Tuesday, April 7, 2009

Trips to Amsterdam and New Orleans


Fortunately I was able to travel overseas two times during my undergraduate time simply because I contributed over Apache Software Foundation during the time I spend at the university as an undergraduate. It was a really really cool experience for me since I haven't been in abroad before that. I went to New Orleans in Louisiana in November 2008 and Amsterdam in March. But due to the touch schedule at the university I couldn't write about both.

My first to participate in ApacheCon US 2008 and I had to give a talk in one of the sessions and it was all about Apache Qpid which was the project I got the committership and now I'm a PMC member for Apache Qpid. That was a very strange experience for me to travel over US alone and I was shocked when I landed over Atlanta AirPort since all most all the people who were around to me was foriengers and I never being to that kind of a scenario before in my life. During my time at the ApacheCon I was able meet lots of Apache folks and discuss certain thing which are technical and really helpful for me for my career and I was able add lot of professional contacts. Whole trip went pretty decent other than delaying my baggage during my arrival to US but now I feel it's good since I got enough cloths from one of the WSO2 collegue and got 50$ from the AirLine.

Now the Amsterdam trip was again a cool experience and opportunity I got from ASF travel assistance committee and I'm really grateful to ASF giving me all of these opportunities. Amsterdam is a damn beautiful city and most of the people are riding their own bycicles and no trafic in the city at all. When I was there it was very cold but I love that weather since I don't want to wash my cloths :-) Most of the people used to close their shops when it comes to 6 in the evening and they go home and enjoy. Almost all the houses are very much similar to houses in Galle Dutch fort so those architectural thing were not unfamiliar for me since my home town in Galle. I was able to get a real experience with the streats I used to see in films with lot of shops around the road and flow of the road is not build with tar but with some kind of bricks. I have noticed couple of differences between Europe and US during the two weeks of my time in Europe and US. US people are friendlier than Europians but they Europian people enjoy their lives and less traffic and little bit of less complex life stile than US. And most of europians used to speak something other than English and sometimes it's hard to do the work in English (All the ATM machines were in Dutch).

I have lot more to tell about my experience but that's all I can write due to busy schedule with my first job which is one of unmemorable opportunity I got in my life.

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