Oracle OpenWorld 2015 : The Journey Begins

The day started at 05:30, which was not much different to normal, so that was good. A quick taxi ride to the airport was followed by a 1 hour sleep on the floor next to the departure gate. It’s wonderful having no shame. 🙂

The first flight from Birmingham to Frankfurt was about 80 minutes and it was fairly straight forward. I had a 2 hour layover before the next flight, so there was no real drama there. I ended up boarding as the last person in the last boarding group. 🙂 I tried to buy a business upgrade, but it was going to cost $2500, so screw that.

The United flight from Frankfurt to San Francisco was about 11.5 hours and a little annoying.

• The plane interior was a really old refit. It was pretty terrible compared almost every other airline I’ve been on in the last few years.
• The “entertainment system” was one of those old shared screen things, not a personal system, so you had to watch the same thing as everyone else.
• The shared screen froze for a few seconds every 5 minutes or so, which kind of ruins your suspended disbelief.
• My special meal was “missing” again. I mean, come on!

It’s hard to believe it’s 2015 when you are on a United plane. 🙂 Luckily, the staff were really nice. There was one lady doing her last flight after 46 years of service. Awesome!

We landed a little late. Getting though US customs was actually pretty quick, which makes a change. I took the hotel shuttle with Osama, Gurcan, Simon, Cary and Arup, who all converged from different flights.

After getting to the hotel, I dumped my stuff and went to the gym. It’s the new me. 🙂 After getting changed, I went down to the bar for a few minutes to say hello to some people, then headed off to bed by about 22:00 local time.

Allowing for the time difference, I think that’s about 24 hours from bed to bed. 🙂 Tomorrow is the first day of the ACE Director Briefing!

Cheers

Tim…

Author: Tim...

DBA, Developer, Author, Trainer. View all posts by Tim...