Last week we spent a wonderful 3 days with Marcela and Peter, two couch surfers from Bratislava, Slovakia.  Slovakia is a beatiful country, and we were happy to see it mostly devoid of the throng of tourists that plague Vienna and Prague.

Peter and Marcela were kind enough to show us around, and even take us to a handful of places outside the usual tourist path.  It was an exquisite treat to hear first hand accounts of the communist era, as well as second hand stories from the various wars of the 20th century.

Yano and I are big fans of couch surfing, mostly because of the rare opportunities to peek into the lives of locals the world over.  Even though today, there’s almost nothing that can’t be surmised from a cursory view at wikipedia and google images, couchsurfing offers something that hotel traveling cannot.

It is something to read about life behind the Iron Curtain, it is quite another to see the twinkle in Peter’s eyes as he recounts the first time he went to Vienna, just a few kilometers away, but on the

other side of the curtain.  He told us about the bright colorful displays in shops with a variety of items, to contrast with grey colored shops with nothing but two types of soaps in Bratislava.

It was quite fascinating to hear about vacations to Yugoslavia, which was even poorer, and having lines of people stand behind their car every time they opened their car trunk, because folks thought it was an ad-hoc black market.

All in all we had a wonderful time with our hosts, and were sad to continue our journey back into Austria to visit one of Yano’s schoolmates in St. Polten.  But alas, that is also another adventure in our rear view mirror, and we’re on a train to Budapest, Hungary, where rumor has it, there is a plethora of Indian restaurants.  My diet officially starts tomorrow…

Ok, that’s better than “I am a Weiner”, which may be more apropos to Vienna but far more risible…

I think most of what we call cultural differences can be summarized in differences in communication styles.  I seem to frequently trip over them as I cross cultural divides, both in my personal and professional lives.

Today we crossed over to Austria in search for hidden Mozart treasures in Vienna.  On the train ride over we met a young Spanish couple thoroughly confused at the Czech-English instructions being doled out by the attendants.  After the usual “where have you been and where are you going” we decided to tag along since they had a better thought out plan with regards to accomodation.  The clever reader may infer “cheaper price per night” and would stand uncorrected :).

We arrived in Vienna, and after much fumbling about, arrived a few stops outside the city center.  Our new found friends had reserved an actual hotel room for 40 euros, which clearly beat our 40 euros for a hostel (and this with breakfast included!).

I asked for a room, and the clerk said 90 euros.  I looked back puzzled and inquired as to why my friends had booked for only 40 euros.  He said, “internet booking 40 euros.  Here 90 euros”.  Trying to be clever, I replied… “do you have wifi?”.  “Yes, here is wifi password.”  “Can I book online?”.  “Yes, here is site to get cheaper price”.

Unfortunately everything was booked, and Yano was upset as to why we couldn’t get the cheaper price.  So we looked around on google maps and decided to meander over to the city center and at least get something more centric.  Right before leaving, I politely asked the gentleman “I can’t find the cheaper price on the internet.  Can you help me?”  He browsed the aforementioned website for a while and replied “Oh, I see.  Internet booking all booked up.  Sorry.”.

All of a sudden I clicked my German communication translator and decided to give it one more try… “Would it be possible to get your internet price but book in person?”.  He stared back nonchalantly and replied “of course, no problem.  That will be 40 euros.”

It may seem funny, but I still get tripped when dealing with eastern European engineers, because I feel I haven’t perfected the art of asking the right questions in a language that is equally understandable to both parties.  You see, it’s not that the man was being difficult, it’s that I clearly didn’t know how to ask the right questions.  I’ve been bitten (no pun intended) by this many times, and I’ve obviously not gotten the hang of it.  But at least now I try not to get frustrated, cause I know it’s mostly my fault.

And in the Germans’ defense, they’re not alone on this.  There’s an entire profession of people that think and communicate similarly… they’re called engineers (and all of their affiliates) :-).

Sorry for the silence and the unentertaining posts so far. I’m pretending I have a job for an entire week, and my boss (who I’d never met before) is here. I’m drinking lots of coffee not to fall asleep during meetings. So far, so good…

Luckily, rms of emacs and GNU fame showed up and gave his usual “free as in freedom” speech. He’s always entertaining on his own right, and I managed to corner him to fondle his beard and strike a pose.

But seriously… I do like to poke fun at rms, but I do owe him a debt of gratitude.  For those of you unfamiliar with Richard Stallman (or rms as he’s called among us geeks), rms has been a pivotal figure in the computing industry since the 1970’s.  His free software movement has been the basis of software the world over. The tools used to write the software in your iPhone and iPad, as well as the software running in satellites, not to mention web servers, and pretty much everything else, are in part possible by a revolution he started in the mid 80’s, and to which I have devoted my entire programming career. Part of the reason software is so prevalent and inexpensive today is due not in small part to a life of sacrifice in the pursuit of freedom.

In the early 1990’s, a young pimple faced boy from Mayaguez, Puerto Rico was welcomed by rms into his MIT office as an equal. He took the time to encourage me into a life writing free software, which in his opinion, was the only ethical way of marshaling one’s creative forces. I was amazed at his candor and his willingness to dedicate such a large portion of his time to let me sit around his office for hours, and ask him a barrage of questions, while offering the occasional advice. He followed through with me for years, through random projects, until I took the job I hold today, writing unencumbered software that is ethically aligned with what inspired me decades ago.

This year, Red Hat achieved $1 billion dollars in revenue in one year, while selling freely licensed software, and it all started with a hard headed idea of taking fate into your own hands, and not bending to the will of software companies restricting your freedoms.

Here’s to freedom!

p.s. This is the view across the street from the meetings…

Growing up I had a great fascination with computers. I spent most of my time programming, which meant that pretty much every other facet of my life suffered. Anything not tangentially related to programming took a back seat at best. I got by in school with the absolute minimum to get decent grades that would assuage my parents. It is therefore unsurprising that having taken 2 years of electronics as part of a computer science degree, I probably couldn’t unhook a car battery without seriously injuring myself and the car in the process. That is… until a lack of basic electronics kept me from properly enjoying a vacation. How hard could it be to hot wire a motorcycle? In the movies, thugs do it in 15 seconds flat, after having sprinted half way across town while dodging cars and cops.

I did what every computer savvy person would do. I spent a few hours googling everything from “Yamaha electrical diagram” and “how to hot wire a motorcycle”, to “how to steal a motorcycle”. Luckily I found the entire electrical diagram for one of the bikes. Unfortunately, I still couldn’t tell the difference between a resistor and a transistor. But I’d be damned if I couldn’t figure it out.

While Alejo slept, I came up to speed on ignition systems, starters, and spark plugs. Thankfully it wasn’t hard to figure out. All I needed was a short cable to bypass the key locking mechanism. When Alejo woke up, I brought him along for a short trek around town, asking for a “short wire to hot wire OUR motorcycles”. In retrospect, that probably wasn’t the best opener. No matter how we spun it, no one believed two homeless looking guys had brought two motorcycles across the state while leaving the keys behind. The local mechanic suspiciously agreed to give us a few short wires, with no advice or help whatsoever.

After only a morning of fiddling around (I never said I was a good thief!), I was able to find the right set of cables to bypass. Short cable in place, and voila– lights on, and the bike starts cranking. Unfortunately, Yano’s bike (which always gets experimented on first) takes a while to crank. While I’m cranking, I’m doing the dance of joy, which got quickly interrupted by Alejo screaming over the noise “hey smartass, if you ever get the bike to turn over, how the hell are you going to fill it up with gas without a key?”. Uhhhh… hmmm… “And if you manage to fuck up the ignition, I’ll kill you when the keys do arrive. I only get one week of vacation, unlike you nerds which work from home and seem to be in a permanent holiday every day.” Fair enough… I put the bike back together, and we drove around the park in the 4×4 pickup.

At this point I must add that Big Bend National Park is absolutely breathtaking, and is sadly one of the least visited parks in the US park system. The restaurant has been revamped to cater to a more gastronomically demanding crowd, and they’ve done away with the traditional hamburgers and chilli that plague campgrounds the world over. The food, though pricey for a state park ($10-$18/plate), is wonderfully succulent. The entrees are varied and are hands down better than most restaurants. There’s everything from fillet mignon, and smoked salmon, to grilled portabella mushrooms and peppers for the vegetarian crowd. The home-made soups are delicious, and the desserts leave you feeling as decadent as you’re used to.

So all in all, bikes or not, we’ve been having a blast. The views are spectacular and the food is great. Below is a link to the pictures so far, which may spoil the rest of the story, but are well worth seeing. We’re both pleasantly surprised. Big Bend has not left us wanting.

And as you can see, we eventually get our keys!

A doctor and an engineer go on vacation…  While this is most likely the beginning of cruel joke, so far it hasn’t disappointed.

When you live in the southern most part of Texas, there are a limited amount of places you can visit if you can’t convince your fellow vacationers to visit Mexico.  I’m in the unfortunate dilemma of having a few more weeks of vacation than Yano this year, and my friend Alejo is in a similar predicament, having vacation but being restricted by his US visa status to stay within the country.

We originally planned to go on a road trip with our motorbikes, but being limited to a week, we quickly realized that Texas was far too big to get out without inflicting permanent damage to our buttocks.  Instead, we wussed out, and decided to take the bikes on the back of the pickup truck where we could drive in the comfort of a/c for longer distances.  Unfortunately, we ran into the cruel reality that is Texas geography, and realized that a day an a half would only get us to El Paso which is just like McAllen, but with less things to do (if you can imagine such a place).  So, the only logical vacation not involving airplanes, involved driving as far out within a day or two, and that turned out to be Big Bend National Park in the middle of nowhere Texas (as everything in Texas is, with the notable exceptions of Houston, Dallas, Austin, and some say San Antonio).  We’d drive with the bikes on the bed of the pickup, stay in the park, and ride on and off-road all day for a week.  Meanwhile, the women would stay behind– tending the children, or in my case, the dogs and the operating rooms of McAllen.

Everything went according to plan until mile 500, when Yano calls and asks “do you have an extra pair of keys for the bikes?”.  Alejo and I look at each other with eyes wide open, and slam on the breaks.  The bikes almost ended up in the cabin and I nervously responded “huhhh… why do you ask?”.  “Cause there are two pairs of keys on the dinner table here.”  My fault entirely, I couldn’t blame the doctor for anything more than the sad state of medicine in the south of Texas. There were various insults, mostly flowing in my direction, and numerous threats of taking my bicycle wheels (which I’d brought too), to make sure I would be under the same inflicted boredom as he would be starting tomorrow.

There was no sense driving further, so we stopped at Marathon, Texas (see previous comment about nowhere Texas, and multiply it by 500).  It turns out FedEx drops by every other day, and most popular carriers will sporadically deliver this far out.  Luckily, the Gage Hotel and Spa is a quaint hotel not unlike what you’ve seen in popular westerns: cantina, guns, and pretty girls.  I’m not really sure, but I think we are the only visitors here tonight.

12 Gage Hotel

We’ve arranged with Yano (who hasn’t stopped laughing), to ship the keys overnight. “Overnight” being an euphemism for “if you’re lucky in three days”, but hey– at least we’re not in McAllen– and there are mountains [I’m not allowed to ride on the bicycle].

p.s. Oh yeah, stay tuned for a week’s worth of insults (hopefully involving running bikes).