Category: travel

Flying Back

I flew back from LA to Chicago last Sunday, on the day of switching to daylight saving time. My original flight was about 11 AM, but then I switched to the first flight of the day so that I won’t spend the whole day on the flight (and I had a show at Theo that evening).

Although that meant I had to be up before 4 AM of DST, it was the right decision – I believe, that’s the only way for an American Airlines flight to be on time :). I was unsure whether the lounge will be open – in ORD, they open the AA lounge at 5-30AM, and even later, at 6 AM, in Helsinki. Maybe they stay open 24X7 at LAX, I don’t know, but at 5:05 AM they were open and breakfast was available – the first normal breakfast, with fruits, that week!

Then, same as on the inbound trip, there was no food on the plane, and by the time I was out of the aircraft, it was already six hours after this breakfast. I still wanted to get home ASAP, because I had chances to bike while the weather was nice, so I didn’t stop in any of the airport cafes, and preceded to the Uber pickup spot.

Judging by the driver’s name, there were high chances he was Muslim, so I said that I apologize of he is fasting, but would it be OK with him if I munch on a bisquit since they didn’t feed us during the flight. He said is was fine, and then he asked me whether I want a date, because it’s the best after you didn’t eat for a while. It was so unexpected tha I said “yes”, and he pulled out a napkin with several gigantic soft dates, and I took one. It tasted heavenly.He proceeded telling me how he was caught during the previous night “missing hour” with not being able to get in time to a cafe opened until 3 AM, because 3 AM happened right after 1 AM, and how he was well prepared on that day (“I also have oranges, if you’d like!”) He definitely made my day!

Pasadena

The weather was horrible most of the time, and also, I was busy with multiple work and non-work things and the only time I did some sightseeing was for a couple of hours on Saturday, when I met with my friend Tanya and she took me to see Pasadena Town Hall and American Pacific Museum.It was great to catch up with her, and also, that was the only day when the weather was nice!

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Hotel Dena

I loved the hotel, all its retro decor, my room, and the gym. The only thing that I strongly disliked was food, breakfast specifically, but I already lamented about it.

Now, some nice pictures.

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A Post Of Food Complaints

As it turned out, American Airlines does not serve food or even have food for purchase on the flight to LA. I was in the lounge before the flight, but it didn’t even occur to me to take an apple on board – I was absolutely sure I could purchase something during the flight. It turned out that the only thing I could purchase was alcohol, chips and almonds!

With the flight delay, and the time it takes to get from LAX to Pasadena, it was 8-30 PM local time when i got to the hotel, so it was already 10-30 PM CT, and I didn’t want to go to the restaurant, all I wanted was to go to bed.

I woke up at 3 AM (5 AM CT), and forced myself to sleep for a little bit more. I didn’t want to switch to PT time because it was for three days only, and Sunday is Daylight Saving Time switch, and my flight is very early, so it didn’t make much sense. However, breakfast at hotel started at 6-30AM, and I needed to survive until that. I grabbed some snacks in the 24 -hour self-service shop on the hotel;s first floor, and there was coffee in the room, but still…

On top of that, the hotel breakfast was mediocre at most. When I see “breakfast included” I assume there will be breakfast buffet, but instead, I was given vouchers for each of the days, and the only thing you could get on this voucher was your choice of eggs (sramble, fried, sunny side) with your choice of toast and coffee or tea. That’t it. I asked for cappuccino, and they said “it was not included.” I said that I could pay for it, they said:OK, and in ten minutes, they brought me regular coffee. 🤷🏻‍♀️

There is no food served at the Expo; the talks start at 10 AM local time, which meant noon for mw, and a lunch break (when you needed to go and find your lunch) was from 1-30 to 2-30 PM! The Starbucks in the building helped,but overall, I don’t know what to say! Let’s just say that the first day, and the whole stay was very food-challening!

If You Ever Lived In Chicago…

I met many new people at the conference, including two people who currently live in Chicago and one who lived in Chicago before. When I said that I live in Chicago, all of them immediately asked the follow-up question: Where in Chicago? To which I proudly replied: Rogers Park.

There is probably nothing to be especially proud of or make a big deal of, but I love how much Chicago neighborhoods define us! I love how many questions are answered by this one reply: I am from Rogers Park, that’s my neighborhood!

And while we are on the topic of Chicago, I shamelessly promoted the city to the international conference participants, so I hope more international speakers will come to us in the future!

And Flying Again!

This time, to Pasadena for a conference. The American Airlines lounge at Terminal 3 now feels like home – I’ve been there so many times, that I have “my” spot.

The flight was showing on time, and I could not believe it! Still, the boarding was announced, and I hurried to the gate.

Guess what? We all got in, and then the captain announced: in case you didn’t notice, it started to snow, so now we need to go through de-icing, and it’s a long line ahead of us, so will will be here for at least 30 minutes.

It ended up being an hour. Well, I should say – only an hour!

Air Travel Again

It’s not even funny, but Boris’ flight back was also screwed up. To be precise, his evening flight on Sunday was canceled, and he was put on a British Airways flight that departed almost four hours later. As a result, he missed his connection in London, and they couldn’t find his new ticket, so he missed the next flight as well and was at home after 10 PM on Monday.

With all that, I am not optimistic about my next week’s flight to LA because it’s also AA. My only consolation is that I fly in the day before the conference starts, and my flight back is super -early Sunday morning on the day of switching to the DST

Monday Details

Trying to cover all this week’s events.

Boris was supposed to fly in on Sunday, right after I would bring my mom home from our matinee CSO concert. I had Monday off, so we were planning to spend it together, and had a long list of what we were going to do.

I didn’t expect anything unusual, so I checked Boris’ flight status at midday just to make sure it departed on time. Nowadays, it’s not always easy to find the flight status online unless it’s your flight and it’s in your app. To my astonishment, a Google search showed this flight approaching Reykjavik! I thought it must be a mistake; but one of the other searches also showed Reykjavik as the destination point. Another one still said Chicago.

I just locked the door of my apartment and started to walk down when I got a call from Boris: We just landed. I asked: in Reykjavik? And the answer was yes.

Nothing was clear for the next twenty-four hours, but now I know the complete sequence of events. Shortly after the departure, one of the four power generators located at the engines died, and they could not start the backup generator in the tail. (As they say in my world, “if you do not test backups regularly, you do not have backups”). This posed no problem for the flight itself but was not enough to support all the sensors, so they had to land in Reykjavik, which, BTW, has no American Airlines presence, so they could receive only limited equipment help.

Boris said that everything was very well organized, and throughout the ordeal, they were kept informed about what was going on, the options and possible outcomes, and all the moving parts behind the scenes. First, they tried to repair the generator, but since no parts were available, the AA decided to bring in another aircraft. All the passengers were transferred to hotels and transferred back to the airport in the morning. It took way longer than expected to reregister all passengers because this airport is not equipped to service aircraft of that size.

Fortunately, I found a website that showed all the “flight notes,” so I knew about all the expected delays and new estimated times. After the aircraft finally landed in ORD, I tried to take several screenshots to capture all the changes.

Approaching Chicago

I almost never post the views from the airplane window, but I like that one!

Prague Dev Day

On Monday evening, I flew to Prague to deliver training at the Prague PostgreSQL Developer Day. I used my full-size (10 hours long) PostgreSQL Query Optimization Training, cut out about 1/3 of it, and updated it with the examples from the book’s second edition. The preparation took way longer than I expected when I submitted this training proposal, but I am happy with the result.

It was a super-short visit to Prague; I barely was outside. I upgraded both my flights to business class because I have nine European upgrades, and I can only use them on Finnair flights. There were only two business class passengers besides me on the way there, and I was the only one on the way back 🙂

Salmon lasagna – I don’t know what Italians would think about it, but I liked it!
I chose the Grand Hotel International due to it’s proximity to the venue, but to be completely honest, it didn’t impress me, although I understand it’s historical significance.
At the entrance of the Department if Information Technologies where the event tool place
And if you are wondering – yes, there were only two female participants out of twenty-five
Together with one of the event organizers, Gulcin Jelinek