I’ve just began my 30-day tour of Australia and New Zealand, where I will be making 11 presentations in 9 different cities. I began my journey from my home, on the Big Island of Hawaii at 9:30 AM on Saturday, and arrived in Sydney at 8:30 PM on Sunday. Hawaii is located at -10 GMT, while Sydney is located at +10 GMT, a 20 hour time difference. It is not as bad as it seems, as we crossed the International Date time, so while, technically speaking, we are 20 hours apart, in effect, the time change was only 4 hours different.
The 5,500 mile trip is supposed to take about 10.5 hours of flying time, but when we got to Sydney, we ended up flying in a circle for an hour before landing. The pilot never said why we wasted an extra hour, but when we landed at the airport, our plane was chased by several fire trucks, which seemed a little unusual. The weather was perfect, and we were never given any explanation for the delay, or the fire trucks. Apparently, there were no problems, as we landed safely.
I spent Monday recovering from the trip. I slept in late, but did get a chance to take a walk near the Sydney Opera House (see the photo above). It is spring here, and at least today, the weather was very nice, in the low 70’s.
On Wednesday, I fly to Perth (about a 5 hour flight), where I will speak at twice, once at the .NET users group, and once at the SQL Server users group. I’ll keep you posted as my tour progresses.
