Our friends Andrew and Janice finally tied the knot last Sunday, in
Langkawi, Malaysia.
They're Aussies currently living in New York, and Janice is of Malaysian
descent, so I think part of the reason was to accommodate some Malaysian
relatives that wouldn't be able to travel, and the other reason was that it
was going to mean a bunch of people had to travel anyway, so why not travel
somewhere a bit exotic?
As my sister is getting married later this month in Brisbane, we decided to
spare Zoe two massive international flights in close succession, and Sarah
and Zoe flew out a few days ahead of me, and went to Brisbane, and then Zoe,
Sarah and her mum flew to Langkawi from there, and I flew there from San
Francisco, with the plan being for Sarah and Zoe to hang out in Brisbane for
the 4 weeks in between weddings.
It was the longest amount of travel I think I've ever done. I hadn't sat
down and calculated what the travel time was beforehand, and when I got on
the flight from San Francisco to Hong Kong, and they said it was going to be
nearly 14 hours
just to Hong Kong, I nearly wept. The only good
thing about it was I didn't have to wrangle a toddler as well.
From there, I had to get to Singapore, with a several hour layover, and then
another flight from Singapore to Langkawi. I left SFO at 1:20am on Monday
morning, and finally arrived at about 7am (San Francisco time) the following
day.
I didn't even bother getting off the plane in Hong Kong, it was only an hour
and a half layover. I think the layover in Singapore was 5 hours, and it was
a separate flight. Singapore airport at least was pretty good to kill time
in.
It was funny, I was reading Wired while I was killing time in Singapore, and
they had an article, which included a side bar on
10 Best
Airports to Get Stuck In, and I observed that getting to Langkawi and
back involved using 4 of them.
The flight into Langkawi was more eventful than usual. I was dozing a bit as
we were coming in to land, and I woke up to the sensation of taking off
again. I wondered if we'd had an aborted landing? Sure enough, soon after,
the captain got on the public address and said that they'd had to abort the
landing due to bad weather in Langkawi. He had pretty bad Engrish, thanking
us for our frustration and saying something about fuel, so I didn't get a
lot of the details. We proceeded to circle for a while before finally
landing. I think the flight ended up landing something like an hour or more
later than scheduled. So that was mildly exciting. Langkawi airport was one
of those little "walk across the tarmac" places. I think I stood the closest
to an operating jet engine that I ever have, as another aeroplane taxied in
to a stop between my plane and the terminal while I was walking to it. Loud.
Anyway, that was all just me getting there. Sarah had a bit of fun getting
to Brisbane on her own with Zoe. She's now too long to sleep in an in-flight
bassinet, and doesn't seem to like sleeping vertically in the Ergo Baby
Carrier (possibly she was too hot in it). I think she got a bit of sleep
lying across Sarah's lap, but Sarah didn't get much sleep. I think there was
similar fun for the Brisbane to Kuala Lumpur flight, but at least she had
two laps to lie across for that one. Sarah, Zoe and Sarah's mum arrived in
Langkawi earlier in the day on Tuesday, and I made it to the resort at about
10pm (local time) and pretty much immediately crashed for the night.
The
Westin
Langkawi was just fabulous. I don't think we've stayed at a resort since
our honeymoon, and this resort was a whole other level compared to
Heron Island.
The rooms were very comfortable, and the resort was very accommodating of a
toddler. Their Kids Club menu was excellent. The breakfast buffet (included
in our room rate) was the most comprehensive breakfast buffet I have ever
seen in a hotel. The only thing missing was bacon, being a Muslim country,
but I can live without that. It was pretty easy to just fill up on
breakfast, skip lunch and just have a light dinner. The on-resort dining
prices were also very reasonable. The off-resort prices were even cheaper.
The resort facilities in general were very comprehensive. Three pools. A
children's play room. A well equipped gym and recreational area including
squash courts. An extremely nice day spa.
The thing I liked best about the whole destination wedding thing was all of
the activities leading up to the actual wedding. The wedding was on the
Sunday, and we had the Hen's and Buck's parties on Friday. Apparently
Australia is the only place that calls it a Buck's party. The rest of the
world calls it a Stag party, how about that? There was some last-minute
changes to the Buck's party, and we ended up chartering this huge $2 million
yacht for 4 hours and going for a cruise and doing some jetskiing and water
sports. The captain was Aussie, so we all had a good chat with him.
Apparently it's a corporate vessel, with an exclusive chartering arrangement
with the Westin.
On Friday night, we all went out to a seafood buffet dinner at the Yellow
Cafe over at Cenang Beach. Most of the guys and girls already knew each
other courtesy of the day's activities, so dinner involved a lot of meeting
the other halves.
What I really liked about all of the pre-wedding stuff was that by the time
the wedding rolled around, you really felt like you knew a bunch of Andrew
and Janice's family and friends, which I think made the whole thing feel a
lot more intimate.
Saturday was a recovery day. Sarah's aunties Glenda (who was in Singapore on
business) and Vicki (who lives in Thailand) had joined us at the resort by
this stage, so we were all knocking around together checking out the island.
We took the
cable car to
the top, but unfortunately the sky bridge was closed due to the inclement
weather.
There was a lot of touristy stuff at the bottom of where the cable car was,
and Zoe got to have an encounter with a very large python. She even tried to
give it a kiss.
One of the things that was surprising was how popular Zoe was with all of
the locals and other Asian tourists. We could probably have charged for
photographs. There was a little girl, who I thought was possibly a similar
age to Zoe (turned out she was two and a half) and I asked her parents if I
could take a photo of the two girls together, and no sooner had they sat
down together and a virtual paparazzi materialised out of nowhere taking
photographs. Similarly, all of the staff at the Westin were totally taken by
Zoe, and wanted to touch her. To her credit, Zoe handled all of the extra
attention pretty well.
The wedding wasn't until 6pm on Sunday, so we did a 4 hour island hopping
boat tour in the morning. That was a bit of an experience. It was nothing
short of sheer bedlam trying to board the right boat at the wharf (I use the
term lightly) and then the boat's captain had to arrange the passengers
appropriately so as to keep the boat on an even keel. It was a narrow motor
boat with a canopy cover over the back two thirds of it.
First stop was Dayang Bunting Island, home of Pregnant Maiden Lake, where we
stopped for 45 minutes. More bedlam ensued getting off the boat at the wharf
there (there was veritable flotilla of tour boats all trying to load and
unload at the same time). Monkeys abounded. They seemed incredibly tame. We
were practically tripping over them. Zoe didn't seem to be as taken by the
monkeys as I thought she would. It was a short walk up a reasonable flight
of stairs to get to the lake, though some incredibly humid jungle, and once
we got there, there wasn't a huge amount to do in the time we had available.
So we dunked Zoe's feet in the lake a few times and then made our way back
to the chaos at the wharf and got back on our boat.
We stopped for a similar amount of time at another island with a pretty nice
beach, and Zoe had enough time to a quick swim in the ocean with Sarah, and
then we made our way back to the boat again to another spot where we watched
sea eagle feeding. Heaps of eagles circling overhead would take turns to
swoop down and grab fish and fly off again. It was impressive. I think I
managed to snap some good action shots with the long lens.
Then we had the wedding itself. It was on the beach out the front of the
Heavenly Spa on the resort. Let me say, the Westin knows how to put a
wedding together. The ceremony was as lovely as the location.
For the reception, the one 5 bedroom villa on the resort was booked for the
night. Dinner was a buffet on the lawn out the front (briefly delayed thanks
to a rain shower) and then speeches and general partying happened around the
terrace out the back of the villa. There were some beautiful speeches.
Janice's brought a tear to my eye. Part of the whole package included
something like a 10 person video crew that were running around capturing
everything. It felt a bit surreal. It was definitely the most high-end
wedding I've ever been to (sorry Scott and Julie, your "Wedding of the
Century" has been eclipsed by the "Wedding of the Millennium").
Monday was a wind down day. Zoe mercifully gave us a sleep in until 8am.
Our flights didn't leave until the evening on Tuesday, so after we checked
out we went for a drive around the island to try and get Zoe to take a nap
in the car. We ended up at the
fruit
farm, which to the best of my understanding is run by the government.
Zoe had fallen asleep by this stage, and Sarah said she'd stay behind in the
car and have a nap too. So her mum and I went on the tour. It was a fun
little tour. There were only four of us on it. They drive you around the
farm on the back of a truck and show you the various crops they have. They
stop at a few places and give you a bunch of fruit samples, attempt to
answer your questions, and take funny pictures of you. The favourite seemed
to be to dangle a fruit on a knife up close in front of the camera while
having the subject(s) in the background look like they're carrying an
enormous fruit.
We got back to the car to an upset Sarah and small group of locals milling
around. Sarah had managed to lock Zoe in the car for about 30 minutes when
she got out to make her a sandwich after Zoe had woken up from her nap.
Fortunately the engine was running and the air conditioning was on, so there
was no risk of Zoe overheating (on the contrary, she was a bit on the cool
side). Some kind locals had somehow figured out which car rental company to
call (it's possible there's only one) and someone came out with a spare key,
so the crisis was averted just before we got back to the car. It's the first
time Zoe's been locked in the car (it's pretty much impossible in the Prius)
and it was just our luck that it'd happen in a foreign country!
One of the saddest things about Langkawi was the amount of garbage floating
around in the ocean, and washing up on the beaches. I was swimming in the
ocean off the yacht while we were out on the Buck's party, and it was
disgusting. The jetski was temporarily disabled due to sucking in something.
We visited Black Sand Beach, which was supposed to be something of a tourist
attraction. Covered in trash.
Ian Kiernan would be
sad. The captain of the yacht we were on for the Buck's party said it was
all from Thailand and got flushed out of all the rivers and streams by the
recent rain. Just goes to show how connected everything is.
The house is very quiet without Sarah and Zoe, but my friend Liam is
visiting from Zurich for a couple of weeks, so that's helping break the
silence. I'm using the time to get a heap of things done that I don't
otherwise get time to get done.
Unfortunately the photos from the trip are only available on Facebook at the
moment, but they'll eventually get uploaded
here.
There are currently roughly 1500 source packages in Debian which possibly
(very likely actually) do have broken URLs in debian/control.
While it is quite useful that we have VCS information and Homepage
URLs in the Packages file these days, we also created a rather big source
of bitrot. These URLs are typically paste-and-forget. Sure, people occasionally
catch the fact that a homepage or VCS has moved, especially if they are active
and in good contact with their upstreams. However, there are also other cases...
The Debian Python Modules Team is 
And while I was on it, I thought I could do the same for the GNOME and GStreamer teams:
(hint: pox-guest and piotr in python-modules are the same person)