Each time I work from Valo in Helsinki, I like it even more (if it is possible :)). I’ve mentioned a couple of times that my only challenge with working there is the uncertainty about exactly when a room will be assigned to me on any given day. The standard reservation time is from 9 AM to 5 PM, and I rarely start working before that, but until my room is assigned, my key button doesn’t open the gym door, and I love using the opportunity to work out before work.
On Monday, I saw that the room had already been assigned at 6 AM, so I happily departed for Valo. When I saw Jarko at his usual place at the “catpatin deck”, he greeted me and said that he saw that I had reserved the rooms for three days, and he made sure that for all three days the rooms would be assigned starting from early morning, so that I would have time to go to the gym and have breakfast. I can’t even describe how touched I was!
There are very few people working at the beginning of July, and the entire staff at their main cafe is on vacation for six weeks. Lunch is being served in a smaller cafe, and breakfast time is extended until 11 AM, because most people are staying in the hotel rather than co-working 🙂
We are actively using the time of year (white nights) to go biking, even though I spend 10 hours a day at the co-working space, including daily workouts and meals.
On Saturday, we biked to Natasha’s place, and it appeared to be faster than taking a bus. On Sunday, we went for a very long bike ride, including a lunch break at IKEA (it started raining twice while we were biking, but we waited for the rain to calm down at the bus stop shelter). There was no biking on Monday, but then I biked to work on Tuesday (Boris escorted me both ways), and then we went for another bike ride after that to cross the new bridge, which is closed to any fossil-fueled traffic 😂.
On the way to EspooLunch at IKEABiking to workOn the bridgeNo cars allowed
Each time I bike in Helsinki, I feel incredibly jealous of the local cyclists who can bike literally from anywhere to anywhere using the safe biking lanes that are isolated from other traffic. To be clear, biking in the city during the rush hour still makes me uncomfortable, but I know that it’s mostly in my head. Other than that, looking at all the bike lanes, all the arrows, all the crossings … I totally get what Anna is trying to achieve! Even Milwaukee can’t be compared with Helsinki, and I do not even want to start talking about Chicago!
It was a super-fun concert, and if you look at the program and wonder how some of these pieces could possibly be performed on an organ, you are in your right to wonder! It was quite unexpected, and sometimes funny :).
A very short trip to Helsinki. Left lots of loose ends in Chicago, in the office, and otherwise, and trying to take care of at least some of them remotely.
My flight was on Friday evening, and I decided to take the L to the airport, thinking that at least the travel time would be predictable and I could do some work on the train. Didn’t exactly work as planned, since I had a medium-sized luggage which was rolling around all the time, and I had to hold it, and a Blue Line train moved as if it was a race car, but I made it to ORD, and even had a relaxing hour in the LOT lounge (that’s where Finnair is sending their eligible members these days).
It was nice to see the welcoming screen 🙂
I have been in Finland for three days, and I did a lot of biking, met with friends, attended an organ concert, and worked from my favorite coworking space. Some clothes shopping. A lot of time with Boris. Sleeping for 7 hours a night (I will be back to six tonight, most likely, but the first two days are like that).
When we biked to Natasha’s place on Saturday evening, we passed multiple green areas with lots of wild flowers everywhere. All the flowers were the ones I saw in the countryside when I was a child, everywhere I ever spent my summers. If there is anything from my childhood I am nostalgic about, it is nature in the places where it was almost untouched by civilization: meadows, strawberry patches, wild blueberries, and lingonberries; high pines, ferns, and horsetails. And this soft light-green grass, which is surprisingly different from the prairie grass, and I never thought about it until the first time I came back from the prairies to the European North. And that might be the main reason I would always want to come back to Finland 🙂
At the PG DATA conference, we held a “Sponsor Passport” raffle: attendees could stamp their “passports” at each sponsor table, and those passports were then used as raffle tickets.
In case someone doesn’t know, I am not a lottery person at all, and the only reason I placed my passport in the box was to set a good example for others. I was called to draw, and imagine my surprise when I handed Pat the first passport and he said: Hettie!
I thought it was a joke, but it was not: I won a $100 Amazon gift certificate! Even funnier, two other organizers won the prizes, and then one of our meetup members!
Yesterday, at PG Day Boston, they also had Sponsor Passports, and I participated again, joking about my PG DATA experience. A couple of people who attended both joked about the “staged wins.” You will never believe it, but I won a $100 Amazon gift card again! And again, my name was the first to be drawn.
I became somewhat nervous, thinking that this luck is for no good. How did it turn out? I will tell you tomorrow – too tired now!
My friend and former colleague was in charge of Pg Day Boston; it was the first event in that series, and I promised him I would come. Fortunately, there are plenty of direct flights to Boston from Chicago, but Boston is one hour ahead of us, and to make it a day trip and to get most of the conference, I had to take a 6 AM flight, which meant I had to be up at 3 AM. That was an extreme even for me, but remembering how I stayed in line three weeks ago, I decided to be on the safe side. I even pre-ordered Uber, which I almost never do.
Also, remembering that there was no food on my flight to Vancouver, and that the lounge does not open before 5 AM, I decided to upgrade to First Class. I arrived at the airport on time; the priority boarding didn’t reopen, so I stayed in the line with others, but chose a shorter line this time. Then, I waited for 25 min for the lounge to open. I got a cappuccino, a small yogurt cup, and a small cup of chai pudding, thinking I would have a proper breakfast on the plane, but they didn’t have any food, even in first class! There were drinks and some snacks, like crunchy bars, and that was it. Oh, well. First World problems:)
The conference took place on the 6th floor of the Boston Museum of Science. The great thing about it is that it is very close to the Logan Airport. Since my flight was ahead of schedule, and the ride was less than 15 minutes, I only missed a small part of the keynote. The most difficult part of the whole day was staying awake, alert, and social while being up since 3 AM. I mostly succeeded :). I had several great conversations, made some meaningful comments, and reconnected with several of my former EDB colleagues. I probably could have stayed for the whole social hour after the conference and been on time for my flight, but I chose to spend this extra hour in the airport lounge and have a proper meal. Even though it was rush hour, it still took 15 min to get to the airport (most of the way it was an underground tunnel). No lines at security, great food in the lounge, free in-flight internet (now the norm with AA), early arrival, and a quick taxi ride home (I know by now that taxi is faster on tbd way back, and not that expensive).
I spent zero time in Boston, as expected. I am thinking – it’s sort of funny how you can actually go for a day to Boston with no luggage, no packing; just a regular backpack I take to work. I am not sure whether it was a justified spending of time and money yet, but we’ll see. I mostly went to support Tom, but he appears to be fine anyway. There was enough EBD people, which made up for the lack of external audience, and overall, he is just more relaxed about the whole thing than I :). Besides, he won’t be doing these conferences anymore; there is a new team coming next year.
Anyway, I guess it was good that I went. The event was different from mine, and it’s OK.
One more highlight from my Milwaukee trip. Anna promised me the best caramel apple shop ever, and she made sure to include that stop in our biking adventure.
I got the top right – Door County Cherry Dark
They packed it, and I took it home, because it’s not the kind of apple you can eat on the go!
And since Boris doesn’t care about caramel apples, it was all mine! It took me four days 🙂
I am in the final stretch of the conference prep, and there is not a 30-minute stretch when I wouldn’t need to do something conference-related, mostly answering never-ending emails and telegram messages. Boris arrived Friday evening and immediately jumped in to help me, for which I am immensely thankful. We spent Saturday on preparing the room host kits, ordering what else was left to order, and so on. In addition, I am not yet ready with my own presentation slides for the conference, and I realized I didn’t send the Prairie Postgres flyers to FedEx for printing.
Boris said that FedEx’s cutting of the badges (I printed a sample) was not good enough, and volunteered to print and cut them all. I believe it’s way more work, but I didn’t object.
The two non-conference related activities on Saturday included a med-length bike ride, and finally assembling the new coat rack:
Our plans for Sunday and Monday were the following: we had three tickets for Hillary Hahn matinee recital at the CSO (for Nadia, Anna and myself) and then we were all going to go to Milwaukee to visit (Boris haven’t been to Anna’s new house yet).
Nadia studies violin by Hilary Hahn’s books, and we tried to attend a recital last year, and it was cancelled; we finally made it this time.
(I forgot to get the third ticket until the last minute, so I ended up in the back)
This day was not without calamities: it was raining all morning, and I slipped on the Jarvis station steps. Twice. First time was OK, but the second time I 1) ripped my pants (I know it’s fashionable, but I do not like it!), 2) broke four nails, and 3) broke the iPhone screen, which I thought was unbreakable.
I called Boris from the train and asked him to put an extra pair of pants into my backpack, which he was going to bring to me after the concert, and I had to live with all the rest. (I went to do my nails yesterday, and I still need to find time to repair the screen!)
The concert was awesome, and dinner at Ryo Sushi was great as always, and we also went to Amorino, which probably was a mistake because the wait time ended up being 35 minutes.
Then we went to Union Station, boarded on time, but the departure was delayed due to technical issues, and we arrived in Milwaukee with a 1-hour-and-15-minute delay!
Still, the next day was great! Boris and I had chosen the bikes (Anna collected bikes from several friends so that we could choose the ones we were most comfortable with), and we set off for a 30-mile ride! My only regret is that I couldn’t take pictures along the way, and I hope to take them on my future visits.
I took a red-eye flight from Vancouver on Thursday night. It was not because I wanted to save one hotel night for my company, but because it was the only way to get home before Boris’ arrival on Friday afternoon.tio It’s not fun to depart at midnight, but even more so when I realized that there was no One World Lounge in that part of the airport. Same as in Montreal, they have domestic departures. international departures and US departures, which are none of the above :).
On top of that, the flight was delayed for over an hour, so by the time we finally departed, it was already 3 AM in Chicago, and we landed at about 7 AM local time, so I spent the whole day sleep walking, and still had to do some work at work, because I was out for four days
When I went to see my mom in the middle of the day, she didn’t have any pity for me, and just said “well sometimes, I can’t sleep at night”🤷🏻♀️. Somehow, I managed to do some work, ordered some food, went to Jewel Osco to buy the rest. unpacked, and even did a workout (because sitting in the airport for five hours doesn’t help the motion deprivation), and I also baked a creamcheese-rhubarb pie, and as always these days, sent a whole bunch of cconference- related ommunications, and all of this before Boris arrived.
And what’s next? Next is a final pre-conference stretch, which I will hopefully survive!
That was a very sweet conference :). During my free half-day on Monday, I walked to locate the venue and found it right by Gastown (the original settlement that made Vancouver, now a historic site). That’s where the Steam Clock is, and that’s also where I found an amazing coffee shop that sold gelato and all kinds of desserts. Since it was just a 2-minute walk from the conference venue, I went there multiple times, sent several people over there, and also brought several desserts to the conference.
Haselnut mousseMango mousseRaspberry mousse
I also shared with others a pear-haselnut tart, a raspberry-chocolate tart, and a strawberry cheesecake.
Lavenda-blueberry tart from another bakerySpeaker’s gifts were boxes of chocolateAnd my friend from Vienna brought me that!Also, since it was the 30th anniversary of Postgres, we had two gigantic birthday cakes!
