I decided to walk the morning of May 6th. On my way to Moscone center I noticed cliques of people carrying the same designed backpack. Tricles became streams; streams merged into torrent rivers. I arrived at 8:15 and decided to browse the bookstore to kill minutes before the general session. When I was done, at 8:25, guards formed a line preventing more people from tailing the queue. They don't want a mob scene when the doors open. The crowd, I was part of them, waited for nearly 20 minutes before it was "safe" to proceed.

I was a resident in San Francisco bayarea for many years but rarely stay in the city. I arrived Sunday night and stayed in a hotel near Union Square, a lovely area full of shopping, restaurants, and activities. When I heard the bell, Tony Bennett's song came to me.

I gasped and ran up to John Gage to shake his hand when he had a break. He was helping James Gosling with their t-shirt launcher. He co-hosted JavaOne's opening session, talked about sensors, instruments, network, and, of course, his favorite subject: Earth. I saw lovely Rita and Fiona who came to help out the OpenSolaris launch. Everywhere are hugs of old friends: Diane and her staff, Solaris people, etc. Whichever Stephen Hahn's disease that made him wear a tie seemed to have infected David Comay too. Oh well...

Ian Murdock opened CommunityOne with eye-catching artistic slides. Rich Green, Jim Hughes, and Jeff Bonwick decisively upstaged him destroying harddisks with sledge hammer, anvil, and power drill, on the stage. The robustness of ZFS kept the system and application running while the boys were having a great time.

Jetlag overpowered and kept me from the OpenSolaris release party. Good thing that Fiona took pictures of everyone having a great time.

It was a pleasant surprise to bump into Lin Lee, Jonathan's newest staff member and an old friend in China. We sneaked out to Yerba Buena park for a cup of tea. As I sipped, I recognized a joke of globalization. I flew 7000 miles to have Chinese tea in San Francisco; my favorite afternoon drink in Beijing is a cup of Java. Lin ordered Lapsang Souchong, a Chinese tea that none of us heard of before. Google showed it to be "正山小种" or "星村小种". This makes the whole tea-drinking even more laughable: the dark tea came from my ancestor's hometown. My father grew up in 星村 (XingCun) and may have named me with it.

JavaOne was even more entertaining. Ian Freed from Amazon demonstrated Kindle, an electronic book the size of a thin paperback. After a few more guests, Jonathan unveiled the special guest Neil Young, the venerable rock singer. Neil Young came on stage with a cap and wrap-around sunglasses. His signature side-burns are all grey already. Instead of singing, he introduced his archive that includes everything about his music since 1963. At the end, he showed a LincVolt vehicle that records all energy going in and out of the old Lincoln when it tours the country. The visual of an aged Neil Young, a pony-tailed Jonathan, and a sleek black-t-shirted Rich Green on stage is just so special and memorable. I was hoping for a song, but got only several needle drops from Neil Young's archive.