So I was standing around in the exhibit hall talking to Martin about something trivial (like why people use MySQL) whene I noticed Larry Wall standing there, apparently listening in on our conversation (which I was surprised since it wasn't a particularly interesting discussion).
Then there was a lull in our conversation, and I turned to Larry. He looked up from his Japanese-English dictionary, and asked "governor stone?" (To clarify, "chiji" could mean governor, and "iwa" means stone, so phonetically he translated my last name to "governor stone".) So we started talking, mostly about Japan and how it was an interesting society, with his daughter chirping in every now and then (in a jester's hat, no less, although she seemed pretty cool). Apparently he's been studying Japanese for a few months ("to keep those neurons working" he claimed, "but only when he doesn't want to work" according to his daughter).
Anyway, for the rest of my life, my first real memory of Larry Wall, The Perl God, would be of him looking up from his dictionary and going "governor stone?"
P.S. I never got around to telling him that I was more of a PHP guy. But maybe that was for the better.
Posted Fri, May 26, 2006 13:39 by flower@195.225.176.158
From: http://flower-garden.i-find56.be/
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