In London

I only stayed in London for two days, mainly at the conference, but the same as five years ago, it was great! Now for the second time, no rain all the time I stayed.

Last time, we went with Vlad, which meant that I didn’t have to worry about getting around. This time, I was a little bit nervous about how I will get around, even with Google maps, but everything turned out fine. Mostly because of exceptionally friendly people. Each time I would start to slow down and look at my phone, and then around me, somebody would ask me where I needed to go and help me get back on my route. It was truly amazing! Also, whenever I would emerge from yet another passage in the tube, somebody would ask me where I needed to go, and if that was the wrong train, they would not only tell me where to go to get on the right one but looked back to make sure I actually made all the left and right turns!

loved the hotel I stayed in (I will show the pictures in a separate post), and I enjoyed the conference, met many of my co-workers in person, met many people in general, and had a great time! I wish I had had time to do more things in London, but I hope it wasn’t the last time!

Postgres London 2022

I had too many things happening in the past several days and the most important one was my presentation at Postgres London 2022.

In yet another attempt to separate my personal and professional life, I am pasting here a link rather than reblogging. The post can be found here.

A New Twist In Biking In Helsinki

Boris had a very bad bike accident on Wednesday. He says that’s because the sun was bright and because he was not looking at the road but looking back, making sure I was not left behind. In my opinion, the problem was his state of mind. Before we went, I asked him whether he was sure we should go, and he said – yes, it might become better.

He had very serious reasons to be upset, so all is understandable, but as a result, he ran into the rear of a police car – at full speed! I am not even going to describe his face (it still looks very impressive, and actually worse than right after the accident), but the most amazing thing is that he broke a police car bumper!!!

The police filed a proper report, and the hilarious part of this story was that the officer said: we hope our insurance will cover the damage, but we need to check. Most times, it’s not the bike hitting a car, but the opposite, so we need to check whether they would cover the situations like this!

So…

I thought this trip felt a bit too perfect to go as planned. I am not flying to Ireland tomorrow, and it is very sad, mostly not because of Ireland but because I won’t see my friends. The only consolation is that it would be much worse if we found it out tomorrow! I spent two hours rebooking and rearranging my life for the next five days, and somehow it was rebooked and rearranged with virtually no financial loss.
I will cover the last three days later – they were great, but now I am infinitely sad and disappointed that things didn’t happen as planned.

Suomenlinna

We didn’t plan to go to Suomenlinna on Wednesday, it happened spontaneously. I too an unplanned day off, and then a couple other unplanned things happened, and we desperately needed something positive, so we went there for just an hour and a half at the end of the day.

It was amazing, as always, and we saw a couple of newly restored buildings, and had a fancy dinner at a restaurant that we didn’t check out for a while.

It Does Not Go Away

Although I didn’t see that many refugees on a trip this time, the sense of a more massive war approaching is here. And t does not really matter whether you are now in Europe or anywhere else. Each day, the news from the front leaves me paralyzed with horror, and every day, my mind is running circles asking – why, why, why there is so little help?! I said it already multiple times, and I can repeat it again: if Russia continues pressing the Ukrainian forces out of their territory, if Russia is left victorious, it won’t stop there! There is no hope for Ukraine; there is no hope for the world; there is no hope for Russia’s rebirth as a different kind of state if this won’t be stopped.

A Rose Garden

Boris took me to another rose garden – and I thought I knew all of them in Helsinki, at least the ones which are close to the city center. But here is another one – and in walking distance from our home.

And yes, not all of the flowers pictured here are roses, I know 🙂