It's an Exciting World

Out and About in the UK

I started the week with a games night. I made some cheddar marmite rolls and picked up lots of different easy to make finger foods. I’m still figuring out the right mix of things to have to eat and drink, but I’m getting closer each time I think.
It was great fun, and we played some codenames. A good number of choir people showed up. We had Abi and her partner David, Audun, Alex3, Bella, Mairi, and Raiad. We then played a round of a karaoke based game where you had to burst into song that contains a given word as a lyric. It was surprisingly hard and fun. Audun cleaned up. The hardest part was knowing the lyrics before and after enough for people to accept the submission.

We then moved to the other table and set up for Secret Hitler. Alex did a great job replacing the app, and giving a rousing intro to the game. Then we had a game of the fascists winning and game of the liberals winning.

Tuesday I jumped on the train to Cromer with Lata. She organised a hike through the forests and along the coast near Cromer. I handled the specific paths, we took over the first two days. We arrived without fuss, checked in, and headed down to the beach to just get our feet wet. The water was just over 8C, so quite cold.

The first route was 13km. We set out for Felbrigg Hall, with a nice loop out through the woods and fields, then back along the coast. The hall was idyllic and the hike to and from it was lovely. The tree lined Victory V was a lovely place that felt like a parade ground. We didn’t go inside the hall, but walked all around it. We saw lots of lambs that were only a few weeks old hopping around, as well as deer and pheasants.

https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/Hike-7Apr-2026/P1YNMVEypV

The second day was 24km. We started by heading back the way we came from day one, then headed for the forests. We chained together all the public foot paths through the forests and along the tracks so we only ever had five minutes at most walking along a road. There was only one point that I messed up and had us on a road instead of on the parallel path, but I couldn’t find the entrance for it. We went through a number of estates, nature preserves, and forests. It was such a gorgeous day, and the mustard fields in full bloom were amazing. There is an old style steam train that goes between the coastal towns here and I got a picture of it across one of the mustard fields. We went to Sheringham Park and sat by the temple there for a bit to have a snack. We eventually made it into Sheringham proper, after hitting the coastal trail and walking for an hour. We had a lovely lunch overlooking the water there, and saw people swimming, which inspired me. We took the coastal trail back and saw many many mobile homes that had been set up as holiday homes. Besides the lack of a good grocery store or restaurant near them it was a great little spot. We chose to walk barefoot along the coast for the last hour, and it was amazing. We had to avoid the rocky bits, but it wasn’t too difficult and the water on the feet was refreshing after all the hiking. I decided to quickly run into the water, and didn’t even put my head under, but got up to my chest. We then quickly ran up the cliff and got cleaned up before heading to dinner.

https://www.scribblemaps.com/maps/view/Hike-8-Apr-2026/lCOOGhzj14

Lata got so unlucky with the food on the trip. The lunch in Sheringham was supposed to have the famous brown crab for the region but they were out. The restaurants we checked each night were already booked up, despite it being early season on a weekday. We found places eventually, but they were out of the dishes she wanted. Then when going to the ice cream parlours, they were out of the flavours she wanted.

The last morning in Cromer we hiked up to the lighthouse, which was a nice and short hike. We had some extra time to kill before the train so we went on a quest to find a Cromer crab sandwich. The first place didn’t have them, but the second we tried did. I got a takeaway crab sandwich and it was pretty good.

I had a great time overall, and would love to do more UK hiking trips. I might even do some backpacking trips this summer.

I got back to the kitties, who had been looked after by Stacie. They were happy and not as clingy as when left alone for two days. I had a day at home, then on Saturday I went to Bedford for a chorister’s 40th birthday, Alex3. It was amusing to me that it was a sleep over at his parent’s place. They weren’t there, but I did get to meet his older siblings. We played some board games, and then the main event was capture the flag in a nearby park using nerf guns. I had an amazing time. The trains between London and Bedford were all messed up so I caught a ride back with Abi and David, who live just across the canal from me.

On Sunday I decided to head to Kew Gardens and walk around for the day there. I’ve been to Kew Gardens before, but only at night in the winter for the light walk. This was a hugely different experience, and everything was in such amazing bloom. Well, almost everything as the Wisteria looked like it still needed another week to bloom. I walked around for several hours, and got a little lost, but that is fine as I was just looking around and picking a direction to wander. Once I had gone through everything I headed back home.

The canal and streets around King’s Cross are also looking gorgeous with trees bursting with flowers. I love the look of the tree lined streets where they meet in the middle. Add to that the trees are overflowing with flowers and a double decker red buss driving down the middle and it is a picturesque sight.

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April 15, 2026 2

Belgrade

I took a trip with Stacie to Belgrade. She was between flats and decided that there was no reason not to just travel to arbitrary new places around Europe to see them while she didn’t have a home base instead of couch surfing or getting expensive temp housing. It was a better trip than I was expecting, as I didn’t really have any expectations going into it. We met in the airplane as we were flying to Serbia. We got in on time and we ran into a small hiccup getting out of the airport. We tried a number of apps to see if we could get ride shares to the city centre, but they wouldn’t work. I assume that is because those apps didn’t have any drivers in Belgrade. We wanted to go quickly so we just got in a cab and went straight to the city centre. We only got a little ripped off, as the fair on the way back to the airport was 3000 vs. 4200 on the way to the city. It is always off when the cabs collude to quote a number and don’t use the meter.

Once we got in, we got situated in the hotels. Stacey got her solo room in the hostel and I took a bit to find the right place. I booked on Priceline, but it was more like an AirBnB with the flat being run by a single person who I had to contact on WhatsApp to get the code. It took him about 45 minutes to respond, but I eventually got in. It was a surprisingly nice place and amazingly central.

We had a hard time finding a restaurant that had space, as the first three we tried were full. We found a place on the same street as our hotels and had some real Serbian food. It was also the nicest Serbs we ran into on the trip.

The next day I got up and wandered the neighbourhood for most of an hour before Stacie got up. She just got back from CA so was jet lagged.

We Walked the fort, which turned out to be an amazing free park with so much interesting history. They also had some clearly arbitrary statues, the most arbitrary was ‘Victor’ the nude man holding a sword and bird. It said they put it there because the residents didn’t want it in the city. Somehow that led to it having pride of place at the fort. There were lots of artworks spread around the fort, and many different eras of construction. Most was built in the 1700’s and 1800’s, but the fort started with Roman construction in the first century AD.

We made our way down from the for to the Sava and then walked out to where it meets the Danube. The meeting of the rivers is interesting because the Sava is a muddy river and the Danube’s waters are much more clear. Where they meet is a distinct line. It is especially interesting as the Sava enters the Danube as the Danube splits around an island. So the water coming from the Danube towards the Sava side just stopped due to the strong flow from the Sava, creating a lake like surface next to the roiling muddy water. We walked along the Sava until the construction stopped us. Then headed into the city.

I was happily surprised at the number of parks and tree lined streets. The old parts and new parts of the city were gorgeous. The socialist era parts were utilitarian and a stark contrast. We walked through a few of the larger parks, then went to find a place to drink. We stopped off at a brewery, then a piano bar before heading to a dinner at a place Stacie had reserved.

The restaurant was unique in that we sat at a bar for dinner and had a screen behind the bar playing Cinderella as a ballet with the stepsisters in drag. It was amusing for sure.

We pretty much called it a night after that. The next morning I stayed in and got some things done. We met at 10am again, then went to a museum that caught my interest, the Ethnographic Museum. The primary purpose of the museum was to show the way of life of the people in that area from 1700 to about 1940 it looked like. It reminded me of The Museum of the Home in London with the different rooms setup to show what a typical house would have looked like. We also noticed that they were using a lot of AI in their new exhibits. The two main uses were to have talking head characters that would tell stories. The both generated the characters and generated the videos of them talking, and it looked like HeyGen to me. Then they also had used AI to take historic photos and turn them into colour videos. It was fascinating to see that tech used in a public museum, especially since they were using what looked like 2 generations ago of the video models that aren’t that great.

We then walked the river again and got lunch at a nice place on the water with great views of where the Sava meets the Danube. We walked the river, and took the bridge across to walk along the other bank. It was a giant park and surprisingly nice. They were also doing a lot of construction to improve the riverfront on that side, and the place I had thought we might rent kayaks from was also under construction and didn’t have any floor. We also pointed out some of the construction renders had AI generated layers on top to show the people and trees.

We walked to the botanical garden, which again was surprisingly nice. Then went to dinner on the riverfront. We were running a bit late so I had to leave shortly after the food came out.
I made it to the airport just a little behind, but the customs e-gates were down, so the line for customs was crazy long. After getting through customs I was able to join the book club discussion for an hour and a half before the flight. I regret not being able to participate in the discussion more. I’ll follow up with people on the discussion for sure.

The flight back was otherwise uneventful, which is the best I can say about flights.

Overall what made the trip worth it was the time to talk to Stacie. She is intelligent and knowledgeable about the parts of startup life that I have no idea about. I also love her funny and down to earth takes on life.

April 5, 2026 0

RS1 Choir Performances

This week was the first major performance for the Ready Singer One nerdy choir that I was able to participate in. It was great fun and I think went really well with a full seating for the Crypt on the Green. Each section of the choir had their own performance, making it about 50 people per group. I loved it and also really enjoyed showing up to the Tuesday performance to listen. It makes me happy to be a part of such a fun and friendly group of people.

My group performed on Monday, and I appreciate that Lynne and her friend, as well as Steph and Roxanne and her husband came to see the performance. It started pretty late, so we didn’t stay at the pub too long afterwards.

Friday I was getting ready for a last minute trip to Belgrade, because why not, and Stacie invited me along.

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April 5, 2026 0

Lates

I did my multiple choir rehearsal again, and had a great time. A number of the other Monday basses joined me, so we ended up a little bass heavy on some parts, which was amusing because that almost never happens.

Thursday evening we went to Lynne’s choir performance in a gorgeous old church. We stayed for the first half, but then had to sneak out to go to the Science Museum Late where my choir was performing. We made it just in time for the final show, and Steph got to see all the Star Trek memorabilia while I enjoyed the museum.

Friday afternoon I went to Maggie’s dance recital, which was a lot of fun. I met up with Nathan there, and he was still wearing his sparkle makeup from the Thursday late, which was amazing. After the recital went long, I joined Steph at Chotto Mate, a nice Japanese restaurant that has been on the list for a long time. Then we went to the British Museum Late, where we mostly went to the Samurai exhibit. I tried to go to the Geek Orchestra performance, but the room was overfull so I was unable to listen or watch.

Zaheer and Zahira invited us to join them and Flick to watch Hail Mary. I really enjoyed the movie, although they did the movie magic for a nicer ending in multiple ways that somewhat undercut the more interesting messages of the book. We went out for Italian afterwards, although Steph and Flick went home instead.

That evening, Steph and I went to an immersive cocktail experience called Avora, which had a story similar to Avatar. It was fun, and I appreciated the time I spent with Steph there. It can be good to get away from the devices and just be present for a bit.

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April 5, 2026 0

All the Singing

I continued the RS1 singing trend from Saturday Karaoke and Sunday Mercato to go to Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday rehearsals for choir. It was great, and the last few weeks of the session are my favorite, because we mostly sing through the whole repertoire. I love doing the full songs with all the parts, but recognise we do need to do the note bashing at the start.

I also spent as much time outdoors as was reasonable. I ended up taking the camping folding chair and finding nice places in different parks or by the canal to sit and work, tethering off my phone for internet. It worked amazingly well, and I plan to continue the trend on nice days.

Tuesday before choir I went by some museums. The garden museum was ok, not great. But the Imperial War Museum was interesting and had sections on WWI WWII and wars of the Empire. It was surprisingly open about all the wars the UK fought for the Empire, although it focussed on many of the smaller less known ones.

On Thursday I played a game with RS1 people at Jamie and Liz’s place. It was about politics and having a kingdom decide who will next rule it. We played two rounds. The people made it fun, but the game itself was somewhat limited in scope and interest. Not many decisions, and the ones we made weren’t clear or didn’t have much consequence.

Saturday I went to a RS1 birthday party that was 101 Dalmations themed, and it was fun. They had karaoke going in the basement of a pub that was pretty close to our place. I didn’t stay long, but had fun while I was there.

Sunday was Zaheer’s birthday, and I joined at his place for the party. He was ambitious with wanting his computer to run XBox and Switch games, with different controllers connecting. It somewhat worked and we played a few rounds of Halo. Then we did some karaoke and had a few shots.

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April 5, 2026 0

Start of London Spring

After getting back from Budapest, I had a relaxing week of the London spring. It was amazing to see all the cherry trees blossom. They take about a week each, and stagger for a little over a month. There are two streets nearby our place where one blooms at the start of march and the other at the start of April. I think the one that blooms earlier gets more sun, and the one that blooms later has older larger trees as well. Some of them are a vibrant pink, while most are white. Their petals create small drifts along the street that I love to see and sometimes I’ll grab a handful of petals and toss them in the air.

Monday was rehearsal with RS1, and we learned the last song for the term.

Tuesday I went to Moulin Rouge with the TodayTix last minute tickets. It was pretty good, and they did a really good job with the Jukebox musical style in the same vein as the movie. They had a lot more songs they sprinkled in that worked really well with the story telling.

Wednesday I did a gear check on all my dry suit equipment, since I finally got all the different parts I needed together. It worked really well, and I just need to get a bit more lead weights to have everything I need all together, although I only need the lead if we do lots of dives without having ready access to a dive center. It was also nice to hang out with the dive club after the pool session.

I stayed in Thursday and Friday, but on Saturday I had people over for Karaoke. It was a good mix of people with some from dive club and some from RS1 choir. I need to work on my queueing system for next time, but I still think the youtube system is the way to go.

Sunday was a Mercato Mayfair performance, and it was nice. We did a bit of learning new songs for the Star Trek late at the science museum. The “I’m the X” song is nice, but I don’t really care for the Klingon Warrior Anthem. I don’t think it is meant to be something that is liked anyway.

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April 5, 2026 0

Budapest

Steph and I decided to take a weekend in Budapest, mainly so I could see an immersive theatre show, but we still made a full weekend of it.

I got in Friday late afternoon, and wandered Margrit Park in the afternoon, then went to the show Walk My World. It is in the style of The Burnt City and Sleep No More. The set was extensive, and not as detailed or cohesive as the sets by Punch Drunk, with most rooms being somewhat independent of each other instead of connecting through. This didn’t take away from it much, especially with the addition of the acrobatics. They had all sorts of rings and ropes and poles for doing dozens of types of acrobatic performances. They also had a giant robot arm, which was incorporated well into the performances. I thought I’d found all the rooms on Friday night, but I was very wrong. I still got to see so many performances and the finale was spectacular. I’m especially happy to see this kind of performance being done in more places. I’d say it was more entertaining but slightly less immersive compared to The Burnt City. I liked The Burnt City more, but that just means Walk My World is my second favourite piece of entertainment of all time. Were it in London I would be going at least twice more.

Saturday I went to meet Steph at the train station as her sleeper train from Zurich came in. We dropped her stuff off at the AirBnB, then walked down to the Central Market. It was an impressive building, but seemed a little odd with all the small stalls built in the massive structure. We got a fried bread with lots of toppings, and it was delicious, but hard to eat.

We then went to the Light Museum. It was an art gallery, not a museum, and they clearly ran out of light based things and had a few artists just put objects on display. They had some really amazing light based art. I was disappointed in one of the exhibits because it was supposed to be an apparently static water drop in a strobe light, but the drops weren’t calibrated to the strobe frequency, so it didn’t hit the effect at all.

We walked by the parliament building, then up to the castle. We went through the entire castle museum, which was way bigger and more interesting than I was expecting. We then walked through castle district on the way back to the AirBnB before dinner at an amazing little restaurant, Mandragora, on the way to the theatre. Steph and I went to Walk My World together, and I realized just how much I had missed from the first night. I found at least 10 new rooms and 3 new acrobatics apparatuses. I know I missed at least one other, but suspect there were several more I missed. If it has a long run, I may return.

Sunday we checked out of the flat, and got a breakfast of a Kreme, which is like a custard sandwiched between two puff pastries. It was tasty but hard to eat as we couldn’t cut the puff pastry without squishing it. Then we took the cute old subway line, which has only 3 small cars and tiny platforms to the park. We had a nice lunch at an art nouveau / art deco restaurant, Gundel. After lunch we made our way to the Rudas Spa. The Turkish baths part of the spa was my favourite, with old stone and gorgeous lights in the roof. We spent hours switching between the hot baths and saunas before I had to leave for the airport. Steph stayed at the baths for a few hours longer since she was catching a train instead of me needing to get to the airport.

March 8, 2026 0

Spring!

Steph was gone to Zurich most of this week.

I got out of the house for some amazing weather. Monday was nice enough to walk to and from choir. Then on Thursday I walked along the canal to Regents Park, then walked down to Hyde Park. Some of the cherry trees were in bloom, and it was gorgeous to see the hyacinths and daffodils.

Friday morning I headed to Budapest.

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March 8, 2026 0

Spring Singing

The first signs of spring are coming out around London with daffodils and hyacinths starting to bloom. I’ve been buying a hyacinth a week at Waitrose because they smell so good and I love their flowers. The cherry trees are also starting to bloom, so I’ll want to go to some of the great cherry tree walks in Hyde park next week or so.

I also did a lot of singing with RS1 choir this week. I organised a nice dinner at 7 dials market on Monday, with eight people joining for dinner. I’ll do that again when possible. I also went to the Tuesday and Wednesday sessions since we were doing run throughs of the songs so far. It is always more fun when we sing many of the songs all the way through compared to when we note bash. Note bashing is needed, but I’m not going to do multiple days of note bashing the same songs unless I really need it.

I also went to two museums this week that had been on my list. I went to the Transport Museum and the V&A East Warehouse. They were both fascinating, and well worth it. I’m going to these on weekdays during the day, so they should be less buys than normal, which helps a lot. I’ll have to make a larger list of museums that I want to go to and work my way through it. This is somewhat related to my newest project, which is for events around London: Another Like That (anotherlikethat.com).

On Friday I hosted a lunch at Caravan in Kings Cross for the StartX people in London. Only four came by, but it was still a great chat. The four people I get along with best were there.

Friday evening, I went to Giulio’s place for karaoke and games. It was fun to talk to everyone there, and we did some songs in other laguages that were challenges. Giulio also happened to know the piano part for Lumier, one of the video game songs we are singing in choir. I tried to sing along, but I know the bass part for it, and his arrangement was slightly different than the one I know. It mostly worked.

Saturday Steph got back and we lazed about for the day. Then on Sunday we went to the Dive Show near Birmingham. I got my last few things for the dry suit setup I needed, which were a hood and boots. I’ll set up some time to try it out and join on some trips this summer to the channel. We also signed up for Scapa Flow, which has been the next big dive site I’ve wanted to go to. It is north of Scotland in the Orkney Islands and has many WWI and WWII ships that were scuttled there.

Sunday evening we had a book club discussion on Everything is Tuberculosis. It was an interesting discussion, although not surprisingly low attendance for it.

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