Rabat, Casablanca, Marrakech
I cannot believe it's been a week since I left the U.S. My original flights were SFO -> Dulles -> Paris -> Rabat, scheduled to leave Monday morning. At 9am Sunday morning I tried to check in and discovered the first two were definitely cancelled because of the hurricane. I had my phone on hold with United for six hours and Bob's phone on hold with Oracle travel for about three, and it disconnected twice before I got through. The agent said she put a bunch of alternative itineraries on my ticket, but they had to be approved by United and she couldn't get through either so she told me my best shot was to go stand in line in the international terminal, since the best option was SFO -> Munich via Lufthansa and then I would have enough time to take the train to Paris to catch the flight to Rabat. I stood in line for about an hour, and then the agent absolutely refused to even look up my itinerary since my original flight was via Dulles, and sent me to domestic. After another 90 minutes or so (may be longer) I finally make it to domestic and they told me that my Lufthansa itinerary had been approved, but I was standing in line so long that I missed the plane. So off to Chicago I went. I think we left at 11pm and got in around 5am local time. I didn't sleep at all on the plane and decided that Larry Ellison could afford to pay the day rate for the Hilton at O'Hare. I got about six hours of sleep and then futzed around online. I got really lucky on the flight to Paris. I had paid for an economy plus upgrade on the original flight so they gave it to me for this one. Given all the cancellations from the hurricane I expected it to be packed, but I ended up with three seats in a row to myself. Four hour layover at CDG where I had to exit the airport and re-enter and do security again to catch the plane to Rabat. My hotel sent a car (thank Larry) to pick me up and it was another 30 minutes in the rain to get to the Sofitel. Very nice hotel.
I had nothing to do on Wednesday, which was nice. I like having a cushion day to help with the time change. Badr called and offered to take me to lunch with Faissal, and I happily accepted. Badr and Faissal run the Morocco Java User Group, and are the ones trying to get this new conference going, which is why I was here (google JMaghreb if you care to see what we're doing here). They are both in their late 20s, engineers, really really nice guys that I've known for a couple of years. Generally excellent hosts. We went to a locals-only place for lunch which was great. They dropped me back at the hotel and I was on my own for dinner. The price escalation for tourists is insane. Right now 100 dhiram is about $11. My lunch was a good chicken panini (they were out of tajine?) fries, and a coke for 42 dhiram. My dinner at the hotel was a lamb tajine and a chicken/almond pastry thing for 600 dhiram. It was very good to be sure, but the gouging here goes way beyond what it does even in India.
Thursday morning I was up at 5 to take a two hour taxi ride to Casablanca for Oracle Day. Oracle Days are boring as all fuck. A bunch of suits talking marketing-weasel speak (this time in French!) and me doing one Java presentation in English. There is this weird snobbery internally at O about O's database products vs. Java. The Java/Sun folks are basically second class citizens and I had to fight hard to come here at all. The suits think nobody is interested or serious here about Java. We proved them wrong. About a hundred people showed up for O-Day, my talk was the very last one, and started 90 minutes after it was supposed to end, and I still had 14 people in the room, which was more than I expected, honestly. This was a throwaway day to see what was happening. I met up with a woman I've been emailing work stuff back and forth with for ages - her name is Nina and she is Bosnian but lives in Holland. I had no idea what to expect. She is bad bad bad influence in the most fun way, most of the time. The talks were all in french so we snuck out to the old city and walked around the bazaar for a while, not intending to shop, just fending off vendors. We had a blast got lost, got found, had a nice lunch and then rejoined the show.
After my talk was done Badr came to pick us up and his phone rang as we were walking out of the hotel. Some asshole exec from Cairo decided 36 hours before the event that his keynote for JMaghreb wasn't worth doing (who cares about Java anyway?), and Badr and Nina both just looked at me. OH HOLY HELL. I was going to do my usual community session and then hang out at the booth and hand out swag for JMaghreb. Now I was the headline speaker from Oracle. I sent out an email to everyone I could think of back home begging for their JavaOne slide decks so I could put together a presentation. Within a few hours I had 9 decks to choose from, and I worked like crazy all day and late into the night to get the thing put together, practiced deliery and timings in front of the mirror, barely slept from nerves.
500 people who do care about Java showed up for the conference, which is an absolutely astounding turnout for a firstyear program. I am enjoying rubbing it in with the suits. :) After all the work I put into that slide deck, the projector didn't work when it was time to start. I ended up basically miming the thing - talking from my script on the laptop and pointing to the empty screen saying "imagine a java logo here.." Fortunately the audience had a sense of humor about the whole thing. I went straight from there to my other session which went really well. I was ready to just hang out in the booth the rest of the day but a group asked me to come sit on a panel for another session so I did that too. This is by far the most time I've ever spent on stage at one of these things.
It all went pretty well, considering. I went back to the hotel and took a nap before dinner. Badr took all the speakers out to dinner and then to a "cafe" - which is Morocco-speak for a bar/dance club. Morroccan long island iced teas are even more dangerous than american ones. I got back to my room after 2am and agreed to meet Badr for breakfast at 10 this morning, and he would drop me off at the train station for Marrakech at 11. That all went to plan, but then everything else derailed.
It has been a crazy crazy day. So I misunderstood Badr, or he was just plain wrong, and me having a bit of a hangover didn't help. I was sitting at the wrong track and missed my train. I finally got on the right one around 2:15. Got into Marrakech around 7:15. Something happened on the opposite side of the train from me about 10 minutes out from Marrakech - huge bang and the window shattered - it was safety glass and there were two impact points. I don't know if someone shot at the train (we were out in the countryside) or if the train kicked up a rock somehow. The window sagged in but didn't fall out of the frame. I'm pretty sure it was gunshots though - security came through and closed all the curtains on the train and they were pissed. I was sitting next to a young muslim woman and she was terrified. She didn't speak any english, but we had been friendly and had shared snacks from the vendor all afternoon. She grabbed my hand and didn't let go until we got off the train.
I was not in a good frame of mind when we got here. The station at Marrakech is completely modern and very very nice, and it was a total zoo of locals, tourists, guides, vendors selling chinese-made tourist crap. I totally bullshitted a cabbie by acting like I knew more French than I do, and lied and said it was my third time here and handed him a card with the name and address of the place I booked. I don't think I would have had the balls to pull that off if I didn't have the two India trips under my belt. Both the place I booked and the place I ended up are in the middle of the medina - the original walled city of Marrakech. There are no cars here - it's all narrow winding passageways 4-6 feet wide and sometimes as low as 5 feet in the arches, so the taxi dropped me off at the outer edge and a teenager came up to the car and asked me where I needed to go. It was full dark by then, and I'll admit I was more than a little freaked out. I made him show me the street signs where we were going - there is absolutely no way I could have done it by myself. 10 minute walk to the place I booked. When I got there they said Lonely Planet had no contact info for me and they had overbooked and were moving me to this place. I didn't know WTF was going on, so I asked for the name/address of the new place so I could tell "my local friend where to meet me in the morning". I'm getting good at travel BS. :) I figured it was safest to make a show of emailing Badr and cc'ing Bob and Dawn. It was a very nice looking place, and they were very apologetic. They sat me in a central patio and gave me a bottle of water while I was waiting.
The new place sent a guy over and it was about a twenty minute walk (he was moving FAST, I'm hurting a bit) to the new place through the medina. I sat in another patio for about an hour while they took my stuff to my room and did the paperwork. While I waited they brought me tea and little dishes of almonds, raisins, and biscotti. That's dinner for tonight. I don't have the energy for anything else. This new place is gorgeous. (google riad Al Jazira Marrakech for pics.) Bigger than the first one, and I have a nicer room with a double bed instead of a twin. The room is actually on three different levels - double doors to walk in and there's a bed in an alcove, and a daybed/couch thing with a bunch of cushions, then up a few stairs to the sink and a big open walk in shower, and then up another few steps to the toilet.
My friend Dawn's husband is Moroccan and he has a cousin who owns a travel agency here, and Simon has told them I'm coming, so I sent him a note and we'll see what happens next. I'm so tired I might just stay in the riad all day tomorrow. They have three beautiful open patios, one with a pool, one more like a living room with a TV (where I am now, and where the wifi seems best), and another one where all the ashtrays are.
Everything has worked out well and I feel very safe here - it's quiet, but there are a bunch of different people staying here and the host has been perfectly polite and friendly. I hope tomorrow is a lot less exciting.
I had nothing to do on Wednesday, which was nice. I like having a cushion day to help with the time change. Badr called and offered to take me to lunch with Faissal, and I happily accepted. Badr and Faissal run the Morocco Java User Group, and are the ones trying to get this new conference going, which is why I was here (google JMaghreb if you care to see what we're doing here). They are both in their late 20s, engineers, really really nice guys that I've known for a couple of years. Generally excellent hosts. We went to a locals-only place for lunch which was great. They dropped me back at the hotel and I was on my own for dinner. The price escalation for tourists is insane. Right now 100 dhiram is about $11. My lunch was a good chicken panini (they were out of tajine?) fries, and a coke for 42 dhiram. My dinner at the hotel was a lamb tajine and a chicken/almond pastry thing for 600 dhiram. It was very good to be sure, but the gouging here goes way beyond what it does even in India.
Thursday morning I was up at 5 to take a two hour taxi ride to Casablanca for Oracle Day. Oracle Days are boring as all fuck. A bunch of suits talking marketing-weasel speak (this time in French!) and me doing one Java presentation in English. There is this weird snobbery internally at O about O's database products vs. Java. The Java/Sun folks are basically second class citizens and I had to fight hard to come here at all. The suits think nobody is interested or serious here about Java. We proved them wrong. About a hundred people showed up for O-Day, my talk was the very last one, and started 90 minutes after it was supposed to end, and I still had 14 people in the room, which was more than I expected, honestly. This was a throwaway day to see what was happening. I met up with a woman I've been emailing work stuff back and forth with for ages - her name is Nina and she is Bosnian but lives in Holland. I had no idea what to expect. She is bad bad bad influence in the most fun way, most of the time. The talks were all in french so we snuck out to the old city and walked around the bazaar for a while, not intending to shop, just fending off vendors. We had a blast got lost, got found, had a nice lunch and then rejoined the show.
After my talk was done Badr came to pick us up and his phone rang as we were walking out of the hotel. Some asshole exec from Cairo decided 36 hours before the event that his keynote for JMaghreb wasn't worth doing (who cares about Java anyway?), and Badr and Nina both just looked at me. OH HOLY HELL. I was going to do my usual community session and then hang out at the booth and hand out swag for JMaghreb. Now I was the headline speaker from Oracle. I sent out an email to everyone I could think of back home begging for their JavaOne slide decks so I could put together a presentation. Within a few hours I had 9 decks to choose from, and I worked like crazy all day and late into the night to get the thing put together, practiced deliery and timings in front of the mirror, barely slept from nerves.
500 people who do care about Java showed up for the conference, which is an absolutely astounding turnout for a firstyear program. I am enjoying rubbing it in with the suits. :) After all the work I put into that slide deck, the projector didn't work when it was time to start. I ended up basically miming the thing - talking from my script on the laptop and pointing to the empty screen saying "imagine a java logo here.." Fortunately the audience had a sense of humor about the whole thing. I went straight from there to my other session which went really well. I was ready to just hang out in the booth the rest of the day but a group asked me to come sit on a panel for another session so I did that too. This is by far the most time I've ever spent on stage at one of these things.
It all went pretty well, considering. I went back to the hotel and took a nap before dinner. Badr took all the speakers out to dinner and then to a "cafe" - which is Morocco-speak for a bar/dance club. Morroccan long island iced teas are even more dangerous than american ones. I got back to my room after 2am and agreed to meet Badr for breakfast at 10 this morning, and he would drop me off at the train station for Marrakech at 11. That all went to plan, but then everything else derailed.
It has been a crazy crazy day. So I misunderstood Badr, or he was just plain wrong, and me having a bit of a hangover didn't help. I was sitting at the wrong track and missed my train. I finally got on the right one around 2:15. Got into Marrakech around 7:15. Something happened on the opposite side of the train from me about 10 minutes out from Marrakech - huge bang and the window shattered - it was safety glass and there were two impact points. I don't know if someone shot at the train (we were out in the countryside) or if the train kicked up a rock somehow. The window sagged in but didn't fall out of the frame. I'm pretty sure it was gunshots though - security came through and closed all the curtains on the train and they were pissed. I was sitting next to a young muslim woman and she was terrified. She didn't speak any english, but we had been friendly and had shared snacks from the vendor all afternoon. She grabbed my hand and didn't let go until we got off the train.
I was not in a good frame of mind when we got here. The station at Marrakech is completely modern and very very nice, and it was a total zoo of locals, tourists, guides, vendors selling chinese-made tourist crap. I totally bullshitted a cabbie by acting like I knew more French than I do, and lied and said it was my third time here and handed him a card with the name and address of the place I booked. I don't think I would have had the balls to pull that off if I didn't have the two India trips under my belt. Both the place I booked and the place I ended up are in the middle of the medina - the original walled city of Marrakech. There are no cars here - it's all narrow winding passageways 4-6 feet wide and sometimes as low as 5 feet in the arches, so the taxi dropped me off at the outer edge and a teenager came up to the car and asked me where I needed to go. It was full dark by then, and I'll admit I was more than a little freaked out. I made him show me the street signs where we were going - there is absolutely no way I could have done it by myself. 10 minute walk to the place I booked. When I got there they said Lonely Planet had no contact info for me and they had overbooked and were moving me to this place. I didn't know WTF was going on, so I asked for the name/address of the new place so I could tell "my local friend where to meet me in the morning". I'm getting good at travel BS. :) I figured it was safest to make a show of emailing Badr and cc'ing Bob and Dawn. It was a very nice looking place, and they were very apologetic. They sat me in a central patio and gave me a bottle of water while I was waiting.
The new place sent a guy over and it was about a twenty minute walk (he was moving FAST, I'm hurting a bit) to the new place through the medina. I sat in another patio for about an hour while they took my stuff to my room and did the paperwork. While I waited they brought me tea and little dishes of almonds, raisins, and biscotti. That's dinner for tonight. I don't have the energy for anything else. This new place is gorgeous. (google riad Al Jazira Marrakech for pics.) Bigger than the first one, and I have a nicer room with a double bed instead of a twin. The room is actually on three different levels - double doors to walk in and there's a bed in an alcove, and a daybed/couch thing with a bunch of cushions, then up a few stairs to the sink and a big open walk in shower, and then up another few steps to the toilet.
My friend Dawn's husband is Moroccan and he has a cousin who owns a travel agency here, and Simon has told them I'm coming, so I sent him a note and we'll see what happens next. I'm so tired I might just stay in the riad all day tomorrow. They have three beautiful open patios, one with a pool, one more like a living room with a TV (where I am now, and where the wifi seems best), and another one where all the ashtrays are.
Everything has worked out well and I feel very safe here - it's quiet, but there are a bunch of different people staying here and the host has been perfectly polite and friendly. I hope tomorrow is a lot less exciting.