It's an Exciting World

This week was mainly spent with Steph’s parents. We went to several dinners around London, and all of them were delicious.

We also went to SIX the Musical, and I think they liked it. It is shorter and more energetic than many musicals. They said afterwards they would have liked to learn more about the history beforehand.

We also finally made it to the Cotswolds. We went around to most of the major villages, and even stopped by Jeremy Clarkson’s restaurant.

It was great to see Elaine and Russel.

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This week we did a really interesting activity that simulates Star Trek. It was really well done, but I took a position that was just ok, radar. I learned from that and I know now more about the experience, so I’ll be able to do more next time. Steph had an amazing time, running around and repairing the ship. Steph was also on Navigation, but got backup from the comms station.

I also looked after Henry again this week, and while I was in the neighbourhood I took some walks through Hampstead Heath. It was a gorgeous time to be in the heath, as many of the flowers were in bloom.

Steph’s parents got into town, so we went to dinner with them at Coal Office. They took the repositioning cruise across the Atlantic, so they didn’t have any jet lag.

It was overall a lovely week in London.

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After the choir dress rehearsal on Sunday I got very sick. Monday and Tuesday I didn’t really leave the bed. Wednesday and Thursday I was in bed mostly, but trying to work. Friday I made it to the office as my fever had broken. I still had a lingering cough for a few weeks. This was pretty much all of London week 119.

London week 120 was much better. I still had a cough, but I was able to get out and about, and the cough wasn’t so bad that I had to back out of the choir performances. I had a great time performing again on the steps of St. Pauls, where Lynne and a friend came to watch. It was also during a half marathon going through London, and right by the Cathedral, so it was chaos in that area. I had a good time of it with the singing. I was also strangely happy to have a light sunburn from standing on the steps for so long. It feels good after so many months of cold and overcast to have a sunny enough day to get a sunburn. The other choir performance was in front of the Albert Memorial in Hyde Park. We got there early and had a nice picnic under some amazing cherry trees. Then we walked around and looked at some of the other nice flower beds around the memorial. The performance went well, but the choir was on a flat area high up, so it was hard to see the audience. I only did the first cast, and I stuck around to hear part of the second cast, which was a nice change of pace.

During the week not much happened. I finally made it back to dive club, in the new pub, The Crown. I also finally put in my notice at work, so my last day will be May 21. I’m looking forward to doing something of my own again. We also went to the play Stiletto with Nancy and Punit this week. I wasn’t a huge fan of the play as the musical numbers didn’t fit into the play, they were points where the action paused and then people sang about their emotions. We then got drinks at an amazing bar, Mr. Fogg’s Society of Exploration. It was a lovely atmosphere, with great drinks.

Nature has been amazing these past few weeks, despite me being sick. The weather has been lovely, and we’ve started to see the first baby birds. I also saw a fox walking along the outside of Regent’s Wharf, and we took a morning to just have a picnic in the park before I headed into work. It has been slow and lovely overall.

I had a good week in London. I got to go to both Choirs, with the WEMC choir on Tuesday at Oxford circus being for the final sing through of all the songs. We also did the dress rehearsal with about 300 people on Saturday, which was amazing. I put the recordings I got from Oxford Circus below.

Wednesday was a great AI discussion group, and I really enjoyed talking to the group on lots of concepts of AI tools, societal impacts, and where the best opportunities are.

Thursday we were joined by Radha, Lynne, and Roxanne at Much Ado About Nothing with Tom Hiddleston (Loki) and Hayley Atwell (Captain Carter). It was surprisingly good, as I was expecting the minimalist set to really detract from the performance, but it worked great.

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Here are the audio files I recorded. And youtube performances for all the WEMC choir numbers this week (I went to Oxford Circus instead of King’s Cross this week):

I had my second week of the Ready Singer One choir. It was a ton of fun, and I am really enjoying the challenge of the music. There are songs in German, Italian, Latin, Japanese, and some old Norse. The group is great people, and I’ll have to join more often for the dinner before or drinks after.

I had my normal Wednesday choir with WEMC, then on Thursday took the day off for the amazing weather. Steph and I walked through Green Park, around St. James Park, and down to the Victoria Embankment Gardens. We had lunch an at amazing Laotian place, with the most amazing dry salad. The flowers were out in bloom, with daffodils and hyacinths, but the tulips weren’t blooming yet.

The weekend was pretty chill, and I got some good work down on my AI projects as well as seeing the Benjamin Button musical. It wasn’t like the movie, but I found that much better. Sunday was especially nice, and I went to Merkato Mayfair to do a rehearsal/performance with Ready Singer One. It is an amazing venue, and I’m really happy that they have a monthly performance there. I’ll be sure to attend. I wasn’t able to sight read Russian for the Tetris song, but it was still a lot of fun for the rest of them.

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I had a really good week, despite the weather going back to just above freezing and cloudy.

I went to a new choir on Monday called Ready Singer One. It was much faster paced than West End Musical Choir. The music is a selection of anime and game songs. The focus of the evening was the theme to Attack on Titan, and it was really hard. It is face, starts in German and then changes to Japanese. Singing in another language is really hard, and I’ll need to practice a lot to be able to do it well. I’ve started listening to their audio tracks and I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to do get it. I went for a drink afterwards and it was a much more social group that seemed to know each other better. They talked about board games and video games they organised to play together. I look forward to joining in more.

Tuesday I went to the musical Operation Mincemeat, and it was fantastic. I really enjoyed the format of the five players taking on different roles. The music was also really good, with some numbers making me think of SIX and others being more traditional musical theater. The best number for me was the love letter, which was such a touching song.

That evening I went to a museum late at Imperial College, where they had an exhibit on the future of cities. It was interesting, but not as good as other lates, since it wasn’t really a museum to start with. Steph wasn’t able to join because King’s Cross and Euston stations were closed for security reasons for an hour or so right when she needed to travel.

Wednesday morning I went to an AI conference, which was interesting. It was more people in sales and datacenters than the people actually using AI for projects. I still met a number of interesting people there. Wednesday evening, I did the normal choir and joined for dinks afterwards. It was a nice time, and I got to talk to Anton some more.

The rest of the week was chill, and I just worked no a backlog of chores and adulting tasks.

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We had a wonderful week of amazing weather. We still needed jackets in the evenings, but during the day you could sit in the sun without being cold. I took advantage of this a few times, with Steph joining me on a walk through the Camley Street Natural Park. Then on the weekend I did a long walk through Regent’s Park.

Otherwise it was a pretty normal week. I had a lot of late meetings at work, and then a lot of meetings about AI outside of work as well.

I finally went to a physio, and everything was healing nicely. I got a new set of movements to do. The lunges are the only ones that still hurt a little.

I went to The Score with Lynne and Steph on Thursday. It was ok, with a really strange flow. I’m not certain what the point they wanted to get across was, and the ending was one of the strangest I’ve ever seen. The main character reminded me of my father, and I imagine he’d see the son character as me.

Friday I met Punit in Walthamstow and we got through a good bit of AI video discussions.

Saturday I hosted people at our place again. I invited the entire complex through the forum, but only one person was able to come. Luckily Craig from choir, Giulio, and Xiaomeng were able to come as well. I had a great time playing Codenames and Tokyo Highway with them. I want to host those kinds of evenings more often. I need a better way of organizing them for communicating what people should bring, or to be more accurate what people should not bring, as everyone is bringing too much.

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This week I was still limited in mobility. I went into the office each day, but didn’t do much beyond that Monday and Tuesday.

I met with Punit again on Wednesday, and then we went to lunch in Shoreditch with Nancy and Steph.  It was really nice spending time with them.

Thursday was a lot of calls with all sorts of people.

Friday I gave a presentation on image generation to the StartX AI Roundtable, which went over really well.  I was nervous as I’m not an expert on training AI, just on using it.  I really enjoyed giving the talk, and might do another one on video generation.

I spent most of the weekend working on AI and spending time with Steph.

I’ll attach Monday and Tuesday the following week here, as it wasn’t much going on.  People from work were visiting the London office and I spent time with them.  I also went to choir at Liverpool St. on Monday, and did some volunteering with StartX on Tuesday.

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This week I was still dealing with a broken ankle, although I didn’t learn it was broken until later in the week.  I just thought it was a bad sprain, which turned out to be mostly true.  There was an avulsion fracture, but the recovery instructions was the same as a bad sprain. I was still going into work each day, and I met up with Punit Tuesday morning to talk AI at the Camden library.  We went to a nice sandwich spot in St. Pancras afterwards, which is the kind of thing I don’t do nearly enough.

Wednesday I pushed myself too hard in walking to the doctor’s office in Angel, then choir, then to dive club.  I ended up with bruises all along my leg from the brace.  I really enjoyed choir, but they were actually on time starting for dive club, so I only was there for the last little bit.

I pushed myself more on Friday as I had an x-ray and found out about the fracture.  There wasn’t anything they could really do, and I already had a boot.

For valentines I cooked for Steph and I got a bottle of cava.

After the active week on the ankle, I took it easy and went nowhere on the weekend.

On Saturday we had people over for games and dinner. Not many people were able to make it, as I didn’t start planning until Wednesday that week, but Anton and Giulio came over and we had a good time with them.  Then Jose and Diana joined and it was a great time.  I really enjoyed the game the Diana brought which was like a  reverse Jenga, where you have to build a tower without it falling over.  We also played a good bit of Codenames, Overcooked, and Drawful.

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