Doha, Sri Lanka, Bentota
On Friday evening, I went to Heathrow for my flight to Sri Lanka where a national week on free and open source software will take place next week. This national free software week will include various events, such as a CodeFest (in which a number of Asian Debian developers will participate), a conference, some talks for schools, etc. I'll give a tutorial on contributing to Debian, an introduction talk about the organizational structures of Debian and another talk at the event for students.
My flight went via Doha and it was a bit delayed because some passengers got on late. That wasn't a problem, however, since I had plenty of time to catch my connecting flight. The amazing thing was that it was something like 32 degrees C when I arrived in Doha at only seven in the morning. I only spend a few seconds outside on the way from the airplane to the bus but I felt sticky already.
On the way to the airport I started reading Neal Stephenson's Quicksilver, the first part of his baroque cycle. He talks about Newton and Leibniz and stuff and it's really fascinating. I hadn't much time to read books recently but I'm really looking forward to reading all three books of this series (each of which have something like a thousand pages). On the first flight, I watched Kingdom of Heaven, which was great. I just love movies that play in the Middle Ages or so.
On the second flight, I managed to sleep a bit and after I while I arrived in Colombo. I have gotten quite used to luxury of being picked up from the airport but this time someone waited for me before immigration. This is getting really scary. ;) She took me to the VIP lounge where Pradeeper, one of the organizers, kindly met me. Having expressed my interest to spending some time at the beach before the conference, the organizers reserved a hotel room south of Colombo (where the beaches are best) for the first two nights. A driver took me to Bentota, about two hours south of Colombo. The hotel is really amazing. It's right at the ocean. I can hear the waves in my room and the sea is about 30 meters away from my balcony. This is one of the few hotels in this area which experienced little damage during the tsunami. On the way here we saw quite a number of houses which got destroyed and a larger number of newly re-built houses. Anyway, I just had a foam bath and I'm about to head to bed. This place seems really nice and I'm looking forward to exploring it tomorrow. (This would probably be a good place for a honeymoon; they even had a candle in the bathroom, although I guess the bathtub isn't quite big enough for two.)