It's an Exciting World

I had an amazing amount happen in one week. Selling a house in CA, Buying a flat in the UK, leaving Meta, and starting on my own company.

On top of that there was a lot of choir and people visiting from out of town.

After getting back from Turkey, We took a much needed day to rest at the flat. Then I got to my last few days in the office. I also met up with Punit, and we walked around the Camley Street Nature Park. Steph and I also dropped by IKEA to get some furniture shopping in and establish a baseline for what we are looking for in our furniture for the new place. We closed on Tuesday and got the keys. There was still some furniture left in the flat so we got that moved out on Thursday.

I had a lovely going away drinks on Wednesday, with a lot of my Meta colleagues coming by. Many had already gone home since a plumbing issue caused the P Building to be shut down. I also left my keyboard in the office since I rushed out, but not a huge thing to have left.

Thursday I was free and the weather was nice and left my phone at the flat. I walked from King’s Cross to Russel Square, then down to Westminster. I walked through St. James Park, Green Park, and Hyde Park before having lunch in Little Venice. I decided to head back and jumped on the tube to get back in 15 minutes.

Thursday evening most of the dive group for Turkey came over and we had a lovely evening of games. They were so nice, and I really appreciate the books from Diana, Jose, Anel, and Pavel. I’ll read through the one from Anel so I can discuss it with her.

Friday I had a motley assortment of friends over, and it was great to see them all getting along so well and connecting. Nicole, Radha, Marissa, Bijoy, Lynne, and Pauline came. I really enjoyed the evening, and I want to host more social events like that. The new place will be better setup to handle it, from the layout of the space and having our own furniture to move around as we like.

For Friday I did a twist on the blueberry scones that I’m calling blueberry dumplings, as I wrap a few blueberries in the scone dough. It turns out much better than the scones, due to the blueberries staying whole and inside the dough instead of leaking everywhere.

Saturday Morning we had a call with Yutong and Paul. It has been too long and I was really happy we were able to get so much time talking to them. It was really late their time, and I appreciate them staying up so late to talk.

Michael and Michelle arrived Saturday around noon. They took a jet lag nap before we met up with them for dinner at Dishoom in the Battersea Power Station. We then headed to The Treehouse where we met with Nicole and some other of her friends. It was a really nice evening, with drinks late into the night. A little too late into the night for me, but it was still great discussions. It was interesting to hear the others complain about their moms, and when they asked me I could only answer “My mom is perfect.”

Sunday was lots of choir. In the morning we went to Merkato Mayfair, a church converted to a food court. The acoustics are great in there. Then we headed to Comic Con, and performed again. The guys from dive club were amazingly supportive and showed up to listen and record. We walked around afterwards until the Con closed. Then I headed into Covent Garden to meet Evelyn, who happened to also be in London this weekend. We had dinner at Seven Dials market, then watched a street act. We then met her husband and went to Mr. Fogg’s Society of Exploration. It wasn’t their normal kind of place, but I think they still had a good time. There was a live singer who did amazing jazzy cocktail covers of pop songs.

I’ve also been setting up tons of meetings about leaving Meta and a whole different set of meeting with builders to walk them through our plans and get bids. I feel bad that I haven’t done much actual work yet, even though it has been only two working days, during which I was mainly handling the flat purchase.

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This week I did a lot of singing, and skipped out on just as much.

I went to choir rehearsal for Ready Singer One on Monday and then West End Musical Choir on Wednesday. I’m still enjoying both choirs, and they don’t take up that much time overall. I skipped the Tuesday rehearsal, because it was for a performance I wasn’t going to be able to make.

I was also supposed to go to Overtures on Friday, but forgot my ID and was turned away at the door. I still enjoyed sitting and watching Outernet for a little while.

Book club on Sunday was a great discussion, with one of the larger attendances in a while. We were talking about Work Pray Code, and we each had personal identification with the message of work in Silicon Valley trying to be all of a person’s life, filling in for religion and other social structures.

Otherwise it was a calm week, and I got a lot of work done on my side projects.

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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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