出差记

I am writing this post as I am sitting at my hotelroom in Bergen, the second largest city in Norway. The reason I am here is really because I am starting my process of learning .NET and the system architect of my mother company have a day free to walk me through some design patterns and some basic .NET programming. Plus I have a couple of meetings with my team members and it is just convenient to stay one more day to meet with him face to face instead of over the speakerphone.

It has been quite eventful so far. The flight was booked for 7:15am and I had to wake up at 5:30 to make sure I can arrive at the airport with 30 minutes to spare which is more than enough for domestic flights. Just as I was about to leave my apartment at 6 I got an SMS from the airline saying that my flight is cancelled, and instead I was automatically booked for the next flight which leaves at 8:00. That plane will arrive at Bergen at 8:55 and I will only have 20 minutes to get to the office before the workshop begins. Well, I didn't really have a choice...

So I board that plane, and it landed 5 minutes early which gave me some room to work with. I forgot to mention that my boss is also going to Bergen today and we happened to book the same flight originally, since our flight was cancelled I assumed he ended up in the same flight as me, but I was wrong. I couldn't see him on the plane and I couldn't find him in the terminal. At first I just want to share a taxi with him to the office, but I guess we just have to go separately.

I got to the office at exactly 9:15am and I was overjoyed, so I paid and jump out of the taxi and up to the office, greeted the system architect and get ready to start the day, just as I reach for my notebook I realize that I left my laptop at the taxi. So I have to call the taxi station to get a hold of the driver and tell him to come back with my laptop. Luckily I have the receipt so I was able to tell them who the driver was, otherwise it will take a long time to search for that driver (of course I have to save the receipt, that's the only way to claim the money back). As I was waiting for the laptop to come back my boss walked in. It turned out that he was not automatically booked to the next flight because he refused to use the company's travel pass (instead using his own frequent flyer program), have to sneak away before he realize how stupid he was.

My laptop eventually got delivered to me after 10 minutes or so and the day begins. Overall the day was very informative and I learned a lot. I am just surprised the coffee managed to keep me awake.

As I left the office, it's actually not raining so I have to use this chance to checkout the town (Bergen is known to rain/snow 200 days a year). So instead of taking the taxi to the hotel, I walked (4km). I took some nice pictures along the way which I will put up when I get back.

I didn't really looked at the hotel reservation until I got to the hotel and I found out that my hotel stay costs 2050NOK (about 2500 HKD) (I guess HK's 平机会主席 should feel better now.). Plus the plane ticket which costs about 3000, this trip actually cost them 5000. On top of that they sent me to a .NET course next week, the total come up to be 25000 NOK. I guess it is all worth it if they can finally put me into use.

It's 18:20 and I am dead tired. I think I am going to bed now even though the sun is still high up and it doesn't get dark until 9:45pm in Norway nowadays.

Good night.