Eccentric encounters

This nice couple from Manchester — "Home of the Manchester City team, not Manchester United, I'll have ye know" (as Gaz says) — caught the bus with me from Lima to Ayacucho, and we hung out together in Ayacucho for a few days. Gaz is a mechanic for BMW, and Cath is a PE teacher. Like me, they're on a year-long round-the-world trip (except they're nearing the end of theirs); and, like me and every other gringo in Peru, they're on their way to Cusco to do the Machu Picchu hike.

Alexis is a friend of my buddy Antonio, as well as the only Drupal developer in Peru. He's a really interesting guy: he's run his own web hosting company; he's built his own house; he's written a book about how to work from home; and he's developed web sites for a bunch of different clients. Today, I visited him at his home in Chaclacayo, and had great fun eating, drinking, chatting, and recording with him.

Chris became a good mate of mine, during my week at the Flying Dog in Lima. Chris is a Canadian, a very well-travelled guy (although he's new to the Latin world), and a producer of home-made wine. He's also a vegetarian. He's a great guy to have philosophical chats with as well.

Antonio first contacted me over a month ago, with a Drupal support question — by sheer coincidence, this happened to be just when I'd arrived in Mexico. Antonio is the leader of the Linux and Open Source community here in Peru; and he knows everyone, everywhere, who's a part of this community.

This Swedish brother-and-sister pair were staying with me at the Flying Dog. They're both fairly quiet, although not by Swedish standards, I guess. They're also both big drinkers and big smokers (however, Maja was sick for most of the week — so she had to drink and smoke even more, in order to get better :P). These two, myself, and Chris ended up hanging out together a fair bit.

There are plenty of fun people staying here at the Flying Dog, but the only really crazy person here is one of the staff: John. Speaking a little of every language on Earth (including Hebrew), always quick with a wild greeting or a joke, and eager to party and to get drunk with the guests, we've all come to think of John as "one of us", not as a staff member.

The Cohens are the family that I'm staying with during my 5 days up in Vancouver, and in Canada. They live in Richmond, which is (technically) an island south of the main part of the city, and which is also where the airport can be found. The Cohens are: Nanci (mom); Stuart (dad); Genna (sister senior, who I met last year in Sydney, through the AUJS Revue); Andy (younger bro 1); and David (younger bro 2). There is also Grandma (from Montreal), who's staying there at the moment (she came primarily for David's barmitzvah, which was 2 weeks ago).

I met Athena up at Grouse today. We happened to both be hiring skis at the same time, and then we kept bumping into each other on the slopes all day, and doing a few runs together now and then. Athena's orignally from Melbourne, but she spends most of her time these days working on an organic veggie farm in California. Yep, that's right, folks: she's a major hippie (she has an impressive head of dreads, too). Today was her first time skiing in 12 years, but she said that when she was little, she used to go to Mt Bullah (in Victoria, Australia) all the time.

I already knew that the whole world is Jewish; but what I didn't know is that the whole world also has Jewish connections in East Lindfield, Sydney, Australia. I was sitting on the Caltrain back to San Francisco (from Sunnyvale) this evening, and I couldn't help but overhear a girl nearby talking about how she's Jewish, and about how she's got family in Australia. When I went over and talked to her, I discovered that as well as this, she's also the first cousin of Debbie and Benny Geyer, who are old family friends of mine, and who have lived around the corner from me for a good part of my life.

Walking into DrupalCon felt — for a die-hard fan like myself, at least — like walking into the cast of my favourite movie of all time. All these people whose avatar photos I've seen, whose blogs I've read, whose patches I've reviewed, whose criticism I've received, and whose IRC handles I've chatted with (all for the past 2 years) — all of them suddenly, in a very surreal way, came to life before my very eyes. So I finally have proof that this whole Drupal thing is not a great big online hoax: as I always believed, other Drupal people do actually exist in real life!