speaking

Singapore, Melbourne, and the Emergency Room

So many trips to document! After a quiet January settling back in Sydney, in February I headed to Singapore to help deliver the opening and closing keynotes for AWS Innovate AIML edition.

I headed into the office to meet with a few colleagues. The view is pretty nice…

For the keynotes, we were going to stream them live from a greenscreen studio. I headed over early in the morning for hair and makeup, where I found a special surprise waiting: my colleague Ethan had created a special t-shirt with me wearing my AWS dress!

How cute is that?? We spent a very long day of finalising the content, rehearsing, and pre-recording a dress rehearsal. That night, I headed out to Brewerks in Clarke Quay for dinner. Singapore is such a pretty city.

I had a very early start the next day for the actual live stream. It went really well. Thanks to Ethan and my awesome co-host Dean for making everything so fun!

The weather wasn’t great in Singapore that week, but I did manage to work by the pool for a few hours.

I also attended the AWS Singapore meetup one night, which we held in our offices. Massive turnout, and a really great evening of talks.

The next day, I met up with the two members of my team based in Singapore – Cathy and Donnie!

We also hosted a dinner for some of the AWS Community members in Singapore: AWS Heroes, AWS Community Builders, and user group leaders.

On my very last night, I went out for dinner with my good buddy Gabe and his wife Alex. They took me to a local place that was super crowded, insanely tasty, and so cheap. Singaporeans are spoiled for food, I tell ya.

It was a quick trip – just a week – but it was great getting to catch up with all these folks!

A couple weeks later, the Snook and I both flew to Melbourne where I’d be delivering the closing talk of ServerlessDays ANZ.

We made it just in time to attend the speakers’ dinner that night, and then had a lovely walk back along the Yarra.

The next day was the conference. The venue at Federation Square was gorgeous! My buddies Lars Klint and Pete Hanssens were on the organising committee and kicked things off.

Great crowd!

Here are some of the amazing other speakers! The talks are all up on YouTube.

My session was the last one of the day…

Thankfully it went realy well and I was happy that it was so well received! Thanks to my colleagues Paul, Stephen, Gregor, and Derek for all their help with the event.

After the conference, we all headed to a nearby bar for the afterparty…

The next morning we headed out into the city to be tourists. We mooched around the Queen Victoria Markets and enjoyed the sunshine. The hot weather helped us justify stopping off at Brick Lane Shed for a sneaky beer!

We also had a late lunch of some very tasty bagels from Bowery to Williamsburg.

We had a plan to meet someone at ACMI but had some time to kill, so we decided to check out the “Story of the Moving Image” exhibition.

Then we headed up to the lab to meet my friend J Rosenbaum and check out their fascinating new artwork Gender Tapestry. We took selfies that were uploaded and featured in some of the creepy generated faces.

That night, the Snook – a notorious hater of musicals – gave me a lovely birthday present of attending & Juliet with me. (It helped that I told him all the songs were from the catalogue of Max Martin, Swedish Pop producer extraordinaire!)

I LOVED IT. It’s a retelling of Romeo and Juliet with loads of pop song mash-ups, a gay romance, great costumes, fantastic dancing, and Rob “Millsy” Mills as Shakespeare. I mean, WAS THIS WRITTEN FOR ME?!

Afterwards, we headed to trendy Bar Ampere for dinner and cocktails.

On our last day, we headed down to St. Kilda to enjoy the sunshine and check out the markets.

We were delighted to discover the nearby St. Kilda Community Gardens. Lovely place!

We went for a walk along the beach. I always think of the line from the Paul Kelly song – “Where the palm trees have it hard.”

We finished our trip with a spot of furniture browsing in Collingwood followed by beers at The Craft & Co.

And that’s where it would have ended, a nice ending to the weekend… except for a little accident on the way back to the hotel. Here’s how I described it to my sister:

So Rodd and I were briefly walking back to our hotel in Melbourne so we could head to the airport. Down one of the busiest shopping streets, people everywhere.
I walk over, like, a manhole or something.
And my left foot lands crookedly
And I start stumbling forward
And I can’t get my feet under me
And it’s like slow motion, and I’m like, yep, I’m going down. 😂
And rather than try to land on my knees or my hands, perhaps sensing that I could risk breaking something that way, instead I face plant.
Literally belly flop on the pavement, taking the brunt of the fall on my boobs.
The Asian couple in front of me were like horrified “ARE YOU OKAY?!?”
And Rodd helped me up and I’m okay
Skinned my elbow a tiny bit
But I suspect my chest is gonna hurt tomorrow.
So that’s me. Still falling on my face, as a grown-ass adult.

Over the course of the next week, my chest started to feel increasingly sore. I didn’t have any visible bruising, but sleeping on my left side was impossible and it got harder and harder to breathe. Finally I started to get worried that something was really wrong, so we headed to the hospital.

A few hours and a couple X-rays and an EKG later, they confirmed that I wasn’t having a heart attack. The doctor couldn’t rule out a cracked rib, but didn’t see one on the X-ray. The only thing I could do was wait until it stopped hurting, which took a few more weeks. In retrospect, seems likely that it was a case of costochondritis, where the cartilage between the ribs gets inflamed. I’m super grateful to the Australian health care system and the doctors for helping me rule out anything more serious! (Oh, and it didn’t cost me anything. 😅)

Paris and Luxembourg

At the end of November I had a couple work commitments a week apart in Paris and Luxembourg, so we decided to combine them into a single trip – the last and biggest of our time in Europe. (I suspect it’ll also be the longest blog post!) ❤️

We kicked off with a very early (6:45am!) Sunday morning TGV train from Munich.

We bought coffee and pastries to have breakfast on the train, and we just relaxed and watched the scenery as the sun came up.

By 10:30am we were crossing the Rhine into France.

The train had been moving pretty fast through Germany, but you could definitely tell when we crossed over and started really moving. (That’s about 200mph.)

The French countryside is very pretty.

We arrived at Gare de l’Est around 12:30pm and caught a taxi to our hotel. We were staying at the Hyatt Regency Paris Étoile in the northwest of the city. Not an especially touristy area, but it was fairly close to my office. After we dropped off our stuff, we headed out for a walk and ended up at the Arc de Triomphe.

We took the underground passageway and popped out right at the base of the arch.

The Arc de Triomphe honours those who fought and died for France in the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars. Those carvings there amused me, as the ones on the right are meant to be bearded Germans while the ones on the left are the French. In the middle under the archway is the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier from World War I.

Hey, there’s the Champs-Élysées! While it’s considered the most beautiful avenue in the world, on a rainy day with lots of traffic it just looks like any other street.

We next headed towards the Seine, passing by some very fancy shops. Mr. Snook was looking pretty fashionable himself in the Belstaff.

We crossed the Seine at the Pont de l’Alma and got our first glimpse of the Tower.

We walked along the pedestrian promenade towards the Tower and passed by the Memorial National de la Guerre d’Algerie.

And then we were at the Tower! There’s a lot of work being done around the base, presumably ahead of Paris hosting the Olympics in 2024.

We crossed back over the Seine at the Pont d’Iéna.

On the other side, we walked up past the Trocadero Gardens to the Palais de Chaillot. Our only previous trip to Paris had been in 2001 (21 years ago!), and we both had a vague memory that this had been where we posed in front of the Tower all those years ago. Unfortunately it was fenced off for renovations…

…but I peeked through the little window. Pretty sure that’s where it was.

The date was Sunday, November 20th, which means it was our 18th wedding anniversary. I had planned something very special for dinner that night – a river cruise with Ducasse sur Seine.

This is a beautiful glass restaurant boat docked right at the Pont d’Iéna. (Note: our Uber driver was confused by the directions as the wharves are below the level of the street. He ended up letting us out on the corner and we went down the stairs to the docks.) The host took our jackets and led us to our table, which had a perfect view of the Tower.

I had booked us for 4-courses with matching wines, starting at 19:30. That meant we had an hour before the boat actually left for the 2-hr river cruise at 20:30. We had both dressed up and we were feeling pretty special.

The menu from our dinner is currently on a boat somewhere between Amsterdam and Sydney, so I don’t have exact details on what we ate. (The online menu has been updated since then.) But we started off with some small bites along with bread and butter.

There was also a small soup… potato, I think?

At 20:00, the twinkle lights went off on the Tower. 😍

For the second course, I had a beetroot and pomegranate dish while the Snook had a duck terrine.

At this point, the boat started moving! We slowly cruised east along the Seine. Here we are passing under the ornate Pont Alexandre III bridge.

We also cruised past the Tuileries Garden, where I knew a big Christmas market was happening!

Mr. Snook was enjoying himself.

The cruise goes all the way up to Île de la Cité, under the Pont Neuf, and around the island before heading back. Unfortunately the angles were such that we couldn’t really get a good view of Notre Dame.

For the mains, I had scallops while Rodd had lobster.

And then it was time for dessert! Mine involved chocolate and ice cream, while the Snook’s was clementine (orange) flavoured.

On the return trip we got to see the other side of the river (the Left Bank). Here’s the Musée d’Orsay.

And then the Tower came into sight, and we knew we were at the end of the trip. What a wonderful evening! Good food in an unforgettable setting, with my favourite person in the world.

Continue reading “Paris and Luxembourg”

DACH Community Day in Dresden and the Sächsische-Schweiz

Back in October, I was very honoured to be invited by some of my friends in the DACH (aka Germany, Austria, Switzerland) tech community to be the keynote speaker for AWS Community Day 2022. This was going to be their first time back in person after two years of virtual events, and I was very excited to finally meet some of them in person. Rodd was going to accompany me, of course, and he had planned out some fun touristy things for us to do as well.

We caught the Tuesday morning train from Munich. It was about a 4.5hr trip, including a short transfer in Leipzig. I mostly used the time to finish off my slides for the keynote!

On Tuesday night, the local AWS Dresden group were having a pre-Community Day meetup so we went along. Here’s my buddy Mohamed presenting about a couple serverless apps he built, as well as Martin from Groundfog sharing how they built a personalised web experience for visitors.

Wednesday was the big event, so we headed over early in the morning to the conference venue to help set up. My friends Linda (from Vienna) and Markus (from Munich) were going to be kicking things off in the morning.

Markus insisted that I wear the AWS dress. 😂 He was also going to be introducing me on stage.

Eventually everything was ready and the hosts kicked off the morning. I was very excited to see them launch the Förderverein AWS Community DACH, which brings together all the different AWS groups into a single association. (Bonus points for the pun in the logo – in German, “Dach” means “roof”.)

Markus gave me a very humorous intro in which he’d scraped some dubious photos from my social media accounts, but thankfully he ended with the nicest one. ❤️

My talk started out quite personal, talking about how isolated I felt in the first ten years of my career. It wasn’t until I started going to meetups and hackathons that I finally felt like I belonged. At that point, it turned into a big soppy love letter to the folks in the room, who were my first friends when we moved to Germany. I ended by talking about how much AWS values the external community, and some of our plans to support them even more in the future.

One last photo of me with Markus and Linda, who I’m going to really really miss. 😢

We spent the rest of the day at the conference, going to sessions and meeting sponsors and attendees. It was a small but passionate crowd, and everyone was so excited to get back together in person. Thank you to the organisers for inviting me!

We were pretty tired that night but of course had to take advantage of the hotel sauna…

I worked from the hotel the next day, but Rodd got me out into the sunshine for a quick walk and lunch in the city.

We were very amused to see that there is actually an Australian restaurant in Dresden! The Snook was dubious, but hey, they serve kangaroo goulash soup. 😂

We walked up to Brühl’s Terrace, a large elevated terrace overlooking the Elbe. It was a beautiful day.

Here we are with the Hofkirche (Dresden Cathedral), the most important Catholic church in the city.

We also found the Lego store, which had a “Selfie Point.” Okay, then.

Our hotel was very close to the famous Frauenkirche in Dresden. This Lutheran church was destroyed during the firebombing of the city in 1945 and left in ruins as a war memorial for 50 years. It was only rebuilt after German reunification and was completed in 2005. The darker stones you can see were salvaged from the original church and were able to be reused in the reconstruction.

We went inside to take a look as well. It was all soft pastels, trompe l’oeil, and extravagant carvings. Very pretty! The story of how they rebuilt it is truly amazing.

That night we had booked a special dinner at Genuss-Atelier, a local Michelin-starred restaurant. It was described as “rustic vaults” and it felt very cozy.

One of the coolest things was that the tables had built in drawers with all the cutlery you’d need, so the waiters didn’t need to keep bringing fresh sets. I’ve never seen that before.

We went with the six-course “Surprise” menu, and since it’s all seasonal and not printed, I tried to keep notes on my phone about what we had. We started with a couple small bites: pickled herring with potato chip, and felafel with yogurt.

The Snook enjoyed the little bread rolls and butter. (He may have also been drafting a post for We Want Plates.)

Our first proper course was beef tartar with sour cream and chives.

Next was a vegetarian course – turnip cabbage (aka kohlrabi), celery, and yuzu.

Next was the fish course – “eagle fish” (which we think is also called a “meagre“) with radicchio, celery, and capers.

For the meat course, we had lamb with pumpkin and polenta, and of course we opted for the extra shaved black truffle!

Everything was delicious and beautifully prepared. We were also having matched wines with each course, all of them from the local area. Rodd was amused when the waiter excitedly told him how one of them was matured in oak, which is something of a novelty in the region. (It’s very common in Australia!) Needless to say, we were having a wonderful evening.