It's an Exciting World

I continued cat-sitting henry this week. It was nice just chilling with him. He is very cuddly, but doesn’t like being touched on his back. So I scratched his head and cuddled with him on the couch.

Monday I went to Choir at Liverpool street, and it as great being back in that venue. It is a gorgeous large church with high ceilings and great reverb.

Tuesday, Steph and I continued on our rush tickets experiences with Lightning Thief, based on the book of the same name. It was good, but simple. The cast was really great except for the main actor, but the rest were phenomenal. It was really lighthearted for most of it. For someone who doesn’t know the book it can be a little hard to follow, and the characters don’t get as much development as they probably needed to deliver on the emotional bits. This is especially true of the betrayal moment.

Wednesday I went to the AI Tinkerers meetup. It was nice to hear the talks and see how the different companies in the space are using AI. I plan to make more connections there and see where things go.

Friday I gave blood for the first time in the UK. It was pretty straightforward, but my heart surgery was almost a disqualification. The nurse said it would have disqualified me a year ago. That evening I went to Karaoke in Lucky Voice Soho with Giulio. His friends were stuck because of flooding on a tube line, so it was just him and me for the first hour and a half. After that I just snuck off when everyone else got in, as it was already really late for me.

Saturday I went to the dentist for the first time in the UK, and everything was just fine. That evening we went to the Canary Wharf lights walk and were joined by Radha, Nancy, Punit, and Atlas. It was pretty nice, but we thought the lights weren’t as interesting as the previous two years. This is also the most packed we’ve ever seen it, but it was a Saturday night with decent weather. Punit got reservations at a vegan restaurant, Mallow.

Sunday, Steph and I went to tea at Dalloway Terrace. It was pretty good, and worth it with the discount.

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It was a pretty chill week overall.

Some great news is that I got the global talent visa! This means I’m able to stay in the UK for another year regardless of employment status. It also brings the indefinite leave to remain timeline to the end of this year. I’ll be able to take the life in the UK test and be allowed to stay indefinitely. Steph still has to complete 2 more years past me to take the test and get her independent indefinite leave to remain.

Tuesday I went to the show Faulty Towers, which is based on a 1970’s British sitcom. I had a great time, and it was a fantastically done comedy. I had no base in the show before going and wanted to just see what it would be like without knowing the show at all. There were cheers as the characters came on stage, but they did a good job introducing everything anyway. I had a blast and it was hilarious. I got last minute tickets again, and we were second row. I ended up going with a colleague from work who I met at the theater, and I met him for the first time there. It was interesting talking to him as he’d just moved to London and started working for Meta.

My morning routine is starting to solidify. I’m going to the Camden library regularly now. It is a great space, and just above the gym that Steph and I go to. I do my personal projects at the library, then go downstairs to workout, then head into the office.

This is the first week of the spring term for choir, and I went to a new location for King’s Cross choir. Giulio joined me again, and we walked over from work together after having dinner. I really enjoyed the music this week as it is Wicked. We’ll be finishing it next week, and I’m looking forward to the full sing through together.

We also had a meeting of the dive club, and I joined and had a good conversation with people there. I’m looking forward to an early May trip to Turkey.

Friday at noon we went to the British Library with Radha for the Medieval Women: In Their Own Words exhibit. It had a lot of interesting information, and some amazing documents that we had heard referenced on podcasts about European history. After the exhibit Radha took us by where she used to live, and her favorite Chinese restaurant, which had some great Szechuan dishes, although not quite a magic chili tofu.

Friday evening I had a great call with StartX for AI, and then Steph and I had a deep conversation on our plans going forward, since we got the GTV. I’m really happy to be settling down and looking further ahead in plans.

Saturday I started cat sitting Henry again in Highgate. He is an adorable and decently cuddly kitty, but doesn’t like his back being pet.

We played some V Rising with Michael and Michelle on Saturday evening. I think I should redo my controls for the game since I can’t do some of the most powerful attacks.

Sunday we had a full day. In the morning we went to Eltham Palace again, but got to see the whole palace. Steph was also able to get her hat and scarf that she left last time. We met Pavel there and walked around the house and grounds. It was interesting to see the difference between the great hall, the modern house, and the ruins. It was a gorgeous estate and we wondered what led to it becoming part of the English Heritage group. While wandering the gardens we saw a large and healthy looking fox, which darted away from us and then we saw it wandering the grounds. We got a late lunch with Pavel around Victoria Station at Zizzi, and then I went to take care of Henry.

I met Steph at Carla and Grace’s new place, where we played a karaoke game, and then decided to switch to the Youtube based karaoke experience. I had a great time and really enjoy spending time with the two of them. We had some great deserts and cheeses while singing, as well as some wine for social and vocal lubrication.

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This week was the first real week back to work in the new year, and it is starting out pretty well.

Tuesday Steph and I went to Titanique, a Titanic movie parody, that was hilarious. The characters where exaggerated in just the right ways. My favorite was the mom character, who was yelling and saying terrible things the whole time. Then the Celine Dion character was getting in the way of the action, and making things up about the Titanic that were clearly wrong. We got amazing seats, front and center, using the rush tickets. I’ve really been enjoying the rush tickets and I plan to keep using it. Steph at one point had to sing into an aubergine that the Celine character was holding out to her as a microphone. I was given some Celine Dion fake money for a sexy dance number that Jack was having against Cal. This show was so much fun, and I would say it is one of my favorites. I laughed more at this than any other show I’ve seen in London.

The rest of the was mostly uneventful. I met up for coffee with another person on the StartX AI taskforce, which was nice. He also lives in Islington. Saturday I got rush tickets to Mean Girls, which was similar to the other movie adaptations I’ve seen, where the music was superfluous, and it is mainly targeting the people who liked the movie. I didn’t like it overall, but had a few good laughs. I also got tickets to the string quartet by candlelight that evening. Sunday I tried again, but nothing came through on rush tickets for the matinee.

This past few weeks have been perfectly bad weather, being as cold as it can be while also being wet. There have been multiple instances when I’ve walked to work with it snowing for the first half and raining for the second. When we were sitting in the Mr. Fogg’s bar last week it was switching between raining and snowing as we watched out the window. Despite that I’m still finding myself walking around for half an hour to an hour a day, just because that is how life works in London. I feel strangely happy with it, as I have all the right clothing to deal with the bad weather now. Once I get to a nice warm place after the bad weather I feel comfy in a way that I didn’t in California. Also, despite the frozen canals, the birds are still very active. I regularly see all the gulls, morehens, cormorants, geese, ducks, and coots.

When Steph got back from her diving adventures over the weekend we had a sticky toffee pudding together.

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Heidi and her partner came to London for New Years. We had dinner with them at Marketo, the Ethiopian place near our house that we like, then we hung around the flat until the London Fireworks. We watched on the TV while playing Codenames.

The next day we chilled at home until they were ready for dinner, then stopped by Dishoom, which surprisingly didn’t have much of a line. We had a great dinner there, and walked around Coal Drop Yards a bit before they headed back to the hotel.

Saturday we went to Mr. Fogg’s Botanical Tavern & Treehouse. Steph got us a seat in the treehouse part of it, and I really enjoyed the atmosphere. They do such a great job with the decor, and the drinks. I loved the old portraits where they painted flowers into the hair of stogy old men, and pith helmets onto women in ball gowns. The drinks were also presented in a fantastical way. Steph had one that had a smoke bubble on top. I had one in a display case with smoke, and another that came in a small chest.

Sunday we went to an event where we didn’t know what to expect. It was billed as a twelfth night celebration at Eltham Palace with the English Heritage pass. There wasn’t any description of what that entailed. It turned out to be a Henry VIII player lecturing on what the Tudors did for twelfth night and then we did a series of dances from that period. The dancing was surprisingly fun.

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Steph and I stayed in for Christmas, making sure she recovered in time to do some caving.

We headed out for the weekend and stopped by Birdland Park and Gardens, which had lots of amazing birds. They had a large overlap with the Honolulu Zoo, but there were also a number of unique birds, like several Emu and some British owls.

We then made our way to Gloucester Cathedral, which was impressive. They had a cloister that was gorgeous, and had been used a lot in film and TV. We also got to walk around the middle balconies, and the church itself was old and gorgeous. We had hoped to go to the waterways museum, but it was closed for the winter.

We then stayed at the Moonraker Hotel near Longleat. It was a cute hotel, and the restaurant was surprisingly good.

The next day we stopped by Old Sarum, an ancient hillfort that was William the Conquerer had all the English Lords swear to him. They focussed on the period 1100 to 1300, but the hillfort goes back 5000 years. Then we went to Salisbury Cathedral and saw the oldest mechanical clock, the Magna Carta, and gorgeous stained glass.

We then left for Longleat, a stately house that also has a safari park. This was the first manor to be opened to the public in England, and it has had the safari park for almost 60 years. They had all manor of creatures. Steph especially liked the ostrich that came up to our car and tried to eat the side mirror. Then the monkeys were interesting, climbing all over the car. The lions and tigers were neat to see as well.

After the safari park we went straight to the lights walk. It was a different style of lights walk than others we had done, as in this one they had fabric creations lit from within as the consistent style of the entire exhibit. They had all sorts of historical figures and buildings from all over the world. Some of them were anachronistic, but it was all well done.

The next day we went caving from the Wessex hut. We went to GB cave and I got to hang the ladder from the bottom. It was an interesting experience as I would clip the ladder up, climb it, then clip the other end of the ladder higher and climb that end. We went through some tight wet spots and got back to an area called bat passage with some really great formations. There was also a lot of bouldering style climbing involved with this trip, which I really enjoyed.

We drove straight back after cleaning our gear and had a quiet evening.

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Steph was sick most of this week, so we didn’t really do much. I went to work most days, and did my workouts, but otherwise we were home bodies.

I was feeling good on Saturday so I went to a string quartet performance of Christmas songs, which I really enjoyed. String quartet covers is one of my favorite musical styles. This was also in the Artists Church in Covent Garden, with fake candles spread all around.

She felt better over the weekend a bit, so on Sunday we went to a show from the creators of SIX called Why am I so Single? It was really good and the production was much bigger than SIX with lots of scene changes, backup dancers coming on and off stage, costume changes. I think I liked SIX more, but I liked this one as well.

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We got back from Egypt to some kitties that were hiding. Archer was under the blanket on the couch for quite a while after we got back. Once he got over it, he came out and I got a good nuzzle session. Lana also joined us in bed the first night and took her spot between us on the bed and asked for belly rubs.

Monday we had Paul and Yutong coming in from Egypt the day after us. They had an overnight layover in Heathrow, so we took them to the Kew Gardens Christmas lights walk. It was the best light walk we’ve done. There were exhibits that we liked more from some other light walks, but this one had multiple displays that were larger and more impressive than any of the other light walks. It also had some small and simple ones that were meticulously done. I was also amused by a few displays that really seemed phoned in, as they were just a lot of blinking lights, or the kind of wire shapes that you could get from Costco. The first we came across was one of those, and Yutong seemed so disappointed when she saw it, but once we could see the next few it was clear that they got a lot bigger and more impressive. I especially liked it when they synchronized to the music well.

For the walk we got some potent potables, and then started walking. The others got refreshes, and I grabbed some dinner. Yutong and Steph also grabbed some roasted marshmallows over some coals. It was a great time, and because it was so chill, we got to talk a lot while walking. We said our goodbyes and headed back to King’s Cross.

Kew Gardens Christmas Lights Song

The rest of the week was a lot of chores and catching up on work and personal things. I had a lot of calls to family, since I couldn’t really do that from Egypt. I also have really started ramping up my professional networking. I’m having calls with other London based AI company founders, as well as other AI StartX founders.

Steph got pretty sick this week, so I did leave work early a little to take care of her. Mainly buying food and drugs, but also boiling water to add to her baths to keep them nice and hot.

For the weekend we went to southwest England. We went with some of the CDG group to do some SRT caving. I wasn’t doing it well, and tired myself out pretty badly. The hike to the cave was gorgeous, with stone walls that you couldn’t see through the moss covering them. I love the mossy covered stones. The cave also had a few bats hibernating in it, which we had to avoid. It is amazing how close you can get to them and they just ignore you.

After caving we headed to Thornbury Castle for a Tudor Feast. It wasn’t nearly as Tudor as we were hoping. We’d watched some of the period based cooking shows to prepare, and nothing like those dishes were served. It was a feast for sure, and there were to large company groups with us there. One group showed up in Tudor styled costumes, which was great. They also got pretty drunk and both groups were social with us. I was put in a corner of the table with nobody across from me near the speakers, so I didn’t have a change to really talk to anyone past Steph. I still had a great time, especially when we all sang Christmas songs together, and got up and danced.

A storm came through with strong winds that cancelled the caving plans Steph had for the next day. We then got another night at Thornbury, and had a nice day at the castle. It is a magical place. We were in the Mary Queen of Scotts suite, which is a huge room that you climb a tower to get to.

We had a lovely afternoon tea the next day and explored the grounds a little.

I hung out at Thornbury as Steph went to the caving club meeting, and we headed home the next day.

Thornbury Castle Tudor Feast Song

This is the tail end of week 100 and week 101 in London.

We got back from the US trip, and the flight back was rough. We were both having pretty terrible jet lag for a whole week. I managed to still get everything done at work, which was a really long list.

On the day we got back I went to choir to make sure I didn’t miss another week. I was a little out of it, but still was able to sing most everything off book. The Christmas songs are a ton of fun.

Thursday morning was the follow up vet visit for Archer and Lana to get their second round vaccine. I carried Lana on my head again, and she got the royal palanquin treatment. She was still very unhappy the whole time. She didn’t seem to hold a grudge this time, however.

Thursday and Friday were pretty much days of going to work, doing chores, and sleeping. I did play some video games once I finished all the chores. I got back into Hades, and played through it a few more times.

Saturday evening we went to Radha’s birthday party at a pub near her. She hasn’t gone to pubs so she was asking a lot of questions of Mike, the Englishman who came. We also saw Alex and Rachel again, which was nice. Radha showed us around her place, which has an amazing view. The pool was small, but she also has a hot tub and sauna which looked nice, if broken.

Sunday we didn’t do much. We made it to the gym, but that was pretty much it besides chores at home. Monday was a long day at work preparing for a UXR study.

Tuesday was the highlight of the week, where I took off work early to go to Big Ben. We had made reservations months ago to go up into Big Ben. The tour was about two hours long, and we climbed up the small stair to get to the top. It was cold and windy, but we got to see the mechanism run the quarter bells, and then at the top we saw the bells strike 4pm. We then went into the clock faces, and got treated to the lights turning on as we were inside the clock face. It was somewhat magical to be inside the clock face, and I wonder if someone saw my shadow walking in front of the lights on the clock face. Before and after the tour we were in Westminster Hall, the oldest part of Westminster. It was constructed in the 1300’s and still has the original timber roof. It is a massive open hall, and I loved seeing it for the history.

Tuesday evening we went to Little Georgia, an amazing Georgian restaurant near our house. We got two of the big cheesy breads and shared a bottle of wine. It was a lovely romantic dinner, and something we should do more often.

Wednesday was Choir again, but I made it to dive club. Steph wasn’t at dive club as she was meeting with her company’s CEO who was in town from Zurich. I told them about our freediving in Hawaii.

Thursday and Friday were focussed on work, making sure everything will run smoothly while I’m out.

Steph was also gone for those days, so I did a lot of AI fun work.

Over the weekend I caught up on paperwork, as well as more AI fun times, packing, and chores.

Steph got back late on Sunday and we watched Bake Off and Lower Decks.