Last Saturday I became father to a baby girl - in addition to our 2½year old son.
Those of you who are my former collagues from MySQL, you know about the generous Scandinavian 5 week vacations. (Which in MySQL were practiced globally.) I have decided that now is a good time for me to enjoy another Scandinavian perk: long paternity leave. I will be home with the rest of the family until approximately next February :-)
From Sunday 11.4.2010 to Thursday 22.4.2010, I used my Twitter account @kajarno to send
(not counting direct replies) of which a clear majority (but not all) were of a volcanic nature.
Most Swedish readers can follow German and English too, and most German readers also follow English. Hence the large number of English tweets and the larger number of German tweets.
Here’s a subset of the English tweets. The dates and times are local (California 9 h different from Munich; Chicago 7 h different).
Thursday 15.4.2010
Five days of uncertainty, trapped far away from home by an Icelandic volcano, provide plenty of time to think. Here is my attempt at drawing conclusions the day after returning home: partly on a personal level, partly on a general human level, partly on a societal level.
To recap what has happened: Ten minutes before the intended boarding time of LH459 from San Francisco home to Munich, I got an SMS about the flight being cancelled. This was Thursday 15.4.2010 at 20:20. Thereafter I lived in uncertainty in airport hotels, most of the time 40 km south of San Francisco, to finally arrive home five days later than plan on Wednesday 21.4.2010 at 13:00..
Personal conclusion
Conclusion 1: Uncertainty and losing freedom are hard to cope …
[Read more]This blog post is just to list links and tips on getting home to Finland.
First leg: getting to anywhere in Europe
Being stuck in San Fransisco, my first problem has been to get just anywhere closer to home. Taking a boat from America to Europe takes from 6-15 days and is not significantly cheaper than flying. So the best bet is just to fly to Europe.
A friend just emailed some suggestions what to do while stuck in SF:
20+ campfires on Ocean Beach ------------------------------------------------- A fun thing to do any Friday or Saturday night after about 8pm until after midnight is go to Ocean Beach where hundreds of people make 20+ campfires (folks are friendly -- just walk up and introduce yourself and join some group's campfire or walk between many -- bring some beer or snacks to share if you want to). This beach is at the intersection of Great Highway and Fulton street, San Francisco
If you are a MySQL conference attendee who cannot get back home to Europe, you can find other fellow MySQLrs at this page on MySQL forge. Please use it as a central hub to organize gettogethers like dinners. Or why not take the opportunity for a hackathon?
As for myself, my BA flight is canceled and there is no way to even rebook (160 minute waiting line to call BA). I will have my travel agent rebook the flight on Monday European business hours. Until then, I'm stuck indefinitely in California.