Archives for October 2007

Singapore is such an amazing city. It's unique in very many ways. It is both multi-lingual (English and Chinese are both official languages) and mutli-cultural, with Chinese, Malaysian, and India populations plus Europeans. Chinese is the majority ethnicity, but I didn't meet a single person, from cab-drivers to business people, who didn't speak English. In fact, most people watch American television programs and listen to American pop radio. (The view from the Quest Software offices at right.)It's an extremely wealthy city with modern high-rises everywhere. (I sometimes wondered if it's … [Read more...]

After Sydney, I headed out to speak at Charles Sturt University in the teaming metropolis of Wagga Wagga. It's about the size of Pulaski Tennessee and in the middle of BFE, in other words, the Australian outback aka "the bush". The airport at Wagga (they don't say it's 2nd Wagga for some reason) shown at right is about as big as a large IHOP or Shoney's and attended by the same sorts of people. In the picture at right, you can see a BOGAN kid in the foreground wearing the uniform of his favorite Aussie Rules team and the big Aussie rules football. It's a fun game to watch and, much to my … [Read more...]

Everyone recognizes the world famous Sydney opera house. I consider myself a lucky duck to have taken a harbor ride right next to the darned thing. The only thing that could be cooler than seeing a world famous landmark is to see a world famous landmark in the arms of someone you love. (sigh...) I was really fortunate to be able to dine with several friends from Quest - James Delve, Prasant Moorthy, and Vanessa Barcellona. We road a JetCat from the pier right next to the Opera House out to Manly, a very posh suburb of Sydney. There, we ate at a very good restaurant called "Ribs & Rumps" … [Read more...]

As Florida is to us Southerners, so Brisbane is to Australians. It's the fun, sunny, beach-laden place to go for a vacation. It's also hot and humid as can be.Brisbane was one of the original penal colonies that the Brits set up to house convicts from England back in the day. Now, it's a beautiful and thriving city. To the left is a picture of the Story Bridge, one of only three bridges of this size that can be walked across on the very top girders (with a tour guide and carabiner lines for safety). You can also make out the "CityCat" high-speed ferry boat that's plying the river. I only had … [Read more...]

I had the pleasure of flying in to the rather quiet and small of capital, Canberra, on a sunny and warm spring day. (Don't forget that the seasons are reversed south of the equator. That means spring is in October and fall starts in April.) Upon arriving, I got to see a one person protest that Australia hadn't yet signed the Kyoto Accord for global warming as well as the buildings of state. The following morning (today), I spoke to a a crowd of about 50 about SQL Server performance tuning, benchmarking, and best practices. I really enjoyed the folks there and met many interesting people. My … [Read more...]

Tomorrow, I leave for almost two weeks of business in Australia, the land Down Under. I be delivering a series of seminars about SQL Server in most of the major cities around the country.After about 20 hours of travel, I arrive in Melbourne and then make subsequent stops in Brisbane, Canberra, Sydney, Wagga Wagga, and then back to Melbourne. After these stops, I visit Singapore for two days and then return home via Tokyo, Japan. Whew! I'm tired just thinking about it. If you're looking for a sense of scale, the country is very nearly as large as the lower 48 states of the USA. Cheers, -Kev … [Read more...]