I knew the jet lag would catch up with me eventually. Figures it would be the night before my return to the bay area.
It’s midnight local time here in Oslo, and the sky still isn’t dark. And I’m not tired at all. My flight leaves in a little under 7 hours, and I figure I’ll need to get up in 5.
*sigh*
Everything is so green and lush here. I suppose it’s not hard to understand why, when you’ve got close to 20 hours between sunrise and sunset.
I’m sitting at a table just outside the Suppe Bar, eating my Jordbaeryoghurt & musli. It’s a bright, cloudless day. Yogurt, I’m eating yogurt. I hate yogurt. Who have I become in this place?
This trip is just a series of flashes, a series of still images with no continuity. It’s almost like living through memory. I remember things as they’re happening to me.
As we walked back to the apartment last night from Charlie’s at 2am, watching the sun rise, it occurred to me that at no time during the day do I have any idea what time it is. Between the jet lag, the whacky daylight hours, and the fact that two out of three timepieces I have access to are still showing SF time, I’m lost.
It also occurred to me that usually I have absolutely no idea of where I am at any given moment. I’ve looked at a map exactly one time. I know the way to the conference from the apartment, but I doubt I could find my way back.
We walk a lot here. Our normal day consists of 3 30-45 minute walks. A triangle, from apartment to conference, from conference to downtown, from downtown to home. I walk pretty fast here because I want to get to the conference for a talk, I’m freezing and want to get home, I’m hungry and dinner is far away, or I desperately need to pee (this happened Monday night. Thank the lord for “Cafe.Com” and their smelly bathroom.)
I haven’t spent much time socializing online for the past few days. Mostly because half the people I normally socialize with are all here, in person. The other reason is that all the people at home are generally still in bed when I leave for dinner. Lack of a working cell phone and no net connection at the apartment… ah well, I miss my pals.
I leave tonight at 8:20pm local time. I spend the evening at the Oslo airport hotel, then leave for Paris at 6:55. I’m expecting another sprint from one end of CDG to the other, which will involve me missing my connection by 5 minutes, and another 7 hour layover. Hopefully I’ll actually make it home tomorrow.
This post feels very disconnected. Paragraphs not exactly following one another. Reading it makes me think that even if I fail to communicate my head space with the content, the style should do a good job.
I arrived to the ticket counter at SFO less than an hour before my flight was to take off. There was noone else there, just a stern looking French woman and a dark curly haired man.
“Why are you so late?” she asked me as I walked up.
“Uh.. Long term parking.. I waited for 30 minutes for the bus…”
“You’re from San Francisco and you’re this late? *sigh*”
“I’m… sorry?”
For an instant I was afraid she’d say it was too late - that I’d missed the flight, and I should just go home. I got on the plane with about 15 minutes to spare, and took my seat (46H).
A few minutes later a woman stood next to me and informed me when I glanced up at her that I was in her seat. I looked up and sure enough, 47H. I let her sit, and moved up a row to find my seat taken by a French boy no older than 16, the spitting image of Harry Potter. I said he was in my seat, and he said he was only sitting there because this other fellow, a short bald round man with a slightly hooked nose, was in *his* seat. We looked at him questioningly and he dug around in his bags looking for his boarding pass. It eventually surfaced and he showed it to us. It said 46K. I said “oh, that’s right over here.” He got up and moved across the aisle and took the window seat - 46L. Harry Potter took his seat, and I slid into the aisle seat, my home for the next 9 hours and 40 minutes. Just after I sat down, a a girl stopped at row 46 and looked at her boarding pass and then at the short man and told him that he was in her seat. Such a difficult little man.
They played two movies on the flight, both of which I’d already seen, and both of which were horrible. Welcome to Mooseport, and Cheaper by the Dozen. I felt obligated to watch both, as I didn’t want to completely kill my eyes reading and figured they’d put me to sleep. Nope. No sleep for me.
I’m writing to you now from Charles De Gaulle. Sitting outside gate 54, terminal 2D. We landed at about 11:15. I stood around waiting a long time to deplane (I was, after all, in row 46). Walked down the stairs after getting off the the plane, and got on the bus that would take me from the plane to terminal 2C. Then a short walk to 2D and my waiting flight.
Noone told me (and obviously noone told the travel agent) that it can take upwards of 45 minutes to make that bus ride + walk. And that’s if you know where you’re going. I think I got to where I needed to be after about an hour. I walked up to the waiting gate attendant and she looked very sorry.
I then spent about an hour waiting in line at the transfer counter. I got up to the counter and the woman there informed me that there were no more seats on flights to Oslo today, and that she would put me on standby for the 7pm flight. The next flight with available seats was tomorrow morning. She was busy doing something for a few seconds and then said “oh, someone else has already made the reservation for you - you are confirmed on the 7pm flight.”
Of course, this will put me into Oslo at ~9pm, and my Oslo/Kristiansand flight was supposed to leave at 4:50pm. I’m not even sure if they have flights running that late.
A girl that looks like Elly just walked past me. I glanced up, and she was staring at me as she passed The hair gets a lot more weird looks here than in SF. She was walking with her father. She stopped him a few paces past me, and they both turned around, staring at me while talking. I wish I knew French.
I know where the buildings are.. I see them when I drive up and down 101. I know the direction I should travel to get to them, but maps.yahoo.com told me I should travel in the other direction. Now, not having much experience driving on surface roads on the penninsula, I deferred to yahoo. Maybe there’s some weird loop thing that happens somewhere west of 101, I don’t know.
After about 5 minutes driving in the wrong direction, looking for a turnoff that should have been 0.1 miles away from the exit, I called up Peter and had him bring up a map of the area. Sure enough, travelling the wrong way. I told the person I was meeting (after apologizing for arriving 10 minutes late) the directions yahoo had suggested, and he said “oh god, yeah that’s totally wrong.”
fun.
It’s been 5 years since I’ve had to interview, and that last one consisted of about ~5 people (that I already knew, and including my then-girlfriend) sitting around on a couch with me, and then walking with me to get coffee at Chatz. Tough interview..
It’s been 8 years since my last serious Silicon Valley, 8 hour interview.
It’s just like riding a bike, though, right?
