Wooaaah. I got there. It's all happening here. It has been a long day, and I'm so happy to be here now. When I walked into the room where the core team and team leads were meeting for lunch it felt like a renunion. A lot of these gus I had seen just 6 weeks ago. Others I knew from a year ago. Yet others were new. People I knew, but then finally met in the flesh. There was a lot of handshaking, laughing and backslapping going on.
The hotel accommodation is somewhat luxurious. I don't think I have ever stayed in a hotel room this luxurious, bar the time I traveled with my parents to Egypt and they had a room at the Cairo Hilton. Everything about the Mandalay Bay is 'gold' and you feel the lure from the casino with so much yellow shining metal around you. Luckily I'm resistant to this lure. I seem to have no nerve or gene that gives me an impulse to gamble. At least not in a casino.
It's not only shiny and luxurious, it is also huge. And I mean massive. I have spent quite some time trotting from the hotel to the convention center, and then getting from the speaker room to the registration and back ... serious exercise. Now I'm in the speaker room. Got the T-shirt ... Got the Internet connection. Hehe. Wednesday I'm up for my presentation ...