Half of Technet

Most of this was written on the Sunway Lagoon Resort Hotel paper while awaiting announcements for what will happen if the power does not come back on. Thank goodness I did not wear a woolen blouse or something. It was so stifflingly hot!

13 Jan

Been looking forward to this day for the past week. I haven't been to a Microsoft Technet event in years and the techy in me just yearns to mingle with the technocrats again.

I've been surrounded by financial whizzes in my present company. And everyday I've been hearing and using jargons like "bottom line", "paid-up capital", "NTA", "loss-leaders", etc, etc. I so miss hearing stuff like, "SLAs", "IP tables", "configuration management", etc. You get the drift. So the thought of soaking myself into the world of bits and bytes again thrilled me - even if it's just for one day.

A Relaxing Start

The morning started pleasantly. I woke up from a very long slumber (slept at 9pm the night before because I was so exhausted.) Woke up feeling refreshed and had a most relaxing breakfast and shower.

My dad, mom and bro got worried. "Aren't you supposed to be at work or something by now?" dad asked.

"Relax, folks," I sipped my cup of coffee luxuriantly. "I have a seminar today. A Microsoft one," I added for emphasis.

Dad was suitably impressed and we all had a pleasant chat. By the time I got out of the house, it was just past nine. The seminar starts at 10am. But the traffic normally eases after 9am and within half an hour, I was at the Sunway Convention Center. After registering myself, I still had half an hour to kill so I wandered around and observed everybody else.

Some Nerds and a Nice First-half

There were some nerdily-dressed ones loitering about. But generally, the Technet attendees were dressed like any other crowd. Which in a way, was kinda sad because this means that the technocrats are losing their signature style. You can't really tell which conference you are in by the way people dress anymore.

By the time the briefing started, the conference hall was full-house. Made an acquaintance with the person sitting next to me and had a great time listening to the new technologies presented by the speakers. By the time the first half of the conference ended, we were really looking forward to the second half that continues at 1.30pm after lunch. My acquaintance and I were attending the same workshop so we made plans to meet up then, and we went our separate ways for lunch. I hadn't been to Sunway Pyramid in yonks and wanted to window-shop a bit during the long lunch.

The Blackout

When I was making my way to Long John Silver's for lunch, all the lights flickered for a while, came back up and then there was a total blackout. There were some surprised exclamations. The people eating at Long John Silver's blinked in the mild darkness that surrounded them and then carried on eating - what else can they do? And they were the lucky ones to have food on their table. There were about three long queues at McDonalds and the cashier simply couldn't serve them anymore. For one, there was no power to operate the cash register and for another, there was no power to make those burgers and fries.

After a few minutes, the power generator kicked in and the main sections of the shopping mall were lighted up. But the shops located on the right and left were left in darkness. I remembered Ocean's Eleven where a massive city-wide blackout was crucial in their heist and noted that most of the shops at the mall were already closing their doors for fear of looting.

Lunch at Vikings

Ok, so lunch at Long John Silver's is out. Luckily, I was standing near the Viking's hotdog stand and it was still open for business - not affected by the blackout at all. Yippee. I ordered a set lunch and sat in one of the limited tables laid out nearby. Before long, a long crowd started to form at the hotdog stand and the poor guy (it was a one-man show affair) got really, really busy trying to meet the orders. The patrons were patient and understanding, so that was good for the Viking's owner.

I felt sad looking at the other food outlets that were in darkness and empty during a busy lunch hour. They were among the ones that were seriously affected by this blackout. The others who were suffering are also those trapped in the lifts. I was thankful that I did not use the lifts at all that day. The thing was, when I got back to the conference hall, there was one lift still operating and a lot of people still got into it.

I couldn't understand it. Why can't they use the small flight of stairs and not waste the power just because they don't want to walk more?

After lunch, I received a call from Irene who told me that the blackout was affecting most of Klang Valley. I was aghast to hear about the back-to-back traffic happening at the busiest intersections in affected areas because the traffic lights were out. At that moment, I just wanted to get out of the shopping mall and just be at home. Who knows when the power will come back on?

In 1997, there was a massive flood in Klang Valley and on that fateful day, I reached home only at 1.30am. Being stuck on the road for 7 hours in horrendous traffic once was more than enough for me. I don't fancy being in that same situation again.

But then again, I wanted to attend the second half of Technet. So I made my way to the workshop room and the speaker asked us to wait till 2pm when further announcements would be made to see if they would need to cancel the conference because there wasn't enough power to power up all the projectors and presentation workstations.

The Abrupt End of it All

2pm came and we were asked to congregate at the main hall. They formally announced the cancellation of the remainder of Technet and promised to e-mail us the link to download the presentation materials.

And thus ends the techy conference that I was so looking forward to.

Gah.

Note: Read Howard's brief account on this. He's one of the keynote speakers for Technet. Funny guy.