Around the World in 23 Days

🌎 → 🌏 → 🌍 → 🌎

Over the span of 23 days, I circumnavigated the globe, stepped foot on every hemisphere, and visited three new countries (bringing my total up to 43). I made this trip in order to present at three new conferences – Kiwi PyCon, PyCon Poland, and PyCon Estonia – which happened to be taking place over three consecutive weeks.

🛫 Ready for takeoff? 🇺🇸

My first stop was New Zealand, which is nearly the farthest place on Earth from where I live. Getting to Wellington, where the conference was being held, was going to take me three flights and two days. With a 16-hour time difference, I wanted to make sure I had time to adjust before presenting, so I had planned to get there a few days beforehand, and I was testing out the Timeshifter app to help me make the adjustment.¹

As I was finishing packing (which is very challenging for a trip like this with hot and cold weather), I got a text that my first flight was going to take off two hours later than scheduled. This meant my entire itinerary needed to be rescheduled. I was given the option of switching to a flight leaving in 30 minutes (impossible because I was not at the airport yet) or one that would be tight, but possible if I left right away, so I scrambled to finish packing and headed to the airport.

On the way there, I tried to accept the alternate flight, but it was no longer there. Panicked, I went through the United app for rebooking assistance. The agent was extremely helpful and found an alternate path there, which involved changing all three flights. After the changes, I was still scheduled to leave at the same time, but I would now arrive 7 hours later – not ideal, but I was just happy to still arrive on the originally-planned day. The first flight was delayed, making the connection that would bring me to Auckland, a tight one, but thankfully, they let all the people with tight connections deplane first, and I made it.

For the long-haul flight, I was in United Polaris class (business), and after making it to my seat, I regaled the purser and a fellow passenger with my account of the chaotic journey I was having. The purser treated me like a queen 👑 on that flight (one of the best purser's I've had), and I even got a pair of PJs, despite the flight not quite being long enough.² I was able to relax on that flight because, even if I missed the next connection, I knew would at least be in the right country.

After making it to Auckland, I had to clear passport control, customs, and recheck my bag for the domestic flight before I could head to the lounge and grab a shower. I wish I could tell you I was productive during that 6-hour layover, but I was too tired to take my computer out of the bag. Instead, I read up on Wellington.

📍 Wellington, New Zealand 🇳🇿

By the time I got to my hotel (which I learned later on was across the street from a hotel where people involved in Five Eyes often stay), all I could think about was sleeping. Despite Timeshifter telling me not to, I tried to grab a nap before dinner, but I was unable to fall asleep. I was also too tired to move, so I ordered room service and went to bed earlier than Timeshifter suggested, thinking that I would feel better in the morning.

I got over the jet lag five days later, which was roughly when Timeshifter promised, and indeed much faster than one-day-per-timezone rule of thumb (Mayo Clinic). The middle of the day was the hardest part for me – I would feel this sudden wave of fatigue and had to get outside for the sun and chilly wind to keep me awake. Thankfully, Wellington is New Zealand's coffee capital and flat whites were readily available.³

Kiwi PyCon began on Friday, and I presented my talk, Data Morph: A Cautionary Tale of Summary Statistics, on Saturday afternoon (watch the recording here). This was my first time presenting at conference in the Southern Hemisphere, and in the excitement, I was speaking a little faster than normal. However, I was keeping an eye on the time, so I was able to dial it back a bit and finish with three minutes for questions, which is typical for that talk.

No sooner did one of the attendees open his mouth to ask a question, than the fire alarm went off, and we had to evacuate the venue. I had walk out with the headset on, which made it possible for people with questions to ask them directly, but let me tell you it is windy in Wellington, especially by the harbor where we were, and coming from summer in the Northern Hemisphere, that did put a chill in me.⁴

While we were outside, I was introduced to a teacher who had attended my talk, and she expressed interest in using Data Morph in the classroom. It was at this moment that I realized I needed to add some suggested classroom activities using Data Morph to the project's README and documentation. With each Data Morph presentation, I have refined my positioning and made adjustments based on feedback or audience questions, so I made a point to take care of this during my trip.

By the time we got back to the venue, the organizers wanted to start the next talk to stay on schedule, meaning I had to untangle the headset from the nest the wind had made out of my thick, wavy hair, which was also much longer than I like it to be. I vowed to get a haircut when I returned home.⁵

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My favorite full-length talks from the event were (in no particular order) Weaving algorithms: the threads that bind the python and textile communities by Kelsey Vavasour, import rust by Tim McNamara, and Present like a pro by Katie McLaughlin. However, I think the lightning talks stole the show this time. It was an impressive lineup – one of the best I've ever seen. Here are my top picks:

• "Metlink Dashboard from a Raspberry Pi Pico" by Ryan Wilson showcased what he built during the conference using what he had learned there (including reveal.js, for which he gave me a shoutout since I use it for my slides).
• "Why is [Utility Co]'s game offline?" by Asher Foster, which featured a little curiosity-driven penetration testing of a web application.
• "Cool packages" in which Aurynn Shaw introduced a few packages that may not be commonly used.
• "Domain names are not toys" in which Ben Bradshaw talked about registering an "example" domain that many people ended up using for testing emails without realizing a real person would receive them.
• "Falsehoods Programmers Believe About Colour" by Daisy Brenecki, which taught me some new things about color.
• "The guide to containers" by Katie McLaughlin, which was a very clever and creative talk/short story.

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I did manage to squeeze in some exploration time during my stay in Wellington. The Te Papa museum, which came highly recommended by my Wellington colleagues, was a highlight, along with sunset from the lookout at Mount Victoria and the cable car.

August was a month-long Wellington on a Plate event, which had restaurants competing for the best burger. While this is not typically by thing, I did have one from Bellamys, which is a restaurant located inside the parliament building (the Beehive) and formerly restricted just to members of parliament. My top meals though were at Logan Brown and Shed 5. And of course, I made sure to try a variety of New Zealand wines (many from the Martinborough and Hawkes Bay regions).

I would be remiss not to mention the scones – my favorite was the orange date scone from Shelley Bay Baker on Leeds Street 😍 I made more than one trip to this bakery during my time in Wellington and even pointed out a typo on their display case (current → currant)⁶ 😂

📍 Gliwice, Poland 🇵🇱

The next stop on my tour around the world was Poland, which involved another three westward flights. The first layover was in Sydney, Australia, and despite not having the window seat, I was able to snap a nice picture of the Sydney Opera House and Harbour Bridge basking in the glow of the golden hour:

I grabbed a shower in the Emirates lounge there and prepared for the long-haul flight to Dubai. Last October, I went to Dubai to present at PyCon MEA and take some time off, so I knew I wanted to take advantage of this layover to stock up on camel milk chocolate and Bateel's stuffed dates. Upon arrival, I had to find the transfer desk to get my final boarding pass printed (every person I asked about why this was the case gave me a different answer). Once that was sorted, I had a little free time to visit the Emirates lounge there.

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Once in Poland, it was a short train ride to my destination. Upon arrival, my body was once again craving sleep – it had been 30+ hours of travel, and a 10-hour time difference from New Zealand. I grabbed an early dinner and went to sleep. While I was asleep, I received an email from Emirates inviting me to pick up my Emirates Skywards silver tier tags, which are good for 12 months, the next time I'm in Dubai, but who knows if I will end up there before then 😂

I spent the first full day in Poland adjusting to the time because I was presenting at PyCon Poland the next afternoon. Due to technical issues the conference was having with the venue, however, my presentation was delayed until the evening. Jet lag had hit me, and for the first time ever, I started my talk (Data Morph again, although I had tweaked the slides after Wellington) by saying "Good evening" to the audience 😂

During the Q&A, there was a troll (it was an anonymous question-asking system, so I can't say I was surprised). Later on in the conference, an attendee commended me on how I handled that question. The same attendee also wanted to know how I learned to speak publicly because my flow was very good ❤️ A different attendee told me on the final day of the conference that she thought it was "the most creative and innovative talk of the conference" 😍

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First thing the next morning, I was delivering my pandas workshop as a 4-hour session. One attendee there said it was "by far one of the best workshops of the conference" 😍 He also mentioned wanting a longer session 😂

While presenting though, I did notice a few things I needed to fix in the slides, as I typically do, but in this case, one of the things I noticed had gone undetected for four years now! Unbelievably, I noticed it right as that slide came up (before I even spoke about it) – I wonder why it was so obvious to me in that moment, but never before (and not to anyone else that has seen the slides) 🤔 I made sure to fix it before leaving Poland.

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The next day, the lightning talks featured a meme ranker, which elicited many laughs, and an invisibility cloak from Harry Potter (unfortunately, the talk was in Polish, so I couldn't understand it, but I did see it in action). Later on, Pablo Galindo Salgado, delivered his rapid-fire keynote (if you've ever seen one of his talks, you know what I mean). During this talk someone (I won't name names), fell out of their seat⁷ – perhaps in shock when Pablo told us that the color pink doesn't exist because there is no pink wavelength. One of the questions from the audience at the end began by mentioning that Pablo's keynote was like listening to a video on 2x speed 😂

Between the jet lag and the late night/early morning with back-to-back presentations, I was thankful that Gliwice wasn't a place for sightseeing⁸ – I needed to take it easy, after all, since this was only week two out of three. Instead, I went on a culinary exploration and tried a variety of Polish foods along with some Polish vodka. What surprised me most was how much soup there was: each day's conference lunch featured a soup, and restaurant menus had several soup options.

📍 Tallinn, Estonia 🇪🇪

There were only two flights for this leg 😅, but unfortunately, it was not without incident. I had purchased some Polish spirits at the originating airport, and despite being packaged for a connecting flight, the bottles weren't wrapped in anything. Just as I was going to take my bag off the belt at baggage claim in Tallinn, this slipped out of my hand and onto the floor.

The glass of the larger bottles shattered, but the smaller one and a separate item were still intact. The liquid was rapidly making its way out of the duty free bag and onto the floor. I retrieved my passport from the mess and then dug out the reusable bag I always carry when I travel and used it to bring that mess to the bathroom where I could collect the unbroken items and start cleaning my suitcase. Every day on this trip, I would notice another thing that needed to be cleaned, and I'm still cleaning things up after this: clothes, shoes, my backpack, etc.

At least that was the worst of it, and Marriott had upgraded my hotel room to a junior suite, so things were looking up. I was staying in the old town, but it was already evening and I was too tired to explore. I grabbed dinner across the street from my hotel and called it a night.

The next day I spent some more time cleaning and needed a mental break, so I decided I would work NYC hours that day (I was seven hours ahead of NYC) and went for a stroll around old town following a suggested walking tour, which I would finish over multiple days. I spent a few hours in the Kiek in de Kök Museum and Bastion Tunnels before heading back to the hotel to start my work day. I had one of the best meals of the trip that night at Veinirestoran Dominic.

The following day was filled with conference preparations. For PyCon Estonia, I visited the conference venue, tested out my setup, and had a speaker event, but I was also presenting virtually for ODSC Europe, so I also needed to test my virtual setup beforehand and organize a quiet place to present from the PyCon Estonia venue the next day.

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Both ODSC Europe and PyCon Estonia were running September 5th and 6th, so I would be presenting my talk on Data Morph two days in a row with ODSC Europe first. I headed to the PyCon Estonia venue in the morning to check out a few talks before doing some slide review (I had changed the slides slightly after PyCon Poland, as well). During this time one of the attendees introduced himself to me and mentioned that he had been following me since my episode on the Super Data Science Podcast aired back in May 2023 ❤️ That was technically the first time I spoke publicly about Data Morph, so it felt fitting that I would be presenting it there, as I usually mention that having that podcast scheduled pushed me to get the first release done sooner.

A half-hour before my ODSC Europe session, I headed for the room that I would be presenting out of. This was the first virtual presentation I had done in quite a while, maybe since the very first few presentations, and I remembered why I now prefer in-person events. It is very hard to present without seeing your audience (this was actually a plus for me when I was starting out because of the nerves). Aside from some technical difficulties I had with the webinar platform, the talk went well. Afterward, I headed to the conference's social event and went to bed early once more because I was presenting in the morning.

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I woke up the next morning in a panic: I had been waiting in bed for the alarm to go off, and after a while, I wondered why it hadn't already, so I went to check what time it was. At this moment, I realized that my phone was dead (it must have gotten unplugged during the night). Once I found a clock in the room, I realized I had to book it to get to the venue an hour before my session. I wasn't even able to grab food, just a coffee in the hotel lobby. It was hard to shake off this panic before going on stage – what a way to start!

The presentation did go well though, and one of the attendees mentioned that he used to teach and could definitely see the value in using Data Morph as a teaching tool. It was great to hear this because, while I presented the same talk at all four conferences, I did change it slightly for each one, refining the message further based on the questions or feedback I was getting. However, I did come to the conclusion that no matter what you do, certain things will be misunderstood or over some people's heads, and that's fine – it's all about balance.

Afterward, I checked out a few of the talks and spent some time on the hallway track. I ended up talking for quite a bit with one of the PyCon Lithuania organizers 👀

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With the conference over, I headed back to old town for my celebratory dinner. I selected a Michelin Guide restaurant called Restaurant Tchaikovsky, which was in Hotel Telegraaf, where I was staying. The weather was pleasant, so I opted to dine on the terrace. The nod on the Michelin Guide was definitely deserved.

The following day was the final day of my trip, so I finished the remaining sites on my list, a highlight of which was the Great Guild Hall, which is part of the Estonian History Museum. I also tried out a cardamom bun from Pulla Bakery, which I highly recommend.

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On multiple occasions, my experiences in Tallinn reminded me a lot of my experiences in Copenhagen last year. It was fascinating to learn that Tallinn's history is closely tied to Denmark: their coat of arms feature elements of Denmark's and the name for the city is believed to have come from "Taani-linna", meaning "Danish-castle". In fact, the legend of Denmark's flag (Dannebrog) actually takes place in a battle at Tallinn in the early 13th century.⁹

🛬 Homeward bound 🇺🇸

The next morning I headed to the airport for my trip back home. There was a delay in my connection home from Munich, but no bottles were harmed in the making of this journey 😂

At this point, I hadn't been following Timeshifter much, which wasn't too much of a problem. My guess is that it's because my chronotype is more of a night owl, which Timeshifter says have an easier time traveling west (gaining hours). I have also done many trips to/from Europe, so I know what works for me at that distance.

After touching down in the US once more, I had completed my first circumnavigation of the Earth in a single trip. While I didn't get a certificate for my travels,¹⁰ there was a fireworks display visible from my apartment later that evening (no doubt for me).

This was probably my craziest itinerary to date, but I enjoyed it! Would I do this again? Absolutely, just give me some time to recover 😴

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1. Disclaimer: I have a free year of Timeshifter thanks to my United 1K status. ↩
2. I also taught a frequent business traveler about mattress pads – a travel hack I learned about years ago. Always read the fine print! ↩
3. At The Hangar, I even had a flight of three flat whites made with different coffee blends. Unfortunately, the jet lag still hit me later that day. ↩
4. I later learned that Wellington is the windiest major city in the world (source). ↩
5. This was one of the first things I did when I got back. ↩
6. My hotel also had this misspelling on their menus, and I was beginning to wonder if that was just how it was spelled in New Zealand. I asked at the bakery, and they were thankful that I had pointed it because it was indeed wrong. ↩
7. Technically, this person fell trying to sit back into their seat after standing up. In falling, they kicked the TV that had Pablo's slides, which was on wheels and moved toward the front of the room. Pablo was unfazed, and no one seemed to have noticed what had happened except for me and someone I had met a few days earlier who was sitting next to me at the top of the auditorium. ↩
8. Several Polish attendees asked me (on separate occasions) why I would go to Gliwice on my first trip to Poland. My answer was simple: to spread knowledge 😊 ↩
9. See Dannebrog: The flag that fell from the sky. ↩
10. While I was in New Zealand, I learned that, back in the day, people used to get certificates for crossing the equator – I guess mine got lost in the mail. ↩