Erlounge Stockholm

[Bengt Kleberg]

greetings,

first let me express a big thank you to mr per of synapse for the very
nice evening. when erlounge takes place again, in the near future?, i
will make my outmost to be present again.

upon my early arrival at mackinlays inn i realised that without a flag,
or similar, it would be impossible for me to recognise any erlang
programmers present at macinlays. i do not know anybody. should have
thought of that slightly earlier. as luck would have it there was a
human flagpole present that i had seen on the erlang user conference
last year (my first). mr lon is canadian, 2 meters tall and clad in
uniformly black clothes. his hair is also black and rather long. the
black cowboy hat, worn even indoors, is not really neccessary to make
recognition immediate.

having located the erlang people my luck ran out. the nice tasting
draught cider i had drunk at a previous visit had been replaced with
some terrible sugery swedish imitation.  the bottled alternative was
still english, but this evening it was unfortunatly all sold out. this
made me slightly depressed.  after sounding out the people present
about their respective companies potential for hireing, i got really
depressed. it seemed as if everybody was working in very hard pressed
parts of the software industry (telecom, to a man). my chances of
continuing with erlang once i get kicked out from axd301 (any day now
since i was the last person permitted onboard ericsson about a year
ago) looks like zero. not good.

the beer testing was intellectually stimulating. a nice representative
from nils oscar micro brewery talked a lot about beer in sweden and all
over the world. how to manufacture it, how to drink it. after having
tasted more diverse beers than ever before in my life i can now say,
with much greater authority than before, that all beer tastes awfull.
give me a 'real' (non swedish) cider any day.

there is something i would like to pick your collective brains about.
tasting, eg beer, has its four basic flavours. sweet, sour, bitter and
? what is the fourth taste called? presumably this is 'besk' in
swedish, or i might have gotten even this simple fact muddled up.
there was a suggestion that salt is a basic taste, but then which of
the others is phoney?

since mr mathias mentioned that he met me i will take the opportunity
to write a little about him. at the user conference alluded to
beforehand mr mathias made the absolutly best presentation. the subject
matter was not one that interests me very much. it seems it had a lot
to do with hardware which is not my cup of tea. but the way it was
presented was hilarious, in the very dry and understated way i like
humor to be. moreover, after an earlier incredibly spannishified
english presentation the very precise and brittish accent was pure
pleasure. i picked up what little curage i had left (remember that i
was already depressed and by then i had additionally heard rumors about
axd301 getting cancelled in its entirity to make it possible for
ericsson to stop supporting erlang) and approched mr mathias. i told
him my sentiments about his presentation and he answered (in one
breath) 'thank you and what do you want?' my confusion was so apperant
that he kindly explained that such blatant flattery was most often
followed by the most unsubtle asking for favours. mr mathias was even
more entertaning in private than at conferences and the rest of the
evening turned out to be really funny.
guess what? the owner of the best british accent at the user conference
is from australia.


bengt