Day: November 3, 2006

I'm back home. It feels good.

Long Beach was, to put it bluntly, a complete waste of my time. It took 23 hours to get there and 16 to get back. The keynote talks were not all that hot-shit, though there were some good ones here and there. 14-hour days and too many parallel sessions meant that people got information overload and just stopped caring after a while.

The conference venue was sub-par and the town itself is not the shining beacon of California. This trip has confirmed some of my ideas about living in the US in the current sociopolitical climate. I got really fed up really fast with the friendly-but-fake service industry and people refilling my coke glass every 30 seconds. Maybe I'm just being grumpy because of lack of sleep, maybe not. I'm just glad to be home right now.

One conversation I had with a waiter at the convention center springs to mind during a morning coffee break:

me: excuse me sir, but do the cookies have nuts in them?
daw: <blank stare>
me: I'm allergic to nuts. Are there any nuts in the cookies?
daw: naw, (points to cookies) those are white chocolate, chocolate chip, pecan, and raisin.

So apparently, pecans aren't nuts.

Idiot.

Then there was the waitress at the starbucks:

me: excuse me, but does the chocolate mudslide cheesecake have any nuts in it?
daw: <great big smile> no, just chocolate cheesecake
me: fine, I'll have one.

Just as I'm taking the first bite, my fork hits something crunchy. On further inspection, there's a whole fucking layer of walnuts in the middle. As I point this out to the dumbass, she has the gall to say “well, what do you know, I never noticed that before”.

People just don't give a damn. They'll happily smile and take your money, but they really, really just don't give a damn.

So, you'll forgive me if I'm glad I'm home and I can go to my local pub where the waiting staff know my name and actually care when they ask me how I am and what I'm doing and tease me by calling me garlic-boy.