Up soooooo early again on a Saturday! Andrew and I had very quickly packed the night before and since this was just an overnight trip we were traveling light. We each just packed some clothes and toiletries in our laptop bags. Light! Poor Wayne dragged out of bed so he could drive us to the airport. He’s a good man for sure!
The airport was really busy for it being so early but as usual, security was a breeze. Well except for Andrew having his bag searched but this happens every time so we plan for it. Our flight was uneventful. I shifted between reading and napping and we were there in no time. We picked up our super fancy rental car (not really) and made our way toward super fancy San Jose (not really). We hadn’t had breakfast so Andrew tried to Yelp (this is a verb, correct?) us some vegan food. If we thought finding vegan in SF was a pain this was even worse! He did find a doughnut shop, Psycho Donuts that claimed to have vegan options. Well who doesn’t love fried carbs and sugar? We assumed it was going to be much like Voodoo so didn’t have high hopes.
We navigated our way there and wandered around searching for it. It was somewhere attached to a parking garage but we didn’t see it. We asked a woman working in a flower shop and she told us it was very expensive, showed us where Safeway was, told us they probably had cookies and then pointed us to the doughnut shop. We chose Psycho over sanity though. Not only was it attached to a parking garage, it was in the entrance to a movie theater. Yup it was pretty much trying to be Voodoo but their vegan selection was not much of a selection. We each got one and ate them on the way back to the car. They were so-so but it was something to hold us over anyway.
Back on the freeway and headed for the conference. It was being held at the Western Digital headquarters. We found the entrance and headed in, got our badges, said hello to people we knew and headed for the talk. It was a one track conference and was already underway. We listened to talks about BSD something something something until lunch.
We were sitting with our friend Carl so I left Andrew to talk while I went to get our food. They had little signs for everything and I was very happy to see one that said vegan. Wow, they even had stickers with our names on ours! How nice to be taken care of. Oh, so naive. I opened up my lunch and immediately saw a bag of Doritos, and a packet of mayo, and cream cheese on the sandwich. Well then. I opened Andrew’s and it was the same.
I found the organizer, Denise, and asked her about it. I told her I would be happy to go get us something but I didn’t want to throw away our untouched food. She was not happy about the mistake. There was also another woman who had her food messed up as well. She requested gluten free but hers definitely had gluten. The kitchen manager came out, found out what we needed and said she would be back with the correct food for all of us. Whew!
Denise and the other woman, Jennifer, began talking about diversity at conferences. Denise was asking Jennifer what she thought she could do to bring more women to the MeetBSD conferences. Jennifer began making suggestions and Denise seemed pretty open to hearing about them. Since I was standing there I put in my two cents and also mentioned that I had just finished the Ascend Project. Jennifer said something like, “Oh my gosh! You were in Ascend?! I was talking with Lukas about it at Grace Hopper and wow she made it happen! How was it?” I told her how incredible it was and how lucky I feel to have been a participant. I pointed her to the ascendproject.org website so she could read our blogs and course materials.
We talked for a bit longer until our food came. Everything was great and the kitchen manager assured us our food would be correct the next day. Awesome! I was really enjoying talking with Jennifer and asked if she wanted to go sit with us for lunch but she was heading home. Darn! She would be back tomorrow though. Yay!
I went back and told Andrew all about the diversity discussion and how I had met this really nice woman who had to leave. We ate and then listened to another talk or two. It was a good time to go check in to our fancy hotel (not really) so we drove the short distance. Apparently there was a huge wedding going on and they were all staying at the hotel. There were wedding party people everywhere! The were really loud too but they all looked great. I checked us in and we headed up to our room.
We got out of the elevator and I wish I had taken a picture but we were at the end of the most ridiculously long hallway and our room was at the other end! We trudged down there and opened the door. I could immediately tell people had been smoking in there. Ugh! Back down to the front desk. “Can we get a different room? Ours has definitely been smoked in.” Blank stare and then, “They are all supposed to be non-smoking” “Yeah well someone didn’t get the memo.” She was really pretty nice about it and found us another room…..still at the end of the long hallway. This room was much better.
I stayed at the hotel while Andrew went back to the conference for the last talk. I worked on my stupid resume and cover letter with no luck at all. Such a huge pain in the ass. How am I supposed to sell myself? I was so frustrated so I sent a tweet about it. Not one but two awesome women offered to help me. Jennifer was one of them! Wow, I just met her and she was willing to spend time with me the next day during the conference helping me out! Our friend Vicky also said she would help. I felt so relieved so I set it aside and searched for a place to have dinner.
I was pretty worried about this because nothing really came up on Yelp. I changed my tactic though and searched for vegetarian instead of vegan. I figured most anything vegetarian could probably be made vegan. This worked out really well! I found a couple of wonderful sounding vegetarian Vietnamese restaurants. I told Andrew about this and he invited some others from the conference to join us. We went to dinner with Michael, Will, and someone whose name I have forgotten. Sorry, really funny, nice guy from SF!
We ate at Bo De Vietnamese and it was excellent! Not a soul that worked there spoke any English so we could only order food by the menu number and we couldn’t ask any questions about additions, heat level and so on. It was all vegetarian with many mock meat dishes. The guys that went with us were so confused! I told them it was mock meat and none of them freaked out so that was good 🙂 I got the Spicy Crispy Lemongrass Chicken and Andrew got the Pickled Mustard Chicken. His sounded awful so I told him I wasn’t going to share mine or try any of his but when our food came his was like this giant bowl of delicious smelling soup! Mine was really good and spicy but I definitely wanted to taste his so we swapped after we both ate a bit. It was delicious! Everyone got wonderful looking food and I wish I had thought to take pictures. We all loved everything we got so I was relieved. I never know how strangers will react to eating a vegan meal.
We headed back to the hotel for the MeetBSD party. It had already gotten started and the music was SO loud! I never understand why anyone does this at a tech event. There wasn’t a person there who was going to dance. Everyone was nerd talking and it was really difficult to do over the music so many of us migrated out to the lobby.
Andrew and I talked with our friend, Carl. He’s going to propose to his African girlfriend and he’s doing the traditional thing with a dowry and courtship. It was so interesting! He is American and has no idea how it all works so his soon-to-be fiancee’s brother will be guiding him. He’s really nervous but he’s a wonderful man and he deserves to be happy. I’m ridiculously excited for him and this new life he will have!
It was pretty late and we were tired from our early and busy day so we headed up to the room. I have to say for a not very fancy hotel the bed was SO comfortable. It had a pillow top, a cozy comforter and the pillow was perfect! Better than mine at home.
Today I learned that traditionally the Congolese dowry requires giving the father of the bride a handgun but a laptop will suffice.
