Tag: friends

Prague Postgres Dev Days

When I planned my trip to Prague, I thought I would be able to take extra days off for an “unpaid conference,” but in 2026, the PTO tracking changed, and as a result, I no longer received “unpaid conference time.” I am still going to contest it, because I still took my work computer with me, and I still did quite a bit of work while there.

But as for Monday, it was a legit working day. I didn’t go to co-working because I had to leave for the airport before 3 PM, and I still wanted to have some time with Boris. I worked from 7:30 AM to 2:30 PM, with only a break for a 30-min walk, and then we headed to the airport, where I kept doing things from the lounge, and still did one work meeting from the hotel, and still dialed in to work a couple of times on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Aside from that, the whole trip to Prague was uneventful in a good way and very productive. The hotel where I stayed (Vienna House Diplomat) was much better than the one I stayed at last year, in all aspects. The room was better, and the gym was on-site and very well equipped. The reception told me that there was an extra charge of 10 euros per visit, but it was totally worth it. The gym had everything, was way more spacious than the one at my Helsinki coworking space, and opened at 6 AM (actually, even a little bit earlier than that!)

This time, I knew what the venue looked like, so I didn’t spend time wandering around the University campus. There were no technical issues with my workshop; the class was full, people listened, reacted, and thanked me many times.

Also, this time, I didn’t have to leave on the same day, so I could stay for the speaker’s dinner and for two-thirds of the talks on Wednesday. I met with everyone I planned to meet, had some unplanned meetings, and all conversations were very productive. I hope that I secured a couple of new sponsors for PG DATA 2026.

My friend Gulcin promised a birthday cake for my belated birthday celebration, and brought a box of delicious pastries! Everyone who was there tried at least a little bit 🙂

People still can’t believe that I turned 63. Gulcin asked me what the secret of my youthfulness is, and as usual, I responded that the secret is that I always do what I want to do, and never do the things I don’t want to do :). She and another person who was there even posted about it on LinkedIn, which was funny.

I brought cookies for those people who didn’t want to rely on the mercy of the Postal Service

Also, the Lighting talks organizer convinced me to submit a lighting talk, so I gave a five-minute into to my new project, and used this opportunity to advertise PG DATA.

Overall, despite many problems I currently have at work and with many of my non-work activities, my mood is significantly better than before the conference.

Speakers and volunteers photo

I am finishing this post on my flight to London, and for some reason, my Google Photos is not available. I will add more photos from the hotel when I am on another provider 🙂

Tapiola And Toys Museum

On Saturday, I met with my friend Natasha and her daughter (and my goddaughter) Sonia, and Natasha suggested we go to Tapiola, a 1950s project of integrating urban development with nature. I have never been there, and for Natasha, that’s the place she lived when she was a kid, and she wanted to show it to me.

Once again, it might have been better if it weren’t so cold, but it was still very interesting. Retrospectively, I should have taken more pictures!

Used audio and video materials sale in the local library
An outdoor piano
There is a small but really interesting toy museum in Tapiola, but unfortunately, we could not find descriptions in any language, so we often had to guess what period the toys belonged to.

We ended our field trip with a visit to the cafe that makes the biggest cinnamon buns one can imagine:

Natasha and I shared one bun but even a half was of a size of two regular buns!

Last Christmas/First Birthday Gifs

During the past week, two more gifts arrived by mail. The first one was presumably the last Christmas gift from one of my German friends:

The reason I didn’t post it right away was that I forgot to take a picture of the cookies, and then I kept forgetting, and the cookies kept disappearing :). I still have some left back home, but now I am traveling, and I thought it was not fair to wait till February :).

And on Friday, just a couple of hours before I headed to the airport, I received a package from my friend Lena form Ann Arbor:

And I am sure you guessed which one was my favorite: a kolacki ornament!

Early Birthday Gift

My friend from Kenya was in the US over the holidays, visiting her friends in Pittsburgh. I mailed her cookies to her friends’ address, and she mailed me the gift she brought from Kenya. It was a really bright spot in my challenging week.

Cookies From All Over The World

I don’t know why New Zealand is the closest place to Chicago in the whole world, but my New Zealand Christmas present always arrives first, without fail!

Urinetown

What would you think about the musical with the name like that?

Yes, I thought the same, especially after reading the short description about the town where people were required to pay for the usage of the toilets, and how they decided to resist. I thought it might be just a comedy show, and I was going to skip it (ad not to subscribe to Theo at all this season), but my friend MaryAnn said she wanted to go, and I always use any opportunity to meet with her. And as it almost always happen to me, I went without prior reading about it.

Well, it was anything but what I thought. Very sad, very political, sort of hopeless by the end. I think I will discover something new till the day I die.

One of the great things about Theo is that they absolutely ignore the “official line”, and still do what they believe is right:

About the show itself. The built a lot of temporary constructs inside the theater, and everything looks amazing:

Below are official pictures from the Theo website, and I hope they will post some videos, and then I will be able to repost.

I was glad to spend time with MaryAnn; we stayed a little bit longer after the show, and she drove me home, and we talked in her car, and a little bit more.

Lyric Opera

Second day back to Chicago, and it’s a really long day! Escorting before work, work, nail salon, meeting with a friend for a quick bite before the opera, and finally – a Lyric Opera performance: Cavalleria Rusticana and Pagliacci – two operas in one evening. Now that it’s already way past 11 PM, I realized I made a mistake – I should have taken Uber back home. But it’s still warm outside, and I hopped on a bus just after I got out of Lyric, and I thought that I would be home before eleven. But then, I waited for a train at Lake for 15 minutes, and now we are stopped due to the police activity on Howard – do not ask why we are sitting at Thorndale!

OK, we started moving!

Anyway, it was awesome that my friend Elina could come with me, because she does not go to Lyric as often as I, and it is always great to share the joy of music, conversation and an intermission dessert at Florian 🙂

A New Life Formular

I’ve changed the way I speak about time and the lack of it. For the longest time, I used to say: “God does not give me more than 24 hours a day, even though I absolutely deserve at least 30!!!” On Friday, when I was talking to one of my fellow escorts, I came up with the follow-up: “However, God does give me 24 hours, and I am determined to use every minute of it!”

The early morning Friday shift was unusually intense; five antis were out, and there were just three of us, so we didn’t have enough bodies to escort patients and shield them. And that was the first time I was the shift lead (why am I taking on more responsibilities – don’t ask!). But while there is a need in the morning shifts, and while it’s warm enough for me to survive these morning shifts, I will be there. That’s one of the meaningful ways to use these minutes :).

And summer in Chicago continues! It was the upper 80s today! I was finally able to meet with my friend Y; we had been trying to meet since June, and had to cancel for either her or my reasons. I was sad that she didn’t have a chance to visit me in the summer, but we got a summer day in October! We went to the beach, and sat there in the lounge chairs, and I swam in the lake (she didn’t). This time, it almost didn’t happen again because she was afraid to be out while the ICE agents were terrorising the city, but then she decided she would make it, and I am glad she did.

I do not know a single person who would be happy with what’s going on in the city these days. My hairstylist came to do my hair on Friday, and with all her being “neutral” and “not wanting to talk about politics,” she couldn’t keep it to herself.

And on the ICE/Trump topic, there was another shooting, although this time not lethal, and also, Trump quietly deployed 300 National Guards, and now the whole city is mad that police is not protecting the citizen from ICE, and they also mad at the Governor, although it’s hard to tell what he could do in the current situation (except for there are multiple lawsuits filed). Also, he froze the Red Line extension money, but to be honest, I had no doubts it would happen.

Keeping fighting, and keeping doing good whenever I can.

And More Chicago!

While Lena stayed with me over the weekend, I was constantly checking my phone for two reasons: to check what Trump was up to and to follow the moves of my friend from Kenya, who was arriving in Chicago to attend the same conference I was going to attend the next week.

I wanted to be the first person to show her the city, so after Lena left, I immediately headed to the conference venue where my friend was volunteering with the conference setup.

She didn’t even had a chance to check-in to the hotel yet, so we had only two hours, but the Wolf Point Plaza was a great starting point!

And she brought me a dress from Kenya – an amazing dress with gigantic pockets!

We did a lot of things together in Chicago this week – more to follow!

My Neighborhood

On the one-before-last day when my guests were still in Chicago, I made a bad decision regarding taking a bus instead of the L-train, and after an extensive waste of time, we ended up walking to the nearest Red Line station, which happened to be Fullerton.

I tried to make lemonade of the lemons life gave us, and said that at least they have a chance to see one more neighborhood, more upscale than mine, with beautiful houses. They immediately replied: Yes, the houses are beautiful, but there is not a single sign “Black Lives Matter”, or “Love is Love”, or “Hate has no home here!”

Love my neighborhood! Love my friends!