Vazirsingh’s Weblog

My visit to Frankfurt lasted 5 days. 26th April – 30 April. It was for a HP Tech@Work 2010 event over 4 days.Jassim Haji from Gulf Air, Khalifa Al Ansari from NBB  and Abhijit from my company were the other persons along with me for this trip. We spent most of the after event hours together.

 

Day 1- 26th April.

We took the 1 AM flight which reached us at 6:30 AM in Frankfurt. Checkout & baggage claim took less than 20 minutes,smooth,efficient. We took a taxi to Hotel Mercure in Hellfman park (Offenbach), just about 20 minutes away. The other 3 gents checked in & I then took another taxi to Hotel Ibis, Rebstockbad Messe. I checked into room 601, shaved,bathed and then had breakfast at the Sud cafe. After taking a nap for about 2 hours, I got ready to travel to Festhalle Messe where the event was taking place. I took a taxi which took about 7-8 minutes and cost me 7 Euros. I reached just before the first session was about to begin. Grabbed a quick lunch, met Krishna while eating. My three travel mates had the day off, since there was no session for them. I attended 4 sessions on the first day, the opening session was on HP certifications, two were on convergence,one on the new 8 processor server Proliant 980 based on Intel 7500. Met Patro, Ayman Soliman,Amr Walid during the breaks. Met Bernard too, but he seemed to be in a hurry to even exchange pleasentaries,twice. Anyway I will remember him for Egypt, and forget him for Frankfurt.

After the sessions, I found my way to the tram station. I had to ask for the right direction, but people were generally helpful and it was easy to find the hotel. Last station on tram 17. In the evening Abhijit called & reached my hotel. He enjoyed his walk from Messe though it was a bit long. We met up with Jassim & Khalifa near a hotel.

 Then we started walking the streets of Frankfurt. This was to be a daily feature.Jassim found a place to pray while we waited for him outside. When he emerged Khalifa pulled his leg " Did you pray for the entire month". Jassim had spent about 30 minutes inside. The  verbal sparring and camaraderie between Jassim and Khalifa was rather good natured and enjoyable.Abhijit & I had a good time with these two down to earth gents of contrasting natures and looks. Jassim is tall & handsome middle aged while Khalifa is medium built. We ended up eating burgers at Mcdonalds after 10 PM. Jassim was very particular about eating halal food, so this was the result. In fact he ate just a salad, while I had a veggie burger. He wanted to avoid the fried food as it could potentially have been fried along with pork selections. Jassim then broke off while we took a taxi which dropped me then took Khalifa and Abhijit to their hotel.

 
Day 2- 27 April

I slept well,but got up at 5:30 AM. This gave me time to talk to Sheeba, exercise,bathe,break fast and still reach the venue in time for the first session at 8:45 in Messe. I took the tram 17.I met Patro at breakfast, he told me about the outskirts of Frankfurt as good options to visit, as they were picturesque like switzerland.

The first session was on 5600 processors which have been newly launched by Intel. Apart from a 35% performance boost, the other salient features are TXT and AES-NI which have been integrated on this chip. New G7 servers and existing G6 servers are carrying this processor. The G7 servers will support DDR-3. This was followed up by a session which I forget. Then there was a session on cloud computing. Abhijit and others came into the sessions by lunch time. We asked for Halal food for our friends and we had vegetarian food. Sawsan, Diana met us and the customers during the lunch break. Khalifa was lined up for a meeting with HP top brass at 5:15 PM along with Abhijit. We attanded the plenary which had a 3500 crowd. The MC was good, he did not put us to sleep. Dave Donatelli was there. Gartner was there.Convergence and Cloud was covered in detail. I continued after the plenary by attending  a session on mission critical servers and then a NDA session on the new Bladesystem matrix.  At 6:30 after the sessions closed, HP had a welcome event with cocktails which we attended. We had finger food like anti-pestp and spent about 30 minutes in the evnt. HP had organised a dinner after the event. The bus started at 7 PM from the venue and we went to a restaurant on level 25 top floor. It was a sit down dinner but buffet style. There was Halal food organised. Since this event was specifically for the middle east the food was suitable. We wound up at 10 PM after spending some time standing at the window of the 25th floor looking at the city below us. Frankfurt is not a very big city as far as the spread and density goes. A taxi took us to the hotel, with me getting dropped on the way as before.

 

Day 3- 28th April

Morning had become  routine. Met Patro again during breakfast. Reached the event site by 8:40 AM, just in time for the first session. Since we had agreed the last night that my companions would explore the city, maybe switzerland, I  was not expecting them in the event. I had 8 sessions & the presales suite to cover. It was back breaking. I had very little respite since the time I landed in Frankfurt. There is a very pretty german girl manning breakout 1 who has been greeting me with sat sri akal. My shyness did not allow me to reciprocate her friendliness. But she was a good ambassador for german hospitality. I had one session each on proliant roadmap, SAN directions followed by the plenary. The plenary featured Dr. Robert Ballard who discovered the Titanic. He explained how technology allowed him to spend more time doing actual work rather than travelling down the ocean floor. The plenary was followed by lunch. I had barely time to grab my plate and fill up. The next session was on the new Integrity servers rx2800 & the blades 870 & 890 based on Itanium 9300 quad core processors.  This was followed up by a session on HP-UX. I then attended a session on  sizing for dedup & VLS. This was followed up by a session on management & automation, of which I have a slightly fuzzy memory, but I think I learnt about Hyper-V & storage replication usage for automating DR here. This was followed up by the last session which was a workshop on online migration and disaster recovery using Hyper-V. This was the end of the longest day here. I was already feeling the end, since I had just 3 sessions remaing on the last day.

I took the tram to the hotel. Just when I had reconciled to eating out alone, and was making my way to the tram station that Abhijit called. He had smsed me earlier that they had taken the city tour & one more tour and that they would be back at 9 PM. So I had planned a early night after dinner at 8 PM. But then I was told to meet the others at Hotel Le Meredian. I had no directions provided, but I lucked it up to Hauptonbof which is the main station for U & S trains. I got down randomly from tram 17 on a hunch and then walked up to this big building. It was the station. Like I was told I asked people but I could not locate the meeting point which was just across the street. I took a taxi. Jassim had planned on watching a football game. He was standing outside O’reilly’s Irish pub with a big TV in his view. He stood there for two hours or more without having anything.Iron man. In the meantime Khalifa & Abhijit took me around the streets of the city. It was an idea of passing time. This took away 1 hour, but the other hour was spent standing next to Jassim outside the pub.

We ate at a cheap turkish roadside eatery where I & Abhijit had felafel, while the other two had shwarma. Taxi back, dropped me on the way.

 

Day 4-29th April

Morning routine. But did not meet Patro. Reached location & decided to skip the first session. Attended and completed the presales suite. Then attended the session which was on the proliant 980. The others came in by 11 AM. We spent time moving about. Lunch was grab & go bags which we sat down and ate. There were two veg sandwiches & other stuff. We picked up extra bags for the night. This was Halal & vegetarian, so it was suitable for all of us.

Diana Hadad caught hold of us and we spent nearly 30 minutes trying to finalise whether we will join HP on the river cruise. I was dropped on the way to the hotel, and I thought that I would rest a bit. I found that the room had been locked out as my reservation had ended. I extended it at the reception and the lock was reactivated.Hassle free.Then Abhijit called and  I was expected to reach green line tours near hotel savoy by 2:45 PM. I changed and reached there by tram 17. The others came in by 3. But ultimately we did not join HP. We walked around the city & across the main river for the next 6 hours. On the way we spent 30 minutes in a telecommunications musuem which was rather enjoyable. The weather was excellent. With sunset happening at 9:30 PM during spring time, we had the best season in Frankfurt. Temperatures were in 15-20 degrees range in the evening.We spent some time sitting in the paved garden outside the twin towers with the Euro sign. Later we had icecream cones from a stall. We visited a mall with a unique design (it had a massive hole designed in its 3-4 floor body), We shopped for toys. Then Jassim took off to be in time for his match outside the irish pub. We followed. Diana finished her launch cruise and then insisted on joining us for dinner. Abhijit & I excused ourselves as it was 11 PM by then. We also had our dinner arranged from the HP lunch bags. Jassim & Khalifa went with Diana. I heard they had a long walk but ended up eating in the same turkish joint, instead of a proper sitdown elaborate dinner.

 

Day 5 – 30th April

 

I checked out after breakfast, and called for a taxi. I reached the airport and checked in at 9:00 AM for the 11:30 flight. The others came in by 9:15 AM

We spent some time at the duty free & then went to the waiting area. The 4 of us were seated apart from each other. The 5 1/2 hr flight was smooth. We bid goodbyes after reaching the exit gates of Bahrain airport at 6:15 PM. I went to the office and collected my car and reached home at 8:00 PM

The next two days are holidays. Sunday is in lieu of 1st May.