Today is the day where more than four months of planning finally comes to fruition and the journey finally begins. First, about 20 friends came out for a little going away dinner last night. I had promised myself to only have a few drinks such that I wouldn't be hung over in the morning. Unfortunately, one drink often leads to another, and before I knew it I had a nice little chorus line of empty glasses on the table. I still felt fine, but I knew I was probably going to have a rough sleep and wake up feeling like garbage. I randomly ran into one of my co-workers from my previous job who just ...

Last night I ventured across the water and ended up down at Dave's house in North Vancouver. It was good times, complete with an amazing BBQ, some rum, and a bunch of tech talk. I didn't really feel like hiking to the bus stop at 1am to head home, so Dave let me crash in his guest room. The one thing about having a huge chunk of plastic under your eye is that you can really tell when your body is a bit dehydrated. For example, right now my left eye is really sore and I have a mild burning sensation, which usually happens when I'm dehydrated, or when I've had a few drinks. Obviously that kind of ...

I'm pretty bagged, so this will be short. The flight leaving Heathrow was pretty much a complete clusterfuck. Apparently they were out of gates, so they just parked the 747 on the concrete a mile away and had to shuttle us all there in small groups.. We took off around an hour late.. About an hour into it, we had some pretty wicked turbulence, which for someone who hates flying basically unnerved me. I popped a few sleeping pills when we hit altitude and managed to sleep for most of the flight home (surprisingly, because I had an aisle seat, and nobody asked me to get up so they could go to the ...

Now that I'm officially done what I came to do here in Finland, it's really time to let loose and party it up a bit... I just demolished my first beer here in the Oulu airport, and am now working on beer #2 waiting patiently for my plane to board. I've spent the last hour researching cool spots to go drink beer tonight in Helsinki, and I have a few in mind that I'm going to check out later.. I can't be too drunk or out too late tonight since I have lots to do in London tomorrow, but I'm going to do my best to drink as the locals do. Jari and Seppo impressed me with their drinking ability the other ...

So I have a few minutes to kill here at Heathrow, so I thought I would write a quick blog entry. The flight from Vancouver to here was relatively uneventful. The guy next to me was sort of a prick, and unfortunately for me I don't think he brushed his teeth yesterday, but I survived. I haven't slept a wink, so I'm hoping I can sleep for an hour or two on the next flight to Helsinki. I think my next flight is delayed slightly, which means I probably won't get into the hotel until around 10pm or so. One thing is for certain -- I'm definitely going to be ready to have a nice long sleep when I get ...