It's an Exciting World

London Weekly 63

This week didn’t have much going on. Steph was prepping and packing for her trip to Mexico, and I had some long hours at work.

Friday we had a great time with Carla and Grace doing some Youtube karaoke and Unrailed. I really enjoy spending time with the two of them.

Saturday I helped Steph to the train station, and only a few hours later George and Michael got to town. They were travelling for work, and separately added a London weekend onto their trips.

Michael and I grabbed some North Sea fish ‘n’ chips, which was amazing. Then we met up with George at the V&A. We were able to go to some of the major museums together, and I showed them where I performed at the V&A with the choir. We grabbed a pint at the pub, before George headed off to dinner. Michael and I headed to Battersea for the lights displays. They weren’t nearly as good as the Canary Wharf lights. We waited in line for Dishoom, and while waiting David from work came by. The food was amazing as always. After seeing the lights we stopped by The Vaults and Draughts at Waterloo Station. That station is more of a maze than King’s Cross is, which is saying something.

Sunday the three of us met up at Camden market, then Michael had to head to the airport. George and I had lunch and then headed to an escape room in an abandoned underground station. We did really well, and had a great time of it.

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We had a great time Monday with Craig and a group from the Choir. We went to see the musical The Big Little Things about Henry Fraser, a paralyzed artist. The story was about his youth as he became paralyzed and then found art. I really enjoyed it, and the music was great. The stage and seating layout was especially interesting. The stage was made up of tiles that were part of a large screen across the stage. The tiles mostly showed artistic brush strokes that worked as the floor for different scenes, like being at the beach. I liked how they had moments where colors were mentioned and the whole stage would sweep with the color. It was a very well done production.

Most of the rest of the week was too much work. Steph did some more photogrammetry and then connected that with 3D printing one of the objects she scanned.

Friday I had lots of calls with family, and they all seem to be doing well.

Saturday Steph and I did some yoga, then went to a lovely afternoon tea at Kai. They had a lunar new year theme with lots of things done slightly differently from how they would be. They didn’t have sandwiches, but deconstructed steamed buns. They didn’t have biscuits, but had a macaron with clotted cream and flavor crystals. It was a great experience, besides the crying baby that showed up halfway through. We did get a second round of the savory plates, which more than made up for the crying baby.

Saturday evening we had Diana and Sam over for watching a diving movie. We chose “Into the Blue” which was a much better movie than expected. The diving was pretty bad, both unrealistic and with a complete disregard to safety precautions.

Sunday was a calm day. Steph wasn’t feeling well so I went and did my workout and ran to get stuff from the grocery store. We had book club in the evening. It was Tress, a Sanderson book, which was great to discuss.

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The remainder of this week (after the SRT course) was very chill. I went to Choir and Dive club on Wednesday. The Thursday I had a ton of calls with people for StartX and other connections. The calls mostly went well. 

It was also a week when they had Congee for breakfast at work, so Steph joined me for breakfast on Thursday and Friday.

Steph and I played a lot of games together and next to each other. We beat Endless Dungeon, and are probably done with that forever now. We also started Roots of Yggdrasil, a game that is like Islanders, but with roguelite progression mechanics. It is really good, but doesn’t change enough from run to run, as well as each run being too short and not challenging enough. I turned the challenge level all the way up, but even then it wasn’t that hard. It is expected to expand a lot, so I’ll come back to it in a year or so and see what has changed.

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The main thing that I was really happy about this week is that West End Musical Choir started the Spring session. I had been missing it, and I enjoyed singing again. I went to both Liverpool Street on Monday and King’s Cross on Wednesday. I had a great time singing, and there were a lot of new people. It was especially interesting that the Baritone section had way more people this time around. I was amazed that we filled out the assigned rows in both locations, with 15 to 20 baritones at each. I got to meet a lot of new people, but as we aren’t supposed to talk during rehearsal, I didn’t get to know much about them.

Thursday we went to the Canary Wharf lights with Carla. We had dinner at Sticks ‘n’ Sushi beforehand, and hoped Grace could meet up with us, but her event went late. It was bitterly cold, but the lights were really fun to see. I love the creativity that went into each of them. My favorites were the one that looks like fire, and the immersive hanging lights.

Friday I had lots of StartX meetings, for AI and for a refresher on how to lead a conversation group. Saturday was chill, with some recording Steph in Regents Park doing martial arts. I was the stand in for the student and attacker for whenever she needed a second person. It was still bitterly cold, and Steph had me take off my scarf for some of it, as the scarf is too bright, and thus distracting. The fountains were all frozen over with 3cm thick ice. Some parakeets came by and sang a bit at one point, which was really nice.

Saturday afternoon we had ‘rebel book club’ where Steph organized a discussion of Fourth Wing. I read the book a while ago, shortly after it came out, so I remembered things somewhat vaguely. We had an interesting discussion, speculating about where the books would go, and what would happen to the different characters.

Saturday evening we played some V Rising with Michael and Michelle, as they didn’t go to Tahoe for the weekend.

Sunday was mainly prep time for the SRT training trip. SRT is rope work in caves.

Work this week was crazier than normal, but I got a lot done.

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I had a pretty fun week. Monday was tame, but Tuesday was a pub quiz with people from Ice Wharf. We got second, which was a huge surprise as we hadn’t really played before. It was fun discussing with them all, as they were very British. I was able to help out on a number of questions because they were more US specific. I had a good time.

Wednesday during the day, Steph and I went to the Natural History Museum for the Titanosaurus exhibit. Wednesday evening I helped Steph out with her rescue diver exam. We went to the pool in Holborn and did a few exercises where I pretended to drown in different ways, then she had to save me. It wasn’t too bad, but I didn’t know the club kit very well. We went to the pub afterwards, and I was surprised to hear that several people were looking forward to the VR day that I am planning for February.

Thursday was a ton of fun. We had Carla and Grace over for games at our place after work. I picked up some pizza and Steph tried to get some drinks. She as carded and didn’t have her ID on her, so Carla grabbed a bottle of port. Steph instead got apple juice and prepared a nice mulled cider style drink with spiced rum. I find it funny how often Steph is getting carded. The law is that if you look 25 or younger you get carded, and the drinking age is 18.

Friday we went to Elephant and Castle to see the production of Unfortunate, a musical about Ursula from the little mermaid. It was great, and I especially liked the actor playing Sebastian and the Chef. She did some amazing quick changes to pull off the scene where the chef tries to cook Sebastian.

Saturday was a chill day where I played games and got some work done. I set up my Quest 3 and played some of the VR games that have been on my list for a while. The Quest 3 is much more comfortable, and I’m going to try to set up the Steam Deck streaming to it. We had a great session of V Rising with Michelle and Michael. I still have troubles with the controls on Steam Deck, but I’ve mostly figured it out. 

Sunday I went back to Castle Climb on my own, then helped Steph teach some martial arts by being her punching bag.

Some parakeets also decided to drop by our courtyard. Steph tried to get them to eat from her hand, but they weren’t having it. The parakeets that live in St. James park will eat from your hand if you have some nuts.

Steph gave a martial arts self defense class on Sunday over Zoom. I acted as her mock assailant, and she got to beat me up repeatedly. It went pretty well, and I hope she continues to give those kinds of classes.

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This week was calm and slow. The weather was pretty bad, so we mostly stayed in. Steph and I played a lot of games together, and separately. I’ve been really enjoying the Steam Deck that I got for Christmas. The only thing we really had plans for during the week was a walk through Kew Gardens for the lights show, but I backed out at the last minute due to bad weather.

We still went to Brighton on Saturday. We had to detour to Farringdon due to work on the St. Pancras Thameslink station. We made it to Brighton nice and early and had a walk around town on the way to the hotel. We dropped off our stuff and went to the Royal Pavillion, which was amazing. This was George IV’s pleasure palace and it is both marvelous and strange. The outside is Indian styled architecture, the layout is British, and the interior decorations are meant to be Chinese. It was just so over the top as to be amazing

We then walked around The Lanes, which was a cute part of the city with small alleys connecting lots of shops. We got a hot chocolate and headed back to the hotel. We hung out in the hotel slightly too long and missed the peak of the starling murmuration. We saw the last third of it at the pier. Then we had dinner at a Filipino place that had good veggie options.

The next day we did some filming on the beach for Steph’s martial arts. With a short stop by the Brighton Museum I took Steph to the train station. I hung out for another few hours, and then watched the startling murmuration again from the beginning. Starlings started showing up around 3, and the murmuration really got going around 3:35, then peaked around 3:50, and trailed off until sunset at 4:15. I got some great video of it, and hopped the train back to London really quickly afterwards. I got back just in time to join the book club call, and we had a great discussion. This month we had read “You Are What You Watch.” The book was universally disliked, but the discussion around it was excellent. We talked about the contents and the format of the book, and took many tangents.

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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.

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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.