J_K9 @ Linux

Seattle 2007: Day 1

March 22, 2007 on 8:16 am | In Seattle 2007 |

We, that is twelve students and three teachers, set out from school at 10.20am during the second class. I did some last minute packing, got changed into my casual clothes and walked over to the meeting point. From there, we took a mini-van to Terminal 4 of London Heathrow airport, checking that we had our passports, wallets and other valuables with us on the way in case we had to rush back to the school to pick up an important possession which had been left behind. Being such a large group, we had to check in at BA’s Customer Service and World Traveller [Plus] desks. This did not take long, and we were then given the privilege of going through the “Fast Track” lane to get to the security checks without having to wait in line. After the security checks, we were allowed to split up into groups to have lunch at a cafe of our choosing on the condition that we met our teachers at the flight gate at 1.15pm. The plane, BA 49, was scheduled to take off with destination Seattle, WA at 2.15pm.

I had “lunch” at Costa Cafe with the three other members of my project group. These groups were determined a few weeks ago: there are three groups of four members and each group was given the task of creating a presentation on a certain product, not necessarily including a prototype, which would then be presented to some executives at Microsoft when we visited them in Seattle. The best group would then be able to present again to more senior executives who would consider funding the development of that product. I digress – I had a pain au raisin with a small cappuccino. Admittedly, it wasn’t much of a lunch, but I was going to be given lunch on the plane as well so there was no need to overfeed myself!

We met at the rendezvous point, the flight gate at 1.15pm, as we had been told. The Boeing 747 stretched out behind the glass windows, and we had to wait approximately 45 minutes before boarding. At about 1.30, I called one of my friends from school who lives in the same boarding house as I do to learn the result of the Queen’s French Prize, which both he and I had done over the course of the previous week (it consisted of two exams, Language and Literature, totalling 5.5 hours and one 15 minute oral with the Cambridge Fellow who had set the examination papers). I discovered that he was, coincidentally, in the same terminal as we were because he was going to catch a flight to Lyon, so he came over to our gate and we spoke for about twenty minutes before we had to board the plane to Seattle.

There was no delay in boarding the plane – the plane’s engines fired up and it began to move as scheduled. However, after about 15 minutes of moving on the ground, we returned back to the gate because there was, apparently, a problem: the baggage of a cart of another plane had been placed in our hold. This turned out to be false because one of the automated baggage checking systems had failed, so our take off was delayed until around 3.45pm GMT because of a problem which was not, in fact, a problem. So much for reliability 

The flight from London, UK to Seattle, WA takes 11 hours on average. My new laptop’s battery lasted two and a half hours, which I spent learning how to use Photoshop and Fruity Loops in more depth and I killed the rest of the time by listening to my iPod and chatting to Ben (a self-proclaimed freak) next to me. Despite the long journey, it did not pass too slowly as I tried to keep myself entertained at all times, although the stomach ache didn’t help! I even read the transcript of Richard Stallman at the fifth international GPLv3 conference (held on 21st Novemeber 2006 in Japan)… All in all, the flight went surprisingly quickly.

We landed in Seattle at 7.05pm PDT (Washington time), the equivalent of 3am GMT. From there, it took us a full hour to leave the plane and to pass through the airport security, although that is partly due to the fact that some of us had not filled in our VISAs correctly and had to redo them and the security check PCs crashed at one point! Despite the setbacks, we had all collected our baggage by 8.30pm and then continued to make our way out of the airport by sending our baggage down a certain conveyor belt while we took a shuttle train service to the other terminal – those of you familiar with American airports may have experienced this. We then had to rent two mini-vans and, although it had all been pre-arranged, it took another half hour to sign the paperwork and to load and enter the cars.

I was in the leading car with five other students. The leading car had a GPS which was being configured by one of the teachers. The other teacher was driving the car and the remaining teacher was driving the car behind us, which was taking the six other students. It was a very long journey, and I dozed off for a few seconds several times throughout it, but I vividly remember travelling past a large hotel with an enormous, red lit sign entitled ‘Marriot’ and not stopping… The GPS was, for some reason, telling us that we had not yet arrived at our destination. So, we continued on its path and, to cut a long story short, we did a twenty minute long circular route from and to the Marriot! The teacher configuring the GPS had set it to round trip from the airport and back to the airport via the Marriot, so it’s no wonder that the GPS was leading us away from the Marriot for a few minutes before we decided that it was misleading us and reconfigured it. Hehe!

We finally arrived at the Residence Inn of the Marriot chain at 10.40pm PDT (5.40am GMT). It is now 11.49pm PDT and I am sitting in my room, on my laptop with free wireless internet access waiting for my pizza to arrive! Expect more interesting updates tomorrow