Tuesday evening, Moscow was our next stop. Engineering, Support, Internal IT, Professional Services — as in Sweden, various MySQL departments were represented. Russia is a key personnel country for MySQL, and has been so for years. It’s my third time with MySQL in Moscow, and it feels good to start being able to find Count Dolgorukyi, Arbat, St. Basil’s Cathedral, Kremlin, the Red Square, and the Tverskaya Ulitsa.

So as not to bore you with repeating the MySQL on-boarding discussions we had, which were much the same as everywhere else, let me instead share our experience of how to login into Russia, and, more complicated, Marriott Grand Hotel on Tverskaya.

Scene 1: Yesterday, 15:00, Domodedovo airport, Rusaero Biznes Terminal.

• Immigration lady: Do you need an immigration card?
• We: Uhmm, if you say so
• No further action, we depart from Domodedovo, which depending on traffic is between 60 and 120 minutes from the city

Scene 2: Yesterday, 16:30, Marriott Grand Hotel, Tverskaya.

• Marriott check-in gentleman: Can I please have your immigration card?
• We: Ehmm, we didn’t get any!
• Marriott guy: Surely you got one, at immigration, otherwise you wouldn’t have got into the country!
• We: Really, we didn’t.
• Marriott guy: So then I cannot register you into the hotel. It’s the law.
• We: OK, so what should we do?
• Marriott guy: Go back to Domodedovo and get it!
• We: But we’re here only for tonight, it’s five already, we have meetings!
• Marriott guy: It’s the law. We cannot register you.
• Our local MySQLer (let’s call him Misha Bulgakov) shows up: Hi! What’s up?
• … explanations … repeated firm statements from both parties … time passes … some of us get slightly nervous … shall we sleep on Misha’s floor? … more time passes
• Misha, in Russian, to the Marriott guy: What if I book the rooms?
• Marriott guy: Uh, I suppose that would work.
• … investigations …
• Marriott Transport Desk: How can I help you?
• Me: Can I book a taxi for tomorrow from here to Domodedovo Airport, tomorrow morning, room 1234, last name Arnö?
• Marriott Transport Desk: Sure! But, what was the last name again?
• Me: Uhmm … Bulgakov!
• Marriott Transport Desk: Right! No problem.

So, after Misha signing here and there, the Bulgakov party can continue and meet with the MySQLers at “our” office nearby, have excellent sushi at a Japanese restaurant, and take a walk to the Red Square.

Scene 3: Today, 8:30, Domodedovo airport, Rusaero Biznes Terminal.

• Immigration lady: Privet!
• We: Hey, you forgot to give us an immigration card yesterday. We couldn’t check in to Marriott without it. We were in big trouble!
• Immigration lady: Oh, what a pity.
• We: It was slightly more than just a pity.

On we go. Izhevsk, here we come!

After five days of powder skiing and mountain climbing on ski, I’m back in business. This is how I looked out-of-business:

My son and I did not meet with Ötzi the Iceman, but we got a few blisters, a lot of Alpine sun, plenty of powder skiing and the experience of climbing more than 1000 height metres to K2 (in Tirol, not its namesake in Karakorum). And we conquered Austria’s second highest peak, the Wildspitze at 3772 metres above sea level.

The group consisted of our Austrian mountain guide, four ladies and four gentlemen, all of which were German except ourselves. I was happy to note that although I was clearly the least seasoned on ski, my physical shape was above average. When I was at my most tired going downhill, my son claimed I looked like his little sister when she learned to ski at five, “and that’s an insult to her, not to you”. Ah, there’s nothing like the honest encouragement of one’s own children. My excuse is that since discovering snowboarding in 2000, this was my first time on skis this century.

In theory, this is what you see on a ski tour:

However, this is how most of the uphill climbing looked like in practice from my standpoint: The rear end of my son’s skis.

Climbing with skis on can get messy when you need to make a sharp V-turn uphill. This is my son Alexander just after a Spitzkehre, in this case a successful one.

I’ll spare you the picture of the blisters on my legs. Let’s just say that will power helps alleviate pain. Instead, I’ll conclude with a picture of Alexander and myself on the K2:

Long before I first got to know about Sun’s acquisition of MySQL, I had booked this year’s prime skiing holiday. That’s going to be the week right after the Integration Kickoff in Menlo Park, on 3-9 February 2008. And it’s a special type of skiing holiday: It’s Boys Only, i.e. I’m going with my 13 year old son Alexander to Pitztal in Austria.

We’re going to the Ötztaler Gletscher, the glacier where Ötzi the Iceman, a well-preserved natural mummy of a man from about 3300 BC (53 centuries ago) was found in 1991.

Determined not to end up like Ötzi, Alexander and I will get extensive off-piste training under the direction of a certified Austrian mountain guide who according to his web profile has climbed “Cho Oyu, Elbrus, Mt. Mc Kinley, Ojos del Salado, Mustagh Ata, Pumo Ri and Aconcagua” and is heading for Shisha Pangma (8013 m) later this year. We’re walking uphill with furs under our skis so we won’t slip down. The main summit to be reached is the Wildspitze, at 3772 m Austria’s second-highest mountain next to Großglockner. Learning how to climb off-piste terrain and how to use various glacier equipment (such as beepers for finding skiers buried in avalanches) during the day, we’ll be relaxing at the Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten in the evening. It’s huge sauna and wellness area makes it just a tad more luxurious than the spartaneous Dortmunder Hütte or Johannishütte, where I’ve spent earlier adventures with the DAV Summit Club, the tour organiser owned by the German Alpine Association (the world’s largest alpine association).

Der Berg ruft! [1]

[1] The mountain calls.

Two employees of Sun Finland, Margot Wik (whom I studied French with in the 1980s at the Helsinki University of Technology) and Thomas Branders (another fellow HUT student, from whom I tried to learn how to sing Helan går while having fun at HUT’s Swedish language student corporation Teknologföreningen, but don’t blame him for the end result on YouTube) invited me to Sun Finland’s Friday Coffee Meeting 25.1.2008 at about 14:00. I was happy to accept. It’s only natural to do the inaugural ambassador visit in my native country.

I’m looking forward to learning from Margot, Tomi and their colleagues, and telling them about MySQL!

Giuseppe Maxia had a stop-over yesterday on his way to the MySQL Staff Meeting. We met for community discussions, and rounded off with Weißbier and dinner in Munich’s famous Hofbräuhaus.

What a fantastic feeling! The Bavarian spirit of joy and happiness has been decoupled from tobacco stench! I’ve always liked the first and hated the second.

So the German non-smoker protection legislation of 1 January 2008 is good news for anyone considering arranging meetings in Germany. You will no longer be “welcomed” at the airport by an offensive smell. Headaches in German restaurants will now correlate mostly with the amount of alcohol you drink.

Germany just became an even better place to work and live.

MySQLers share many hobbies. One of them is running. After the holiday season, I allowed myself to do some statistics on last year’s running, and add some personal reflections, only marginally related to work and MySQL.

Running is often a social event at MySQL, where a sizable portion of my 108 runs last year were with other MySQLers: Six times with Zack Urlocker (EVP Products), six times with Patrik Backman (Dir SW Eng), twice each with Larry Stefonic (SVP APAC) and Clint Smith (Legal Counsel), and once each with Kristofer Pettersson (SW Eng), Saskia Schweitzer (Training coordinator), Mikael Ronstršm (Principal Engineer/Senior MySQL Architect), and Nicolas Pujol (Sr Director, Alliances & Channels). Running can even be social time spent with non-runners (not just on the phone), as three of my runs were with MySQLers on bike: Once with Michael “Monty” Widenius (Co-founder), once with Lenz Grimmer (Community Team) and half a time with Matthew Montgomery (Support Eng) who suffered a flat tyre.

For me, statistics can be one of many good motivators for running.

I’m proud to note a new record of 1259 km for last year, which is a lot more than the earlier years (the time series for 2001 to 2006 goes 523 km, 477 km, 424 km, 501 km, 809 km, 673 km). Also the pace is faster. My average speed is up from around 9 km/h in the early years of the century to nearly 11 km/h last year.

In fact, I spent nearly 120 hours (4.9 days, to be exact) running during 2007:

    Month       km 	            Time  km/h	     min/km  Ct
 1  Januari     61 km     61 km	 6:04:05  10,1 km/h  5:55,6   6
 2  Februari    47 km    108 km	 4:32:11  10,3 km/h  5:49,3   4
 3  Mars        92 km    200 km	 8:55:22  10,3 km/h  5:48,0   8
 4  April      145 km    346 km	13:58:56  10,4 km/h  5:46,2  13
 5  Maj	       119 km    465 km	11:06:24  10,7 km/h  5:35,7  10
 6  Juni       154 km    619 km	14:03:05  10,9 km/h  5:29,1  13
 7  Juli        71 km    690 km	 6:35:17  10,8 km/h  5:31,8   7
 8  Augusti     82 km    772 km	 7:31:26  10,9 km/h  5:29,7   7
 9  September  128 km    901 km	11:42:47  11,0 km/h  5:28,4  11
10  Oktober    131 km  1 032 km	11:27:24  11,4 km/h  5:15,1  11
11  November   130 km  1 161 km	11:45:28  11,0 km/h  5:26,4  10
12  December	97 km  1 259 km	 8:59:28  10,8 km/h  5:33,2   8

2007	     1 259 km	1258,51	4,9 d     10,8 km/h  5:33,8 108

(If km/h and min/km tells you as little as miles/h and min/miles tell me, you may benefit from my computation in Neo Office that the slowest month of January had an average speed of 6,3 miles/hour and a pace of 9:32 minutes per mile, whereas the fastest month of October had an average speed of 7,1 miles/hour and a pace of 8:27 minutes per mile).

Some MySQLers of course grow tired of all these runners boasting their training, and would prefer us to all play poker instead. Personally, I’m glad to note that an ex couch potato like myself can make steady progress over the years. At school, I always belonged to the last quarter of boys being picked out for any team sports.

Benefits from running are many. Besides being social and healthy, it increases stamina. Stamina is good not just for work, but also for other sports activities: Running helped me climb the Großvenediger mountain (3674 m) in July without belonging to the most tired quarter of climbers in our group. And I enjoy winter sports (last year snowboarding in Wolkenstein in Italy) even more, when tiredness seldom if ever hits my legs.

Finally, running is a great way to follow the seasons in the most beautiful areas close to where you live or travel. I have a set of regular runs that I prefer over others, and where I do my seasonal observations. Of the 108 runs during 2007, 71 were 11,79 km runs around Isarwehr (in Munich), 20 were 11,6 km runs around Sellmo (near my country house in Nagu, Finland — an extended Mšviken Runt by Nagu IF), 3 were 12,99 km runs around Ikea (in Grankulla, Finland) and 14 elsewhere: Orlando, Rancho San Antonio, Palo Alto, Portland, Hamburg (Sports Day with Lenz), Heidelberg, and a few non-Isarwehr runs in Munich. BTW, thanks Garmin Forerunner for measuring the distances.

For 2008, I look out to run more and faster than 2007, and to be able to support more mountaineering, more snowboarding, and perhaps a “trans Alp” on a mountain bike. Whether I’ll go for my fifth marathon somewhere remains to be seen.

In July, I took part as a photographer in the World Body Painting Festival in Seeboden, Austria. That’s an event with over 20.000 participants, 180 bodypainters from 40 countries, stretching over three days. Now I got the pictures sorted out, in time for entering their photo contest.

Lady from Riga wearing labour intensive makeup (right). There are similarities to Bodypainting and Formula One racing, which go beyond the fact that they both seem more popular in Europe than in the US:

OK, so a lot of money move hands between various players in F1, whereas the World Bodypainting Festival collects both professional and amateur performers in one big family. The day starts at 09:30 where the painting teams who don’t yet have a pilot … ehh model, meet up with the models who don’t yet have a painter. At 11:00 the painting starts, and the artists have six hours to paint their models. When the models are painted, they get judged in front of a jury, after which they go on the catwalk to be admired by the audience.

I took part as a photographer for the second time, but definitely not the last. There are some outstanding works of art being created on living canvas, to be admired by the general public.

Parts of the audience (like my daughter) choose to get painted themselves, whereas others (like myself) concentrate on taking pictures and enjoying themselves.

If you wish to see more, click on one of the photos on this page and you’ll be taken to a site with my 91 best pics from this year’s festival, spread out over three web pages (linked at the bottom). Those pics can then be clicked on once more for a larger version.

This was my fourth Oktoberfest, and the first one in voller Montur, i.e. dressed in Lederhosen, a Bavarian white shirt, and Haferl shoes and socks. And it was the best one so far!

Friday in Munich started just fine, having arrived by train from Vienna (SAP TechEd). Within three hours, I had already ticked off the top three items on my permanent Munich wish list:

1. Buying Müslisemmeln (small non-sweet breads with raisins) at Rischart
2. Running my favourite 11 km jogging round around Isarwehr starting from and ending at Viktualienmarkt (where I lived for two years) and going through Englischer Garten and past Deutsches Museum
3. Leaving some money at the Hugendubel book store at Marienplatz (bought two books by Boris Akunin; his hero Fandorin is a 19th century Russian James Bond)

But the weekend had more in store.

Friday evening, my wife Kirsten and I first had a hoiber Hendl (half a chicken) at the Haxnbraterei and then made it at 22:00 into the Augustiner tent. Within 2 seconds of getting our beers (1 litre each) served, we made instant friends with the neighbouring Bavarians at our table. With a forced stop at 23:00, not many beers were consumed, but the ride back home to our friend Miki was a merry one with the usual barriers of communication disappeared.

Saturday, we met with Florian Müller to discuss how to help him becoming “European of the Year”. Stay tuned!

But as Wiesn is something you have to do day-time, we went directly to meet our friends Tom & Gitti at the Winzerer Fähndl tent. Had plenty of opportunities to eat and drink some more.

As if two days (OK, with some interruptions) of Wiesn wouldn’t be enough, we continued 10:30 on Sunday morning. This time at the hip Hippodrom for a breakfast of Weisswurst and (what do you think?) beer.

The climax came right after we were joined by our 11 year old son for some family fun. We went to the Teufelsrad, an attraction from 1910 aptly named “Devil’s Wheel”. It’s a wheel with some 5-6 m in diameter, where they ask for the crowd to come up, sit down and try to stay on board fighting both the centrifugal force and the “evil” assistants using ropes and other tricks to launch the poor contestants into the periphery. While my son only managed to be in the top third of the “boys from 8 to 12″ category, my wife was the overall winner of the “ladies 18 to 92″ category. An eternal honour, something she as a Saupreiss (”damned northern German”) will always be able to refer to in front of Bavarian friends.