يا القاهرة! عملة اي؟

A few days ago I arrived in Cairo again.

I will deliver a series of 11g Administration Courses for Oracle again.

One day after I arrived the there was a a big fire which burned down the house of the maglis ash-shura,  consultative councel    completely.

I was lucky enough to have my new camera with me to take some exciting shots.

 

It looked to me as if there were multiple fires burning at the same time.

Returned from Turkey

Yesterday I have returned from Turkey.
I was there  for 8days together with a very close friend.

On the way back we had a stop over at Istanbul airport where

  Tonguç Yilmaz waited for me
to chat and have a coffee. Can you immagine that there is somebody waiting for you at 6:15h in the morning just to hug you and have a chat at the airport.
This is real friendship and hospitality!

He updated me about the latest gossip from the bloggers community and we talked about OOW and UKOUG meeting and who we have met and who is new to the scene. 
 Thanks for coming Tonguç, you are such a nice guy!

=;-)

sysdba @ CERNs CMS experiment

Today I had the chance to visit CMS one of the experiments @ CERN.
Anton Topurov had organized it for me.
Thanks a lot Anton! This was one of the most imresssing sites I have ever visited!
I am very glad that I could see it before it is started and nobody can visit it any more!

Here are a few impressions:

RAC for CERN

This week I am delivering RAC 10g for CERN  
I am teaching a group of 16 DBAs
who are responsible for the Oracle clusters @ CERN.

The training takes place at the in the
  World Trade Center in Geneva
where Oracle Education still has some facilities.

At the end of the course Philipe,
 one of these hackers surprised me with

SIX different kinds of Belgium beer
which he had organized to convince me that there also is good beer
produced in his home country.
And I had to admitt that he was right which I did not know before!!!

So we had a little party at the end of the class…
I just love these little socializing events with my students when work is done!
This was also a good preparation for my 11g course in Brussels in three weeks.

Arrived in Prague this afternoon

 Today I have travelled to Prague
where I will deliver an 11g Change Management Seminar for Oracle University of Czech Republic tomorrow.
This is kind of the second part of the New Features Overview Seminar for 11g.

When I arrived it had just stopped raining for a while and iI took the chance to stoll around a little and have a look at the surroundings.

 It is a nice city which also is very crouded with tourists.

In a nice passage
I found  a cinema with a hanging skulpture which I would like to know more about.
 Can anyone of you tell me what this is?

Challenging Oracle in Rome

Yesterday evening I have arrived in Rome after a fife hours!! trip from Munich. The plane had come from London and of course was late because of yesterday’s  security threat in GB.

I will go for the Oracle Cerified Master challenge tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. This time Oracle will have a 10gR2 environment for the exam the first time. Until June 30th. Oracle had used 10gR1 for the master exams. So I will be the test bunny again I guess!

Hopefully the exam will not be cancelled again in the last minute. This is my third attempt to get an exam date from Oracle. Two times I had enrolled for the exam and it was cancelled.

   Right now I am relaxing at my hotel thinking some things over which might pop up as tasks in one of the exam sessions. After these two days of exam I will get back to my 11g new features series here, promised!

San Francisco by Limo

On the last day of the Oracle 11g New Features pilot in San Francisco we all took a tour round the City in a very fancy car

I had always wanted to ride in a Stretch Limo 
   and it was lots of fun!

We went to the Golden Gate Bridge …to the Coit tower  from where you get a beautiful view over the city  .. we dashed through
China Town walked Lombard St. ..

and at the end of the tour we went to OLDEST ITALIAN RESTAURANT OF AMERICA the Fior d’Italia which is a must for every lover of Italian cusine who stays in San Francisco! Altough there are some Italians who say that it is impossible to eat pasta outside Italy. I would recommend them to try it. I had my best Saltimbocca ever there. It was just devine!

After dinner we all went downtown again with the obligatory   cable car. It was so much fun and I realy miss some of these people aready.

Arrived in San Francisco once again

Saturday night I arrived in San Francisco.

On Sunday I took a day off:
no burea, no Oracle, no telefone conferences

… and walked along the bay  …where I found these sea lions relaxing on pontons in the harbour. I found out that they first apeard after directly the earth quake. Their populatin has grown up to about 300 int the summer and about 600 during the winter time.

This week I will take part here in the first
Oracle 11 New Features for Administrators course ever

goodby Istanbul

The last day for this time in Istanbul I spent relaxing in a hamam.
For this time I chose to take the full program (suitable for a sultan)at Cağaloğlu Hamamı  which is one of the things you should have done before you die.

I felt like I was newly born afterwards.

 After this I took a lst coffee at the Mandabatmaz Kahvesi
which is an absolute MUST for every fan of sofisticated coffee.
    I just had to congratulate the kahveçi for his brilliant coffee. The bull will not sink in the cup, this is for sure! One more very good reason to come back definitely!

Getting introduced to Istanbul

Today a 9:30 my phone in the hotel rang.
It was Tonguç Yilmaz who invited me to take a tour around Istanbul with him. I was very pleased to meet him and we had a greate day. He spent full eight hours to host me and show me around his town and explain everything to me!

When he was waiting in th lobby of the hotel he ran into a comrade he had studied togeter with and whom he had not met since 10 years. Both of them were very surprised to meet each other after such a long time, standing in front of the lift waiting for an Oracle guy to come down. And the best thing was that they were waiting for different people, one for me and the other one for Paul Dorsey, an Oracle expert from Iselin NJ in the U.S.
What an incident! Two friends meet in a hotel by accident ,
both waiting in the same hotel in front of a lift for two different people,
who also are both linked with Oracle!

 Istanbul must be a village I thought! Incredible!

We first went to Dolmabahçe, from where we took a taxi to Taksim place, which is the center of the European side of Istanbul. We strolled down Istiklal Caddesi until we came to location of the German Goethe Institut, we a very fancy restaurant is also located on the roof of the building.
It is called Litera , from where you get a
wounderful view 
across the Golden Horn to the old city of Istanbul.
We had a cold drink and after this we went down to a tunnel from where we took a kind of tram to Karaköy from where we took a ferry to the Anatolian side of Istanbul.
Tonguç showed me the train station HaydarpaŞa
from where the famous Orient Express starts all the way to Teheran,
and explained geography, history and strategic situation of Istanbul to me.  

On the way to the busstop we needed Tonguç asked a taxi driver for directions and to my surprize he said ” …you are walking into the wrong direction. Jump right into my taxi and I will give you a free ride to the busstop”, can you believe this?  
We took a middibus to Fenerbahçe, passing along the footballstadion.
Tonight is an historical football match and if the Fenerbahçe team wins against Trabzonspor there will be large party going on in all the town, because the team will be winner of the championship and this in their 100th. year! 
In Fenerbahçe I had tavuk göğsü, a very special Turkish desert which I like very much. And I guess that Tonguç took me all the way to very best place to have it.

Tonguç,  you are a very good tourist guide!
And I appreciated it very much that you spent your valuable time at the weekend to introduce me to your city!
Thank you very much for the wonderfull day!