It's an Exciting World

London Weekly 57

Christmas Day we did pretty much nothing. We opened presents and then played video games on my new Steam Deck. It worked just as well as I was hoping it would, and I was able to play lots of multiplayer games with Steph while it was raining outside. I also had a few calls with family.

We had our first Boxing Day in the UK, and it was nice. We kept it low key and then went to Victoria Station so Steph could get some Lush soaps and bath bombs on sale. We then took a nice walk around St. James Park, and it was a really relaxing time. We also played another round of Frosthaven, and it was a perfect scenario for one of my characters. We also did some more planning for the next year and worked on setting up some of my new years resolutions. Mostly it is about being more organized and I’m working with Steph on them.

Resolutions

1. Have a regular chores list that I keep up with.
2. Plan the year in more detail, so we get to do all the things we want to do.
3. Be better about workout schedules and training.

Work was amazingly quiet this week. Even the food services were shut down, despite it technically being a work week. I got a lot of good work done on my side projects.

On Wednesday, Steph and I went to see The Boy and the Heron, a Studio Ghibli film. I really enjoyed it as the magic and story reminded me more of the Totoro, Howl’s Moving Castle, and Spirited Away films than his other war based films. The message was a little harder to interpret, but I still really liked it.

Thursday we went to the Natural History Museum to see the Wildlife Photos of the Year. They were really good, although many of them had the theme of people being terrible. Not surprising, but still not what we were expecting.

Friday we headed to Leeds Castle, and it was a gorgeous castle. We went around the grounds the first day, as the line to get into the castle was crazy. We saw the birds of prey, and walked along the water. That evening we had a nice dinner at the castle view restaurant, before going to the light trail. The light trail was pretty good, and we really enjoyed the different exhibits they had. Each exhibit was from a different creator artist, and they were each very different and unique. I especially enjoyed the more interactive immersive onces. The castle projection was especially fantastic.

The room we were staying in was in the stable yard, and while not in the castle itself, was very close by. We could overlook the garden from our window. The next morning we had a huge breakfast and then went to do the maze before anyone else showed up. It was raining most of the day, but we still had a great time in the maze. It took us a surprisingly long time to complete, and the grotto underneath was also gorgeous and interesting. It was a little touristy with the spooky voices, but I liked it nonetheless. We got in line for the castle, and didn’t have to wait almost at all. We were early enough that the main waiting we needed to do was for one of the sections of the castle to open up. That was the Narnia exhibit, where you entered through a wardrobe. They did a really good job setting up the Narnia scenes, and had nice signs and voice overs throughout. After that we didn’t really have much to do, and we walked aroudn the grounds, despite the rain. We eventually decided to go back early, as I had failed to get us a reservation for afternoon tea. The trip back was smooth, and we chilled for the rest of the weekend.

Sunday night, we did have dinner with Carla and Grace at the Gallipoli Restaurant in Islington. The decor was really nice, but when the belly dancer came out the volume on the music was way too high. We tried to go to a pub, but they were either full or required reservations. Steph and I stayed up and watched the fireworks on the stream, before going to bed.

London Weekly 56.

Steph and I finished up Season 2 of Loki this week, but we also happened to see some of the actors from the show around London.

On Monday I had lunch at Kaki with Nastia. I think she enjoyed it, but we went late enough that I couldn’t fit in a climb with it. We will have to meet up again, but focus on the climbing aspect.

Tuesday, Steph and I went to afternoon tea at the Rosewood. It was one of the best we’ve had in London, even tied with The Langham. The scones were the best we’ve had for sure, as they weren’t overly dry like many British scones have been. As we were entering the building we walked right past Ke Huy Quan, who played OB in Loki.

Tuesday evening I met up with a few of the other baritones from choir and we sang karaoke. One of them was moving away and it was a few guys from choir, plus some of his coworkers. I had a good time, and look forward to spending more time with that group. They mentioned a piano bar that has show tunes singalongs, and that sounds amazing. Hopefully we can do that some time in the new year.

Wednesday was pretty relaxed, as the dive club meeting was cancelled. On my way home from working out I walked past Liz Carr, just half a block from our place. She is also an actor in Loki.

Thursday evening we headed to Leicester Square. First we had dinner at Lanzhou Lamian Noodle Bar, and it was really good. We then stopped by the Christmas market in Trafalgar Square. We also had to get a picture in front of the tree there. Then we continued down towards St. James park, but it was already empty and dark. We walked back to Leicester Square to see the Sh**faced Pissmass Carol; an adaptation of A Christmas Carol with one of the actors being highly intoxicated. I enjoyed myself, but it was very late; starting at 9:30.

Friday we got the new Mario Wonder, and played through a few levels. Pretty much nobody was at the office on Friday, so I got to work on whatever I felt like.

Saturday I cooked some more of Steph’s scones, and went to Castle Climbing Center with Carla. We did the outdoor climbing, and even though it was cold we had a great time. It was nice to be able to top out on the climbs.

Sunday we played a round of Frosthaven and then finished cooking for dinner with Nancy and Punit at their place. We made more blueberry scones, deviled eggs, and an asian flavored lentil dish. Punit made a tasty mac n cheese, and Nancy made some pies and green bean casserole. I had a great time over dinner, and we played some codenames and a fun card game they introduced us to. On the way home we had a bit of an adventure as the train stopped at a station that was way before we wanted. But luckily there was a bus pretty much directly back.

This will be the first London Weekly where I’m going to put the week in the text instead of the title. It is Week 55 in London. Over a year has passed since we’ve arrived. We’ve made great friends and had so many adventures together, and separately. I’m loving life here, and am thankful for the opportunity afforded to us.

Monday evening, after a weekend full of singing, I went to karaoke with friends from work. There were a number of the staple songs that Steph and I have done, as well as several songs from the set I did for choir. I had a great time, and we will need to do karaoke as a group again in January. I might start organizing weekly outings that people can join or not.

Tuesday was a crazy busy day at work, as I was organizing a demo exhibition. I also had assistance from three coworkers to show the demos, as well as interviewing all the other presenters. After work I headed to Substation Brixton with Carla to go climbing with Nastia. We did some pretty tough routes, although they didn’t use the standard difficulty rating, so I can’t rightly say how hard they were.

Wednesday BSAC stuff got cancelled so Steph and I stayed in and started watching Loki season 2. I’m enjoying it so far, but I’ll need to see how it all comes together before I can say how good it is.

Thursday we went ice skating for the WEMC social event after term. There weren’t all that many choir members there. Richard and Idu were there, and I recognized a number of other faces, but didn’t know the names.

Friday morning Steph and I got up early to get her to the St. Pancras bus stop with all her dive gear so she could head to Wessex and learn how to sump dive. I had a pretty chill day at work, which was needed after the crazy week.

With Steph out diving I had the weekend to myself, so I planned some me things; haircut, buying gloves, publishing a book. I also finally made it to the Crypt Gallery, which had an exhibition on Hong Kong, focussing on the protests when China was cracking down and changing the laws. Then I worked on some projects in the Wellcome Collection reading room for the afternoon. In the evening I made some of Steph’s blueberry scones.

Sunday I went to Yonder. Nancy and Punit joined with Atlas. Punit joined me in climbing while Nancy hung out in the cafe with Atlas. There were a ton of kids in the gym, including lots of babies at the cafe.

I finished the book Sunday evening and ordered some proof copies.

Monday Steph and I had a date night to Austentatious – An Improvised Jane Austen Novel. The theme for the evening was “I don’t think so, sir!” They did an excellent job for the most part, and they had some interesting characters. There were a lot of crossed wires on who was supposed to love who, but in the end they pulled it together. I was impressed by the way several of the actors could really pull off the different roles without much more than adding a hat.

Tuesday evening was my company Christmas party. It was expectedly over the top. Unexpectedly, I went in the wrong entrance and got to the venue through a service elevator 15 minutes before it was supposed to start. I found my way to the entrance doors and hung out there. I have the guise of someone who knows what they are doing so nobody questioned me. I had a good time, and avoided all the drama that can come from those kinds of evenings. I heard later that the drama was quite contained, despite the other David’s best efforts.

We had some great calls Wednesday morning with friends abroad. Paul and Yutong were calling late at night, and we chatted with them about where we could go diving. We chatted with Irene after that about her trying to buy a house in Japan. I had to run to work, for a meeting, but we had good calls with both of them. Paul and Yutong seemed pretty stressed out, so I hope they get a relaxing holidays. The pub meet for the dive club was pretty tame that evening. I missed going to choir, since the term had ended.

Thursday and Friday didn’t have much going on, so I got a good number of chores and 2024 planning tasks out of the way. We also finished up the latest season of Bake Off. I also tuned in for an AI talk with the normal StartX AI Friday group.

Saturday I had a marathon performance at the 02 Mall in Greenwich. We did four full sets and I enjoyed it, but not as much as the other locations. I was in the very back, and the room was large and open. That meant that I didn’t really hear the other singers throughout the performance. I still enjoyed seeing the other performers, and since the baritone section is pretty small it has been the same baritones that have been singing together for pretty much all the performances.

After singing I met Steph at the National Maritime Museum. We saw the exhibits we cared about, and then went to a nice dinner at a nearby Columbian restaurant, Balboa. We then finished the night with an ice skate at the Queen’s House.

Sunday was my last performance with the choir for the term, this time at Covent Garden. We were under the overhang at the back of the church there, near the large tree. It was a huge crowd from the choir. Despite it being decently cold and wet, we had a great time. We did Love is an Open Door twice, which I love. That is my favorite song out of the set. After that I headed home and relaxed the rest of the day.

We got back from the US on Saturday morning, or at least I did. Steph got delayed by about 3 hours, which was awkward as I didn’t have a key. My key was with the cat sitters. I tried to just go relax at the office and drop off some stuff at my desk, but it happened to be the weekend they were doing tests of the power system. I went to the other building and was able to take a long hot shower and work in the lobby for a while. Steph eventually showed up and I had enough time to unpack and eat a little something.

Shortly after that I had dress rehearsal for the West End Musical Choir. This was the rehearsal for all the off book performances, and it was a lot of people, around 400 I would guess. I got a really good seat; right at the intersection of the four sections. It was unusual to hear all the sections at the same time, although it also made it a bit hard on songs that had the sections going at different times. I really enjoyed the rehearsal, but was pretty dead by the end of it, as I didn’t sleep much on the flight. I slept amazingly well Saturday night.

Sunday, We had a mostly chill day, doing chores and getting settled back in with the kitties. We got everything prepped for sending our passports in for renewal. We also started planning 2024 in more detail.

Monday I was back to work, but I had a double performance with the choir at St. Pancras station. It was so much fun performing. Steph came to watch the first one, and by the second round it was getting pretty cold. I went to the pub for a drink with some of the other choir members afterwards and they were talking about it being bake off week.

That made me decide to do a triple batch of blueberry scones, Steph’s recipe, on Tuesday evening. I didn’t do it quite right, but they still turned out really tasty. They just weren’t very pretty, since the blueberries had slightly melted and the color hard gotten mixed into the dough a bit more.

People really enjoyed them at rehearsal on Wednesday, where we ran through all the songs and made a nice video.

Everyone loved the scones at choir, but they didn’t get finished off. I took them to Dive Club, which wasn’t actually a club meeting. We each had a few at dive club, and I was left with four that I took to share with people at work on Thursday.

Thursday morning I tried out a cycle class at Better for the first time and it went really well. It wasn’t as hard as I was expecting, but my heart rate still got pretty high. Thursday and Friday were chill days at home, with more chores. We did get some snow on Friday, Dec 1.

Saturday we went to have grilled cheese with Nancy and Punit at their new place. We met their two week old baby, Atlas, who was tiny. They had made some amazing pickled onion, and got a nice bread and some basic bread from the store. It was fun trying the different grilled cheeses. I made a lentil soup to go with it that turned out better than I was expecting.

Saturday evening I got on BGA to play with Adam and Timtimtimtimtimtim. We played Gaia Project and then Feast for Odin. I didn’t do well in either, as I haven’t been playing as many board games for a good while. It was nice playing with them, but the remote board game playing isn’t nearly as fun as playing in person. It was hard to have meaningful conversations while playing.

Sunday Steph and I decided to go to Harrods. We got there before they openned so we went to the nearby nut shop. We had ramen in the dining hall, then went around the food halls and picked up some traditional holiday fare. We got a Christmas cake and some mince pies. We also had to stop by the Cheese station and chocolate room. We took a look through their stationary, but none of the cards really struck our fancy.

We headed back home before I headed to the V&A for another choir performance. The room we performed in was the Rafael Cartoons Gallery, and it was a huge vaulted ceiling surrounded by massive gorgeous paintings. It was a perfect space to perform in. We hung out in the green room for two hours and tried out the new songs there. Silent Night and Joy to the World went well, and I dropped both a full octave from the other men. The one that was difficult was All I Want for Christmas is You. That song was hard to get the tune right and the words are harder than I would have expected. I never fully got it right. The first performance didn’t have many people there yet, but there was a nice couple in the back swing dancing. The second performance was packed, and they filled up half of that massive room. At the end some of the choir members went out into the audience and got everyone dancing. It was a great time. The third was fewer people and slightly more tired and subdued than the second, but still a great time.

We did very little on this short week before heading to San Carlos. Monday I went to the choir rehearsal at Liverpool Street, which got me to the required 6 sessions to be allowed to perform. I’ll catch a seventh when I’m back, but the performances have already started at that point.

Tuesday was a lot of prep for the flight on Wednesday. The flight itself was fine, as I used my voucher from the Seattle work trip for premium economy. Steph and I took different flights, but got in at about the same time. I waited for her in SFO for about 15 minutes.

It was a busy week at work, and lots of other activities came up as well. The one thing missing from this week was choir, as it is the mid-term break.

Monday Steph and I played some more Endless Dungeon.

Tuesday I messed up and double booked the evening. I had promised to do some volunteer work for a group online, so I missed out. Steph and Lynne went to a live orchestral performance of Amadeus. Steph said it was amazing.

Wednesday I did a lot of chores before heading to the BSAC club meeting. I won the bottle of wine, and we got a nice California rose.

Thursday we went to the Old Friends show, which was a Sondheim themed production with some of his original cast from many performances past. The songs were great, but since it was all the highlights there were no stories.

Friday was a lot of work, but I did get to play some endless dungeon.

Saturday I ran a 10K with a coworker, Baha. We got almost exactly 1 hour time on the 10K. I was doing pretty well throughout, but started hurting towards the end of the race. I surprisingly never had issues breathing, and could talk the whole time. As expected, my legs started to give out towards the end.

On Sunday, Steph and I went to the Museum of the Home in Shoreditch. It was pretty neat, with lots of different period based living room setups. They had maybe 20 different living rooms laid out based on the era. We also went on a tour of the gardens, but it happened to be in the pouring rain.

We then checked another food off our list of things to try in the UK. This time it was a Sunday roast at the Own and Pussycat. Nancy and Punit joined us, and it was pretty relaxed. We then went through some of the markets and ran across a stall selling lots of old stamps, and we got a few.

That evening we also experimented with some red lentil tofu. I had soaked red lentils for a few hours, and them blended and cooked them. It set into a nicely firm block that felt like tofu and tasted great with a ginger, garlic, and green onion mix flavored with soy sauce, rice wine, and sesame oil. So tasty, and we have a ton of the red lentil tofu left over for different dishes this week.

We had a pretty chill week. Tuesday we got back to the kitties and cuddle them a lot.

Wednesday was a bit busy with Andrew, Debby, and Alexander in town to visit some of Andrew’s family. They were nice enough to stop by and have a nice afternoon tea with us at the Thames Foyer, Savoy. I then went to the choir rehearsal, and finally to dive club. We talked about our trip to Turkey and I was exhausted by the end of it. Steph was talking cave diving, so I waited until 11 before calling it.

Steph and I watched our shows and played games together. We’ve started getting into Endless Dungeon, which is a great game that is a more real time upgrade on Dungeon of the Endless. The multiplayer also doesn’t break constantly.

On Saturday we went to the British Museum to see some of the originals of the statues we saw replicas of in the underwater museum in Turkey. It was interesting to see them, and we went to a few of the rooms that had been closed previously as well. We were lucky to get tables at an Okonomiyaki place right by the museum that was delicious. Steph made a 3D scan of one of the statues.

Steph and I went to Nancy and Punit’s new place this past weekend. It is a great location and a nice place. It has some quirky parts, but overall is very nice. Before visiting we did some climbing with Punit. Then we did a lunch at the Jamaican place across the street from there. We walked around the neighborhood a bit, and it was very nice.

With Steph gone I mainly worked then went to Choir. I did three choir rehearsals in one week, and I enjoyed the whole time. I went to a new location for me, Oxford Circus. They had a much smaller venue, but it was still a gorgeous church. Liverpool St. and King’s Cross choirs have pretty similar venues, and I like them a bit more. I will probably stick with the Monday, Wednesday choir tempo. I went out for a drink with the choirs afterwards on Monday and Tuesday, but went to the BSAC club meeting for Wednesday after choir. I talked with Gohkan, our trip leader for the Turkey scuba trip. Not much else going on, just getting ready for an early morning flight on Friday.