Alef Arendsen

The conference season is slowly getting started again. This is my schedule for the coming three to four months:

JavaZone: one of the biggest Java conference in the world is hosted in Oslo. I’m presenting a session provocatively titled ‘Spring == XML, XML == suck therefore Spring == sucks??’. That should be fun.

Straight after JavaZone I’m flying to Italy for a short weekend in Perloz. From there, I’m flying to Stockholm, to present at the SpringSource Seminar, co-hosted together with Jayway. I’m looking forward to meeting up with some old friends in Stockholm again!

October 8th, we’re hosting a similar SpringSource Seminar in Delft in the Netherlands. I’ll be presenting on the SpringSource Application Platform as well as the Spring Portfolio.

November 11th, we’ll probably be present at the NL-JUG fall gathering, probably hosted in ‘t Spant in Bussum again. I’m not sure if I’ll be presenting. Last time Iwein covered for me, so I might have to cover for him this time

The week thereafter, I’m in Malmø (if that’s how it’s spelled) for Øredev. I’ll be presenting on AOP there and am looking forward to meeting with Ben Alex again, who supposedly is going to be there too!

Then in the beginning of December I might have to go to Florida (ahhh, what a shame) for our bi-annual developer conference, the USA version this time. No details there yet.

Later in the month, I’ll also be traveling back to Israel (Tel Aviv) once more for JavaEdge, to which I’m really looking forward.

Now I’m pretty familiar to airlines. I’m traveling frequently, but there are also a few airlines out there that are customers of ours. And apart from that, I’ve visited one or two GDSs as well in the last few years. So I think I can say I’m familiar a little bit to the way airlines work, at least when it comes to ticketing. Everytime I come acros one of those strange reasonings of either one of the GDCs or the airline itself, again, I’m amazed.

This time it’s a ticket to Milan Malpensa. I need a ticket to Milan on the 21st of June and I’m probably using different means to getting back. This measn I only need a single ticket. At first I was searching for a return ticket as well, because I hadn’t thought of taking the car back.

Now the single ticket from Amterdam (AMS) to Milan Malpensa (MXP) with KLM is (through the KLM website) only available as a business class ticket, which would cost me around €1200,=.

Getting the same ticket going to MXP on the 21st of June, but flying back on the 28th (actually, I’ll not be flying back, but let’s just assume I do, to get a return ticket). is available for €200,=. In other words: a return ticket is way cheaper than a single ticket!

I guess I have to go through my travel agent again, to get me a ticket or so…

It’s been a while… I’ve been enjoying some fine holidays… Things all started when we finally got word about the elettricista being able to start installing electricity in our house in Italy around Queensday. Normally, I’d be at home for Queensday, ‘coz my house is located right in the district where the best (outdoor) partying is going on. Normally, I’d have arranged a few turntables, invited a few DJ friends of mine and started a party, but not this year.

Saturday, I was off to Milan. That night, we had a nice party in Plastic in Milan. Sunday, I traveled to Perloz, to start working with the electrician on Monday on the electricity. Things went quite smooth, as I had a friend over, speaking fluently Italian. This helped a lot of course.

This picture by the way shows the spring where we get our water from. The little metal tube you can see gets us water and the little whole next to it, has some shutters in it. From the spring, currently, there is no tubing to the house (well, partially, but it’s not connected). Later in the week, we also met with the tubista (plumber) to start investigating how to install hot water and to fix the tubing issue.

Margriet, this friend of mine, was invited by the Dutch consulate to join for a pre-Queensday party on Tuesday night. So Tuesday afternoon, we drove back to Milan to attend to this (quite formal) event. That was nice too… Thursday morning I drove back to Perloz, to meet with Lars and Pyke, for two more days of working at the house.

When I was there earlier in the week, the weather wasn’t very nice. This time round, it was 22 degrees, even at an altitude of 1150m (that’s where the house is). The cherry blossom was very nice…

Friday, I flew back to Amsterdam, to finish off the day at Margriet and Giorgio’s, where we had a few bottles of wine and some nasty Sicilian drink called Mirto or Nirto (I can’t exactly remember).

Saturday, I left for Greece. Only having left the airport 10 hours before, I was back at about noon, to join my sister-in-law, brother and two kids to fly to Lefkada. That’s where we met up with up with my parents, other brother and family and two friends of mine. We had rented two boats to take out on the Ionian Sea for a week.

The week flew by, unfortunately. We took the boats to Ithaka, Meganisi, Kalamos and lots of deserted nice litle bays, where the anchor settled the boat and allowed us to swim and relax. At one point, my dad (one ‘the other boat’) threw the anchor out in a place where it was very rocky. Now, if you know anything about anchoring, you shouldn’t do it in rocky places. The anchor got stuck and I had to release it at a depth of about 10 meters… Worked out fortunately, but because I forgot to clear, my ears hurt a bit after that… Traveling back, I had my little niece take my suitcase, which got me some nice pictures

Now I’m back home. I came back Saturday night, after which I had a BBQ at Margriet and Giorgio’s. Yesterday I had another BBQ at Martijn and Nicole’s so I’ve even seen some of my friends again. Tonight I’m off to Denmark for two days and today is all about preparing for that gig… Too bad, because I already got two phone calls from friends inviting me for a kite surfing session…

I was in Milan last weekend for the Salone del Mobile. Visiting the most important week for (furniture) design world-wide is a great way to get an idea what this industry is all about. A friend of mine is a project manager for many of the Dutch studios and arranges the locations and the logistics related to some of the expositions and parties and it was also nice to see what it al really meant she’s always talking about.

To give you an impression of some of the exhibitions, I’ve put some pictures up on the web. I saw a lot of cool furniture design, of which I found the light blubs by Pieke Bergmans one of the most impressive ones. These quick snapshots don’t communicate the whole thing very well, but it at least gives you an idea. More info on www.piekebergmans.com. Pieke Bergmans has more blub products but I like the lamps the best, especially the desk lamp.

Marcel Wanders, a famous Dutch designer had pieces exposed all over the fair and he had even designed his own cocktail with raspberry and rosemary for his own party, finally mixed by Bombay Saphire. I thought the presentation of his
lamp and cradle at the exhibition of ‘Poliform and Marcel Wanders’ was simply the best thing I saw at the entire exhibition. The atmosphere with the oversized lamp and the cradle was just too good to be true. According to play me design a baby was crawling around in the room while they were visiting. Unfortunately I didn’t see this, although without the baby it was still incredible.

Alissia Melka-Teichroew showed her two series of glasses, one called inside out and another, that in total fits a bottle of champagne. Pouring the champagne in the first-most glass will slowly fill the other glasses as well. At the moooi party we had a little chat and she appeared to be from Utrecht originally, the town I currently live in. There was a lot of cool stuff on display, including a ceramic. gramophone (phonograph) amplifying the sound of an iPod, by connecting the earbuds to it. It works completely without electricity. Classy! You can get it through Charles and Marie.

Another interesting place was Maarten Baas’ Milanese ’studio’. His exhibition was pretty much modeled after his studio and was located in a garage. He had a few very interesting new pieces, of which I thought the Sculpt desk was the best. The Chankley Bore was another very interesting piece, done in assignment for Established & Sons.

Other than that, we had a good deal of parties as well… On Thursday night there was a party organized by moooi. Friday night we went to a club called Plastic and Saturday night we had dinner with Giorgio’s nonno, who in the meantime turned 96. We had fun!

[update: added URL to Charles and Marie.com]

The title really says it all: home sweet home… I never knew it would feel that true once in my life (pffff, this really sounds like I’m getting old ).

Anyway, after three weeks travel in a row, I finally get to spend a little bit of time in Holland. I was in Stockholm first, in Malta after that where I had a fabulous time with the guys (and girls) I trained at a client of ours. Last week I was in Malmo, which was also great.

I’m at home now, spending the week in Holland. Unfortunately it’s not an easy week though. This week, I’ve got a class as well and on Friday I’m speaking at the Profict Wintercamp to which I’m really looking forward. Straight after that event I’m heading over to Cairo, where I’m speaking at the 2008 Java Developer Conference organized by JUG leader Ahmed Hashim. I’m also really looking forward to being there (not to the travel though ).

After that I’m going to be at home for a week. End of March will get to me Israel after which there’s going to be 10 days of Italy spread over 3 weeks.

This morning I left at about 8am for Schiphol airport to fly to Malta, via Milano Malpensa. I had to stay in Milan for about 3 hours, but I didn’t really mind. Getting a good Italian lunch is never a punishment. At the check-in desk in Amsterdam I only got my ticket for the first leg and didn’t think about asking my ticket for the second leg.

On the way, we heard that there was major trouble at Milan Malpensa, because of fog. Arriving at Milan, I immediately proceeded to the transfer, to find about 100 people, not in such a good mood. Apparently, the whole airport had been closed down for about 2 hours because of the fog. I queued up for about 10 minutes during which, nothing really happened. I figured I was going to be smart, by simply exiting the airpot all together (at least, passing passport control), and proceeding to the check-in (ordinary check-in, not the transfer desk).

That was a bit of a mistake. Whereas at the transfer desk, I found about 100 people, in the main hall of terminal 1, there was at least a thousand all standing in line. I tried to sneak my way into the queue in middle, but people didn’t really like that.

Now we have a saying in Dutch that says: ‘Tom Poes verzin een list’. Tom Poes is a creation of Dutch comic artist Marten Toonder (Tom is a Dutch first name, Poes means cat, or pussy). ‘Tom Poes vezin een list’ can be translated as ‘Quickly, think of a ruse’, at least, according to Wikipedia.

I regularly think to myself: Tom Poes verzin een list! That always helps. This time as well. I proceeded to the gates and had to go through passport control. A lady stopped me and told me I had to go back to get my boarding pass. I did have an e-ticket receipt though and that’s what I used to brag my way in. I told her I exited security because I needed to go outside (now, I didn’t need to go outside, oh well…) and I forgot to pick up my boarding pass at the transfer desk. This (fortunately) did the trick. Otherwise I would never have made it to my flight again.

Again, I arrived at the transfer desk, which was now manned by only one service employee (you gotta love ‘em, those Italians ). Things went relatively quickly though and after say 20 minutes, I walked out of there with my boarding pass.

It fortunately wasn’t too late to get a bit of espresso and a slice of pizza (I had figured I should get some decent lunch, but well, this wasn’t too bad after all) and at 2.40pm my flight to Malta left. I’m here now in a hotel by the sea, with the waves crashing into the shores… So far so good

UPDATE: please don’t think I didn’t have a fun time at Malpensa and also don’t think I hate Italy . I love Italy in fact, it’s just a little disorganized at times, as Andrea says in the comments. But well, if the weather is always nice, if there’s plenty of food and if people get old without being organized, why bother huh . Sure enough, a little more organization would be great of course…