jdh's blog

working remotely: Prague Paradise

This past year, I decided to leverage some intersecting reasons for travelling to Prague on business.  But instead of just doing a business trip, I proposed to my management that I work out of the Sun office in Prague for a short time while also mixing in vacation time, so I could both experience the city and make a connection with Sun folks at a non-U.S. site.  My management was very obliging, and before I knew it, my Prague plan panned out.

I was in Prague for the month of September.  Prague is a truly lovely city. A river runs through the center of the old part, with history and statue laden bridges crossing it.  Many of the beautiful old buildings are lit up at night.  I had an apartment in this part of the city.  The transit system is fabulous.  I used a combination of tram and subway to get to work;  each workday, I got to see the city's architectural highlights from the tram.

Sun is well set up for working at a remote site.  I secured 24x7 access to the Prague Sun site, which meant I could work at hours that suited me.  My laptop was already set up with the tools I need (mail reader, StarOffice, browser).  I plugged it in to the local network, which provided seamless access to my home directory and Sun's tools.  I was able to use a local access number from the office phone to dial into U.S. 800-based conference calls, and could even call in from my apartment by dialing first into the office phone system.  The phone connection was quite good -- only occasionally did I have trouble with voice synchronization.  I had brought my headset with me; it worked perfectly, which made my calls as easy as when calling from my main office or from home.

My husband visited for the middle 2 1/2 weeks.  We were fortunate to have glorious weather for the entire month of September, with blue skies and 70 degree days.  We went to the old churches and the famous castle, to the opera, to pubs, and also to several outdoor hangouts overlooking the city and river.  We explored outside the city for 5 days, and enjoyed both natural beauty and several beautiful and historic smaller towns.  Some motorcycle friends rode over from Marseille and stay for a couple of days; we showed them what we'd discovered.

Working in Prague was surprisingly comfortable and similar to my work experiences at home, or at other U.S. based Sun locations.  I could have just worked at the Prague site for a few days, then taken a vacation in the Czech Republic, but this experience of vacation days intermingled with days at work gave me the opportunity to get to know Prague and the Sun culture at this site.  It makes me hungry for more such experiences. Next time, I should try for 6 months or a year!

Posted at 03:47PM Feb 22, 2007 by Julia Harper in Sun  |  Comments[0]

double trouble

Well, folks, this time it's 4 hands again but 2 pianos!  I have a friend with 2 pianos who suggested we do a piece together.  She is a truly fine pianist and I'm very excited to be playing with her.

My piano teacher helped me find a really fun piece by Wilhelm Friedrich Bach - one of the younger Bach sons.  This music is neat for a couple of reasons.  The interplay between the 2 pianos is really delightful.  It alternates between the pianos echoing the other -- working a little motif back and forth up to some climax, and the pianos playing hand in hand -- playing little runs and arpeggios up and down the keyboard a 3rd apart. The other neat thing about this piece is that the music bridges Baroque and Classical.  There are clean melodies and classical harmonies, but it is filled out with all of the trills and frills associated with the Baroque.  I've never played a piece with so many trills.  That will be the main challenge, to get our trills to play nicely with each other.

I look forward to performing this for my friends, but much of the pleasure is in the practicing together.  I feel lucky to have found yet another person to make music with.

Posted at 05:40PM Feb 12, 2007 by Julia Harper in Personal  |  Comments[0]