[Perl blog] YAPC 2005

OK, this will be an attempt to journal my thoughts about
this year's YAPC. Non technical notes will go in my livejournal.
Who knows whether I'll have time to keep up both; nor which one will
get priority on a particular day.

Conference

I arrived in Toronto yesterday for my perl conference... I expect to put technical notes in my use.perl journal, and non-technical stuff here. Heavens know if I'll have the energy to keep both, since, well, I don't want to miss talks in the process.

Yesterday, after arriving with my friend and cohort Eric, we scoped out the hotel, met another friend Liz for lunch, and planned to go to the Pride parade.

Instead, we walked Liz up to where she was meeting the First Congregational Church marchers (and the other Quaker; they got to hold part of the 50-foot rainbow flag, I believe).
Then, eric and I ran an errand for the conference, which sort of snowballed into a 2-hour necessary task, and then rather than go back to the parade, I took a short nap after that, so I missed the parade entirely.
This didn't turn out to be so awful after all; after I finished volunteering for the afternoon, I walked back to the 'gay ghetto' and got to experience the street-party,
which was just getting underway. It was so cool. There were 4 or 5 stages with different styles of music;
I got dinner (jamaican jerked chicken) at the reggae/carribian themed stage, then I wandered down to a stage that was doing Indian music with a stage of (beglittered, under-dressed, mosly male) belly-dancers,
and finally hung out for a while at the dub/trance/dance stage.

Overall, in terms of what I was looking for at this particular Pride, I'm glad I missed the parade; I think the people-watching was actually better than during the parade,
since it was a more mixed crowd, and no Union/Politician floats (for example).
Afterwards, I strolled back to the hotel and met up with friends for beer.