It's an Exciting World

I made it back to the UK, and made it to the RS1 performance. It was great to see the performance, and hear all the parts blending together. Normally I would only hear the section I was in, but being in the audience I got to hear it all. There were certain parts that I always felt were awkward, but when blended were amazing. I also got to join at the pub afterwards.

Unfortunately I got sick and didn’t really do much the following week.

Eventually on the weekend I made it to lunch with some Meta people, then Karaoke on the weekend.

The next week on Tuesday we had a triple choir rehearsal, and that was so much fun. It is amazing getting to sing in the large groups, especially when mixed. Then afterwards we went to the pub for an amazing quiz game. Somehow our team was winning at the start, and we did well throughout, but the mechanics of the quiz weren’t great for us at the end, and we dropped down in the rankings.

I met up with Marissa to cowork in Kensington one day. We only did the morning, then I went to the V&A afterwards to wander the exhibits. I did only a small portion before heading back to the flat.

On Friday I did the last step of the ILR application and then went to the variety show Sabrage. It was pretty good, with a lot more nudity than I was expecting. Steph and I had a great time going to a show together, and it is convenient being a 10 minute walk from our place.

Saturday I went to the Gemini hackathon, but missed half of it due to going to the Lander 23 experience from Punch Drunk. It was my least favourite of their shows, but still pretty good. I don’t know if it is worth going again. It was effectively the game flashlight tag with some extra bits on top and a very loose theming and pretty much no story.

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I spent most of this week working, including going to a few meetups and hosting a breakfast for StartX people in London. I also had a great time at choir rehearsal. I learned that due to my trip to the US I wouldn’t be around for the dress rehearsals.

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Monday was a standard rehearsal at Pushkin House with the choir. I really enjoyed it.

I coworked with Marissa Monday afternoon, at a local library in Kensington. It was a really nice space, but it wasn’t the kind of space where we could easily talk. I prefer the more laid back feel of the Wellcome Collection and British Library.

Wednesday evening I went to a talk on funding and AI from some Stanford based VCs. It was interesting as the kind of thing I’m working on didn’t really come up. I’m not sure if I should be more worried about that or not.

Thursday I went to the Wellcome Collection and worked there in the morning, and it really is a nice place to sit and think. The library is a gorgeous space to concentrate in.

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This week was a break from choir, but for a few people who still wanted to sing, I hosted a karaoke night. It was a lot of fun having them over. I’m looking forward to doing it again. There were a good number of people that showed up, about 8. I think we could support up to twice that number, and we’ll see for the next time.

Tuesday I worked from the British Library and Wellcome Collection with Marissa, and it was really nice. They are such pretty places to work.

Wednesday I actually made it to BSAC, and helped out with the Lifesaver training.

Friday was Archer’s surgery. I took him in the morning and everything went smoothly. He had one tooth that needed to be taken out due to absorption. I picked him up that afternoon, and he was so scared and woozy. He was so sad that week, and he just hung out in the carrier in the hall. I don’t know why and it was very strange behavior for him, but he was still on strong pain killers.

I needed to concentrate on work over the weekend and went to Yonder both days. It was still hard to concentrate, but I did a lot more at Yonder than I would have done at home.

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Monday we had rehearsal at our normal location. The singing was great, but I headed home after to spend the rest of the evening with Steph.

Tuesday I decided to work from the Wellcome collection, and it went pretty well. That space is so nice, with the only issue being power, since they don’t allow charging. Luckily my computer lasts a while before needing a charge, even when running the AI a ton, because I do it mostly on servers.

Wednesday I took Archer and Lana to the vet. They generally looked good, but Archer needed to have a dental visit, so I scheduled that. I brush Archer’s teeth a few times a week, but he is just prone to plaque I guess. Lana’s teeth were pretty much perfect and I never have to brush hers.

Thursday I had my Life in the UK test out in Stratford. They had intense security on the test. I went in an hour early and they were ok with that, and once in I took it really fast. I double checked everything, then submitted. It takes 18 to pass and I was 100% confident on 17 of them. I think the history shows and UK travel Steph and I have been doing has helped a lot. There were parts of the test I learned from our travels, including the recent Battle of Hastings reenactment.

On Friday, Steph and I went to the BSAC dinner. It was at Anchor Bankside, which was a great location. We had fun with the diving movie quiz, although we were off on the years of the movies by a frustratingly small amount, with many being off by 1 or 2 years. We were able to do well overall in the due to Alex and Steph having so many dives between them. I would have liked to talk to some of the others more, but the room was too tight to move around freely and chat.

Saturday I went on a lovely walk around Hyde park as part of an event that Marissa organised. I enjoyed talking to all the people at the event. It was a great group of people and a relaxing time for most of it. I really want to do more events like that and ground myself better. I spent the rest of Saturday with Steph before she headed out on her day trip Sunday. I spent most of Sunday at the British Library.

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Monday was rehearsal at a different location than normal, just next to Euston station. The location was more convenient for me and was overall nicer acoustics. Liz thoughts so as well and put up a poll for possibly changing the location. I am enjoying all the singing and how social the RS1 group is.

Tuesday I worked from Yonder and got some good climbing in. Getting out of the house to work for me has been crucial for heads work time.

Wednesday was just a nice day to stay in. I got a good workout, and then had a short walk through the Camley Street Nature Park. It is getting well into fall now and the trees are changing colors.

Thursday I went to a jazz piano trio concert put on by the pianist that often plays with the RS1 choir. He was really good, and I enjoyed spending the time with everyone from choir that was there. It was late afterwards and a weekday so I headed straight home.

Friday was a joint birthday party and karaoke with the RS1 group. They had a ton of people show up at the bar and set up a makeshift karaoke with the typical Youtube based backing tracks. It was a great time. The party theme was fun fact so I wore my Oculus headset and the pin I won from the beat saber tournament at work.

Saturday was amazing, as I got to go visit Jose and Diana, with Gokhan, Romana, Frank and his girlfriend. I stopped by the Strawberry Hill House beforehand, which was a strange and facinating place. So much of the original had been sold off, but the parts that remained were still interesting and strange.

Jose and Diana did a great job hosting. I think they liked Codenames, and it was their first time playing. They understood the game well, but the english part was a challenge, since after Frank left I was the only native English speaker. They still all did great with it. We also played the wood block balancing game again, and I want to get that one as it is so good, but I can’t remember the name and it was a small run game. Diana made some guacamole that reminded me of California, and Jose made some killer sangria. I really enjoy spending time with them and look forward to doing those kind of hang outs more often.

Sunday was more RS1 with a performance at Mercato Mayfair, followed by a nice lunch with Zaheer and Flick. I then made it to a hack session with everyone vibe coding together. It was interesting to meet other vibe coders and see what kind of things they are working on. Steph made it back from her trip, and we spent the evening together.

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Tuesday I had a 5 minute live demo making a music video at the AI Tinkerers event at the MongoDB.local conference. See the post on LinkedIn for more detail. The presentation went really well and I got the one minute music video created within the 5 minutes. It turned out decently well.

Steph and I went to a private viewing of the Cartier exhibit at the V&A on Thursday evening. It was amazing to see, but we kept coming back to the idea that we would never even want to have any of the things on display. It was nice and posh at the event, and I really enjoyed having drinks in the museum.

Friday I went to a hackathon event for making a short film in less than 18 hours, I used about 3 to make my video. It is a very sad video, so just be warned. I made it about a man learning to deal with grief, and how to live after the ones you love die.

I didn’t end up placing in the competition, but I still had a great time and am really happy with the video output.

That weekend we went to the Battle of Hastings reenactment. It was a decent drive out to the location on Saturday evening. Steph did a great job driving us through the narrow streets at night. The location of the hotel, The Brickwall Inn, wasn’t well marked on the maps, so we made a few wrong turns, but made it there in the end. The hotel was adorable and I really enjoyed staying there. I could stay more often in those little country inns.

The actual battle was pretty good, and we got there just as it was opening for the day. got some mead and traditional cakes. Then we settled by the main battlefield and watched two rounds of hawking and falconry. They were great with the demonstrations and I really like watching how the birds behave and how the people keep them. We also got to see about 80 people participate in a melee tournament with different weapons. They had to fight and when they lost they’d pretend to die. They did daggers, axes, spears, swords, and then a few stranger weapon combinations. There was a demonstration of the horse charges, which was really impressive. I then walked around the Battle Abbey for a bit, but it wasn’t too much to see at the location itself. They were pretty ruins and well kept.

The full battle was quite a scene. It was a lot more rigid than the melee, as they had to have certain things happen, and the horses were involved so they needed the people to move more predictably for safety. It was impressive to see.

All in all it was a great time.

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On Monday the usual place for the choir rehearsal was booked already, so we ended up singing in the crypt studio of a church near Trafalgar Square. It was a really neat space, and the acoustics were amazing since it was actually set up as a music studio. We also got to do songs with ffff markings, meaning very very very loud. We wouldn’t have been able to do that in the normal space.

Tuesday I had a great walk along the canal with Marissa and a discussion. We went around the canals in Little Venice, and I really had a great time.

Wednesday morning I went to a GEO meetup that Stacie was organising. I appreciated the content, and we change some strategy based on the comments.

Friday I went to Yonder and had a good working day with some nice climbing.

Saturday I had people from choir over to play board games. Nathan, Zaheer, and Maggie joined. With the four of us we had a great round of spirit island. I got really lucky in the card draw and the layouts. Steph got back from the play she was seeing and we played some codenames. I had a great time and want to host more games nights with the choir people.

Sunday we had a great discussion in Book Club talking about The Library at Mount Char. I really appreciate the book club group sticking with it after my move to London. Candice especially with her writeups on the books has been amazing.

Over the weekend I was able to put together a really nice video for the Kling competition. I’m happy with how it turned out. Steph thought it was a cry for help, and while we do have some issues with too much screen time while sitting next to each other on the couch it is nothing like what is shown in the video.

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I got two great sessions of RS1 choir rehearsal in this week. I feel like I’m really getting a great experience with them, both on the singing and social sides. I coworked with Stacie on Wednesday, and we got to discuss a lot, but she was called away when we decided to finally climb. We’ll be able to climb some other week.

On Thursday morning I left for the Lake District to hike with Lata. I met her at Euston station, and we grabbed our seats on the train heading north. I was in a ‘window’ seat, but it was really a bulkhead seat. I could peek out the windows next to the seats in front of me and the countryside was gorgeous as we went by. So many sheep.

We arrived at Oxenholme and did the quick transfer to the Windermere train. We got to the town of Windermere, which is still about a mile from the lake of Windermere. Lata checked in and we went to the lake. It was a lovely day, although a little chilly. We took a quick tour of the lake in a 45 minutes cruise in a big circle around the major islands. The one private inhabited island looked absurdly posh with a gaudy building right in the middle. We then took the ferry across and went to an observation platform. It was just a ruin, but originally had colored glass to see what the lake looks like in different seasons. I took some pictures through the replica glass, and it kind of worked. It was a gorgeous place, and we got so lucky on all the timings of the ferries and busses.

The next day we met on the bus to the Gasmere. It is a small town near another of the smaller lakes. We hiked up the hill to Alcock Tarn in the morning, which was a gorgeous hike. The hike got a little steep in places, but wasn’t too difficult. The Tarn was a nice little lake high in the hills. We came back to the town, and decided to grab lunch before hike 2 of the day.

The next hike was Helm Crag. This one went a little higher and out the other side of Grasmere. We went high up into the hills almost the to peak of one of the hills. On this hike we saw a ton of sheep close by, and then Lata pointed out that there was a sheep dog herding the sheep down in the valley. It was great to see it herding. I always love to see animals moving in flocks and herds and schools. It reminded me of a game I had made called counting sheep, where you play as a dog trying to get sheep into pens.

After the hikes we got some of the famous Grasmere gingerbread. I was pleasantly surprised when it was actually amazing gingerbread and not just a tourist trap. The gingerbread had a ton of candied ginger, and was delicious. We took the bus to Ambleside and then caught the ferry to Bowness and walked back up to Windermere. I met Lata for a lovely dinner at Francine’s, a cute French bistro style restaurant. The food was delicious. I really enjoyed the time getting to know Lata, although I fear I talked to much and asked too few questions.

On Saturday I headed back to London and met Zaheer for a climb at Castle. It was a good time, and we spent most of the time in the loft. Unsurprisingly the whole place was busy on a Saturday afternoon.

Sunday was all about the chores. This was an amazing week, and one of the examples of why I love being in the UK.

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