My personal booth babe experience
I was being a booth guy (or rather, an engineer) for Apple Computer at one of the first Internet trade fairs
in Milano.
Business was very slow, so during lunch hour I decided to take a look at the booths. I chatted with the mighty Cable & Wireless, with the powerful Unisource, with the bizarre Gandalf (we-are-not-Cisco). And then I went for the Sun booth.
There a lovely blonde was just waiting for me, all alone. I wanted to know about Java, she gave me white papers. And then, in despair and boredom, I breached the booth babe etiquette and asked her what she thought of this very hot Java idea.
I had no hope. Years of SMAU, of asking to beautiful blondes "What is the RAM size ?", and having them say "Uh, oh, gotta ask Engineer Rossi", and of having them drag out a thick glassed geek from the hidden holding chamber in the center of the booth. I had no hope: they never knew. They are booth babes, booth bimbos, hostesses, being shipped by the white slavers that own them from a dental fair to a computer trade show to an incinerator inauguration ceremony. They are like rentable smiling potted flowers, meant to give a moment of beauty to the sweating geek's day, and to resist Engineer Rossi's timid attempts at human contact. They never knew.
But, she knew. She told me that the object orientation idea was cool, and of course that language success nowadays depends upon the toolkit. It turned out that she was a Computer Engineering student from the Milan Politecnico.
She left a little Java shaped hole in my heart, because I was not free at that time. Probably she is the only reason why I ever took Java seriously.
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