Travel

Korea and Japan visit – Recap, Thank You and Impressions!

A week ago, Roy and I returned from a 1+ week trip to Korea and Japan. It was wonderful but of course strenuous (as always). As today is a public holiday in many European countries including Germany I’d like to take the chance and write a non-technical short article about our Korea and Japan visit – Recap and Thank You!

Korea and Japan visit – Recap and Thank You!

I love both countries. Not only the countries, the food and the things to see, but of course the people. It’s such a pleasure to work with colleagues and customers in …

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Thank you, United Airlines

Well, we all have read a lot of stories about United Airlines in the past months. And my experience with United isn’t that good either.

In the past, UA managed to either let my luggage sit for 5 days in London while I was already in Redwood Shores, and I spent roughly 10 hours in their terrible telephone system waiting for anybody tracking my luggage. Then UA let my luggage sit for only a day and a bit in Frankfurt while I was staying in Pleasanton, CA. And last weekend all my team mates flying in from Mexico to Nashua …

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Lufthansa – 14th pilot strike in 2 years – lovely :-(

I don’t blame anybody. Really, I don’t.

But nevertheless this is awkward.

Bodenhansa - Lufthansa
Source: Facebook – https://scontent.fmuc2-1.fna.fbcdn.net/v/t1.0-9/15193604_10210663792047910_5774221704440071551_n.jpg?oh=99f7242c9283bf664db779354d594b3b&oe=58B51EA1

I’ve got affected by the most recent – the 14th (!!!) in two years – strike of the Lufthansa pilots. And not for the first time. I’ve had my share of strike experience already quite often in the past years with my main airline carrier.

Last week I had a hard time to reschedule my flight to Brussels, and I’ve got stuck in the Netherlands the other day as the workers union VC who’s taking care on the belongings of estimated 5400 Lufthansa …

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Silence for some weeks?

You may wonder why I haven’t posted many things in the past weeks. Or why I haven’t replied to your comments yet. The few posts were pre-written – and I took off for a few weeks and traveled on the West Coast of the US from San Francisco towards the north.

So while I’m writing new content and answering your comments and building up a new hands-on lab for our upcoming workshops let me share some pictures with you – fully off-topic of course ๐Ÿ™‚

Plenty of clouds in Northern California

Coast north of SF

Redwood NP

Orgeon

Mnt Hood
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Some Seoul Impressions – 09/2015

A very intense week in Seoul, Korea, is over – and Roy and I both returned a bit sick ๐Ÿ˜‰ The pleasures of traveling …

But thanks to all our colleagues who did all the orga work, to everybody who traveled from near and far to our 2 day internal workshop (and I stillย remember many names ๐Ÿ™‚ – it was great fun to spend those two days with all of you) – and of course the the customers and partners we’ve had the pleasure either to visit or come to our workshop. Upgrade is in your hands …

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Beijing, Seoul – and OTN Tour Tokyo – just in one week

Uhhh … next week will be a tough traveling experience. 19870 km (12347 mi), all in cattle class on 4 different airlines.

I tried to avoid Lufthansa as they canceled recently flights I heavily relied on – with no reason! And there’s still a huge risk of announcing just their 9th strike within a year and a bit.

But I’m really looking forward to the workshops, to see all the colleagues, customers and of course some great friends. Roy and I will do two internal two-day workshops in Beijing and Seoul with each more than 50 participants – and …

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Back on Track :-)

No updates for almost 3 weeks? Well … sometimes I need a bit of vacation as well … and for sure I didn’t board an airplane. Thanks for staying tuned and you’ll see the next update within a few hours ๐Ÿ™‚

–Mike…

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Some impressions from Australia

Being again in Australia was – again – a great experience. If only traveling to Down Under wouldn’t take this long … ๐Ÿ™‚ But thanks to everybody who showed up – and sorry to those which got a “Sorry, it’s sold out already!” message. It was pure fun to talk to you and we’ll hope to get a lot of people to move onwards to Oracle 12c as soon as possible. Don’t forget: 11.2 will go out of Premier Support in less than 12 months from now on. Of course we’ll return one day – and certainly our colleagues …

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Airfare Pricing vs. Oracle Multitenant for DBaaS?

I’m currently evalutating flight options to and from India for the 3 workshops in March in Mumbai, Delhi and Bangalore.

As everything at Oracle is fully self-serviced I’ve got stuck in our booking tool for over an hour now just wondering … wondering … wondering …

For instance I wonder why an Economy class ticket with Lufthansa and Swiss to Mumbai and return from Bangalore will cost over EUR 5000 (no joke!!!) even though Swiss is a 100% subsidiary of Lufthansa.

whereas I can fly a slightly different route with Delta Airlines only from Germany to the US and back …

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Workshops 2013 – Recap and Map

2013 wasn’t a quiet year. But due to the slip of Oracle Database 12c we’ve had way less workshops than in the years before. But less workshops doesn’t mean less work. It just means different tasks such as more development work, refreshing our entire slide deck (will be uploaded tonight in a fresh new version), learning about new stuff such as Oracle Multitenant, attending at the OTN ACE Tour in Scandinavia, South and Mid America.

In tradition we’ll publish a map with markers in countries Roy and I had been in the past year. You can access …

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Muchas gracias, Buenos Aires :-)

Again, thanks a lot to everybody who did attend to our Lab at the OTN Tour 2013 in Buenos Aires, Argentina, and/or to Roy’s talk about Data Pump in Oracle Database 12c and my presentation about News in Database Upgrades to Oracle Database 12c onย August 7. It was our pleasure to meet and work together with you. And thanks to the local folks of ArOUG organizing such a great event and taking care on us.

And – on another note – the person who did accidentally take one of our 64GB thumb drives at the Hands-On-Lab may please …

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Muchas gracias, Montevideo :-)

Muchas gracias to everybody who did attend our Hands-On-Lab on Monday and Roy’s presentation yesterday at the OTN Tour 2013 in Montevideo. And thanks a lot to our hosts, Edelweiss, Nelson, Paolo and Daniel from the UYOUG. You were so nice, so helpful, so hospitable – it made this event and our stay a very special thing!

As usual you can download the slides from the Slides Download Center to the right (scroll down a bit, please).

And as I enjoyed Montevideo a lot here are a few impressions:

-Mike…

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Thanks to our User Groups in Panama, Costa Rica, and Mexico!

I just have a few moments in the airport to say “Thanks!” to the Oracle User Groups in Panama, Costa Rica, and Mexico for a great series of events last week. Your hospitality was wonderful, and I appreciate the work that goes into organizing and running events like these.

And thanks especially to everybody who ย came to learn about the variety of topics: Database Upgrades, Oracle Database 12c, Hadoop, EBS, Enterprise Manager, and more.

Great audience at the OTN Tour in Mexico City

Mike and I are looking forward to the OTN Tour events next week in Montevideo, Buenos Aires, and Sรฃo Paulo!…

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Back Home …

Now finally back from my short trip to Johannesburg, South Africa. Flying out Monday overnight, returning Friday morning after another overnight flight (all Eco). But thanks to Turkish Airlines – including the short stop-over in Istanbul was worth it as the seating comfort in Turkish’s economy class is far better than Lufthansa’s – as is the food and especially the entertainment system, the service … almost everything. And luckily the Turkish Airline’s employees didn’t go on strike in Thursday ๐Ÿ™‚

But after running now 6 internal Oracle Database 12c: Upgrade, Migrate and Consolidate workshops in the US and …

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Mile High … Collaborate 2013 in Denver

Collaborate 2013 is almost over – we are running our final Hands-On-Lab session right now in the Convention Center in Denver, Colorado. For those seeking for the Hands-On-Lab Instructions for our session please be patient until Oracle Database 12c gets released. As soon as this happens we’ll offer you the HOL Instructions plus many more information about Oracle Database 12c and the different upgrade and migration paths.

Denver apparently has become my no.3 US city – not only because the mountains are so close by. But the city itself is really worth a visit ๐Ÿ™‚ Please find some impressions …

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Long time no update …

I deeply apologize for not updating the blog for some weeks now. I’m still working for Oracle, still in the same group – but due to some other things going on in preparation for Oracle Database 12c I had either no time or simply nothing to report at the moment. I didn’t want to bore you with Oracle Database 11.2 stuff as the slides don’t get changed right now. Oracle Database 11.2.0.4 patchset should be available sometime in early summer with a good bunch of fixes included.

Roy and me had delivered the first internal only Upgrade, Migrate and Consolidate

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Where’s Gangnam?

When somebody did mention “PSY” during a dinner at OOW this year with customers and colleagues from Korea I was completely clueless. I even didn’t understand correctly who or what “PSY” is. I did forget about that until last week as a German online magazine did report on over 500 mio youtube hits for “Gangnam Style“. Well … I didn’t know that I’ve almost missed a global phenomenon. And now I’ve learned that the song is omnipresent in Korea (and not only here) – and Gangnam is a really nice (and expensive) quarter of Seoul …

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Airline mess – what a journey

What a day, what a journey …

Flew this noon from Munich to Zuerich for catch my ongoing flight to San Francisco with Swiss. And that day did start very well as Lufthansa messed up the connection flight by 42 minutes for a 35 minute flight. And as I was obviously the only passenger connection to San Francisco nobody picked me up at the airplane to bring me directly to my connection as Swiss did for the 8 passengers connection to Miami. So I missed my flight. What a start – and many thanks to Lufthansa. I was not …

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Workshop in Denver canceled – thanks to hurricane Isaac

Yesterday Roy did start his journey on time to travel to Denver, CO for today’s Upgrade and Migration Workshop.

But unfortunately due to the remnants ofย  hurricane Issac moving up the East Coast and scrambling up flight schedules Roy’s flight from NYC to Denver got canceled after a 3 hour delay leaving Manchester, NH, and there was no option to arrive in Denver this morning on time.

So we apologize for canceling that workshop. The local marketing department will contact you regarding an alternative date. Sorry for any inconvenience!…

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Some impressions from Seoul and Beijing

There was not much time left to walk around and take some pictures during our fully packed workshop week in Seoul and Beijing. But as I have my camera almost always in my pocket I took some pictures … ๐Ÿ™‚


Seoul View


Seoul Food … yes … BEEF … wonderfully thin sliced beef on the barbecue grid


Tumbling Seoul
(that’s exactly how I felt in the morning after our night at Peter, Paul and Mary’s (see below)).


Modern Beijing … very modern


Well … or even more modern …


There’s always a traffic jam … simply too many cars …

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The best Bar on the globe is … in Seoul/Korea

As you know already sometimes I write about things which really don’t have to do anything with a database upgrade. So if you are looking for tips and tricks and articles about that topic please stop reading now ๐Ÿ™‚

Actually I’m not a lets-go-to-a-bar person. I enjoy good food and a fine dessert wine afterwards. But last week in Seoul/Korea Ryan, our local host, did ask us after a wonderful dinner at a Korean Barbecue place if we’d like to visit a bar. I was really tired as I flew into Seoul overnight from Sunday to Monday arriving Monday early …

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