Today is the first day of my Saskatoon trip. It’s also the first I am away on a business trip. I don’t really know why I got sent to here in the first place. It’s nice to have white board discussion about the testbench implementation with some expertise here in Saskatoon, but does it worth half a thousand to fly me here for 4 days, probably not. I guess it is because I’m the only one care to suggest having a in person meeting for the whole verification team and only one willing to come over. It’s quite an experience for me too, can pretend that I’m someone important by having dinner on company’s expense while reading the HBR. It’s fun the first time, probably not so that much fun if I have to be away from home every so often.

Saskatoon is a very small town divided by a river. I can see the city limit before my plane touch down. Luckily I insist to get a car rental or I’ll be quite stuck if I need to call cab on everywhere I go. The office is located within the University of Saskatoon campus, kinda reminds me the campus of Waterloo. Both campus have uninteresting modern building with a ring road circling the university. I guess the new tech park in Waterloo North Campus is similar to where the office here, with nice office building cater for the needs of small hi-tech firms.

Today is quite busy, after I had touched down and had a quick and late lunch, I rush to the office before everyone go home. Luckily I caught the guy I come to have get into business right away for 2 hours. When we come out from the meeting room, almost everyone had gone home. Since I have to stay behind and check my emails, so I end up have to turn off the lights when I left. The hotel is pretty nice, located in downtown Saskatoon, which is only a few blocks big and a river apart from the university. Unfortunately my room only got a parking lot view instead of the river view. The St. Paul Cathedral is right next to the hotel, I’d like to pay a visit if I can get up early enough.

Since I’m kinda bored here, I treated myself a nice meal at the hotel restaurant. The good thing is that I had brought my laptop with me, so I can still be connected in the evening. Using an aging laptop is not as pleasant than my 3 monitors networked computers at home, but at least I could keep myself from being insane. The connection fee is kinda expensive, $10 a day, so I gota the most worth of it and use as much bandwidth as I can. I had bittorrent installed and start downloading stuff right away. I feel sorry for my tiny 10GB harddisk in the laptop. It’s getting late and time for me to go to bed, let’s see what kind of adventure (or boredom) I will have in day 2 of my trip.