the idae of Sponsor Passports, which encoraged the participants to visit all sponsor tables.

I started this post three days ago, but never had time to finish because the moment I returned to work, I had no time for anything else. But now, I have pictures taken by a professional photographer, so instead of posting whatever pictures I took, I can post really high-quality ones. So now, there just a couple of mine left :).

Here are some of them (of cause, I am shamelessly posting the pictures of myself:))

Speakers gifts
Sponsors
It was a different photographer than two years ago, and Boris was not even in the front row, but still 🙂
Sponsor passports ready for drawing

Amsterdam

One more time visiting Amsterdam, and one more time taking the same pictures :). Interestingly, this blog started with one of our Amsterdam trips, so it is interesting to compare then and now. I should probably do it, but not today! I came back home last night, and I was in the office at 7 AM today, and life is going, an going, and running… So just pictures for now!

Hotel Jakarta

Just making sure I post everything about my trip before life gets intense! Boris also flew to Amsterdam on Thursday; we met at the airport and headed to Hotel Jakarta. I chose although it’s not the cheapest one because 1) there were no cheap hotels around 2) we’ve been there before and liked it 3)they allowed 24-hour cancellation with full refund.

Jakarta was great. I didn’t take as many pictures as I did two years ago, but some are below. The view from our room window was stunning day and night.

The gym still opens at seven, but when I said that I remember that precisely because I wish it would open earlier, they asked me “When do you want it to be open?” and on Friday, they opened it a half-hour earlier, just enough for me to exercise and have breakfast and be in time for the conference.

On Thursday, we were planning to attend the local meetup, but both our flights were delayed (yes, that’s a theme of that trip!) so it was too late to go to the meetup, and we needed some dinner. The hotel restaurant was overbooked and they told us they won’t have space until 9 PM. I think I looked very unhappy because they asked whether we wanted to sit at the big tables, and we said yes. The food was super-delicious, so we didn’t regret we missed the event 🙂

I Biked In London!!!!

My flight to Amsterdam was at 3-30 PM on Thursday, so I had time in the morning to visit my colleague in our London office. It was an unofficial visit, but we had things to discuss, and so he booked a room, and we talked for several hours straight. When we were done, there was still time until lunch, and my co-worker asked me whether I would like to go for a bike ride. He told me later I looked completely startled, and rightly so! I do not bike in Downtown Chicago, because I do not feel it safe (except if I venture there early in the morning on a weekend). But in London?!… However, I knew that he was a biker and he biked to work, and he reminded me that he had a foldable bike, and he said we could rent a city bike and that he could give me his helmet, so I decided to get out of my comfort zone.

I am extremely thankful to him for making this suggestion. Also, since I didn’t feel comfortable on a city e-bike, he suggested I take his bike, and he took a city one. Obviously, I was following him closely, but he was great in waiting for me and showing directions, especially because going on the wrong side of the road added to my discomfort.

The pictures below are the ones I took during this bike ride and the ones he took, including the one from atop his shoulder.

If somebody had told me two hours earlier I was about to do this, I would never have believed them!

Petition Update

The petition I mentioned a couple weeks ago didn’t succeed. However, ironically, the talk didn’t make it to the conference after all because the speaker didn’t get a visa to the UK. This was a mixed result: all of us felt like it was not the result that would satisfy us, but on the other hand, it was a relief not to see the name “PostgresPro” in the conference schedule. I felt physically uncomfortable while it was there.

However, we didn’t want to leave it like this, and we (all of the petition signers who were in London) got together after the conference and agreed to continue our fight.

We are going to send a letter to the Code of Conduct and to the Core Team, and we want to make sure we do not allow people to misinterpret our demands. During these two weeks, it was so many times that people would tell us that we were “discriminating on the basis of nationality” and that “not everybody can emigrate,” and all other nonsense. I coopted a couple more supporters, and I really hope things will move along. I also spoke to one of the Core members who said “he was not looking forward to that,” but also “was surprised it didn’t happen earlier.”

I will provide updates as long as there are any. As I already said multiple times, I regret I didn’t stir things up earlier.

PG Day UK

I believe that was the first conference I was late to! Maybe just for 15 minutes, but still – I always arrive early.

My talk went really well, and I am glad I rehearsed it multiple times. It’s not something “revolutionary” in terms of concepts, but I am glad I presented a new and very useful tool for performance analysis.

I think the biggest problem with the conference was a relatively low attendance, which, I think was a combination of being a relatively new event and not enough advertizing. Thereby, the audience was “polarized” – there were many people who “knew everything” and many total novices, and a very little number of people “from the middle.”

Also, the social event after was non-existent: everybody could stop at the pub and use one free drink ticket, but it was so loud and so crowded that the only place you could speak was outside 🙂

Hotel Durrants

Here are some pictures from Hotel Durrants in London. It’s a “victorian-style hotel” which I mostly chose because of it’s proximity to the conference venue (and an option of cancelling until almost the last minute).

As I mentioned, breakfast was included, but it was not a buffet, which left me wondering what exactly was included :). As I mentioned, the first morning I just ate the fastest thing, but for my second morning I wanted to have a proper no-rush breakfast.

As you can imagine, I loved the setting. However, when it was “no rush”, it was indeed no rush. Twenty-five minutes. I know better to order an English breakfast when in England, at least you know what you get. However, this time, since I was low on protein, I decided to order an egg whites omelet. That was what took 20_ minutes, and also, when they brought an omelet, there was no toast with it, which I totally expected. Since I was afraid it will take twenty minutes again:), I decided to compensate in the office where I was heading anyway.

Below are the drawing rooms on the ground floor of the hotel.

My Flight To London

I didn’t want to fly a day before the conference, because I had too much work and in general I thought I could use this time better. However, I didn’t want to fly in right before the conference either, and I was also looking to minimize the cost. I finally ended up on the daytime flight, which would leave Chicago at 8:25 AM and arrive in London at 10:25 local time. That would still give me time for a good night’s sleep, and that was also the least expensive flight. Economy Premium was just slightly more than Economy Classic, but I decided to be mindful and not spend on extras when I didn’t really need them.

That being said, I got up at 4 AM on Tuesday so that I could leave the house at 5 AM and be at the airport at 6 AM, have breakfast at the lounge, and just relax while waiting for the flight. It all worked fine; moreover, it was a very fast rife early in the morning, so I was at the airport by 5-40 AM. I had breakfast, called Boris, and started to write a blog post while waiting. Suddenly, I saw a notification from the AA app (the flight was operated by American Airlines). I opened my boarding pass and saw that the flight was eight hours delayed! I was devastated and ran to the customer service counter in the lounge. They told me there were no other flights: the incoming flight was delayed, but because it was a late arrival to London and London won’t accept night arrivals, we would have to wait till morning in London. That meant the overnight flight, which I wanted to avoid! Also, I didn’t have Economy Premium, and I could not upgrade because there was nothing available!

I decided to go to the office to attend an important meeting, which I would skip otherwise. Also, it was twice faster to get to the office than to go back home. Only when I was almost there did I realize that I had left my office pass at home (and it was done on purpose because I didn’t want to carry around things I wouldn’t need on my trip). The security issued me a temporary pass, but I could not go to the gym or use a shower, or even open the doors to get from one side of the floor to another.

I sent a message to the hotel, asking them to keep my room for my morning arrival, and left for the airport, planning for longer security lines than they were in the morning.

The lines were longer but not terribly long. Fortunately, the AA lounge has showers. I was unsure whether I would have time at the hotel in the morning, and it turned out to be a good call because the flight was delayed for another hour and then we sat for another hour in the aircraft waiting for a takeoff, because the scheduled flight to London was just five minutes apart of t=our new departure time. Thankfully, BA moved me to the front row in the Main cabin, so I had some extra legroom.

Another thing was the food. When possible, I try to order a low-calorie meal, which I tried to do this time as well. However, the system returned “something went wrong” error and I gave up. When I was already seated, a flight attendant asked me whether I had a low-calorie meal, and I said yes, but what they brought to me was vegan, not low-calorie 😀. Nothing wrong with vegan in general, but that meal ended up be barely eatable, and same with the breakfast: they even didn’t give me yogurt which was a part of other people’s breakfast! I did my best to sleep for about 4 hours, and that was the max I could do on a less than 7 hours flight.

The flight landed at 7:08, and I was out of the terminal twenty minutes later (the worst passport control became the faster one in recent years). The conference started at nine, and I still needed to get to the hotel to leave my luggage and change. I message my colleague who was a part of the org. committee to ask whether there is any food at the conference, and he sent me a picture of pastries, so I realized I needed to get some food at the hotel (my room included breakfast, and was pre-paid). I reached the hotel shortly after 8 AM (thanks to Elizabeth Line!) and checked-in. They told me they didn’t have a buffet, and I had to order. The hotel was very old-fashiined (I will post some pictures), and the restaurant looked very respectable. So imagine me rushing in and asking what’s the fastest thing they can make :). They were visibly puzzled by this request and when on to confer, and then said that they can make fried eggs on a toast. To their credit, it was ready in ten minutes – I time it! So I got the eggs and a coffee and took off to the conference, which was in ten-minutes walk.