It's an Exciting World

London Weekly 65

Adam and I met up in the afternoon on Monday at the Tower of London. We walked over to the Tower Bridge and got the full tour. The bridge was impressive, especially considering it was built in the 1880s. The glass floors were neat, and the engine room was impressive. I was amazed at how well constructed it was. Adam and I then headed to dinner at a little pub nearby, and got in just before a large crowd.

We then headed to Bromley by Bow to visit and artist studio for a woodblock printing class. We had a great time, and Adam did an amazing crab that we didn’t get any pictures of and he lost the art on the flight. I kept thinking that it was so much work to get these prints, and that you really had to appreciate the process. The outcomes were pretty good for me too with my portrait of Archer. The studio was in an industrial park, and was a little disconcerting to get to.

Tuesday, Adam and I had breakfast at my work, and I had some StartX volunteering in the evening. He ended up going to an airplane museum near Cambridge.

Wednesday I was showing off some VR experiences to people in dive club. The two main ones were

1. Ecosphere – a 180 and 360 set of videos, some from famous dive spots. The ones I focussed on were form Raja Ampat.
2. Ocean Rift – a VR experience where you can play with sea creatures in a few different settings.

I had dinner with Adam beforehand, and we had about 10 people come try out the experiences. I pulled together 6 working headsets, and got everything downloaded ahead of time. That took a few hours of downloading and checking statuses and charge states.

I had a farewell breakfast with Adam on Thursday before he headed to Vegas, then home.

Thursday evening I caught up on some chores, and listened to some good audiobooks while cuddling kitties.

Friday Steph got back, so I met her at the train station. She took a nap, so I went into work for a bit, then took my afternoon meetings from home. Friday evening I went to Sergio’s birthday party and hung out with Craig and David from choir. We didn’t make it to Overtures, but the plan is to make it there next Friday.

Saturday Steph and I spent a chill day together, watching shows, doing taxes, and going to a pizza dinner in SOHO. Sunday was also pretty chill.

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This was a packed week.

Monday I made it to choir at Liverpool Street, and it was a ton of fun since we were learning Mama Mia.

Wednesday I joined Finn and Mario for a free diving class taught by Wendy and Mika. The class was really quick, but was mostly the same info as the one I did in Mexico. We then went to the pub and had a pretty chill pub meet.

Thursday was the StartX neighborhood, and I think it went decently well.

After that I stopped by the London Bridge choir for some more Mama Mia. I went out for drinks afterwards as well, and had a great time chatting with the musical director.

Adam got into town on Friday and we had dinner together on top of The Standard. This is one of the restaurants we’ve been walking past every week and saying we should go, so I finally went. It was decent food, and the ride in the glass elevator was surprisingly nice. He came over and we made some plans for while he was in town.

Saturday we had a full day. We went to the Hunterian Museum and John Soane house. They were amazing little museums, with strange and fascinating collections. I’ll have to go back to the John Soane house with Steph. We then walked to the London Mithraeum, which is a Roman temple. There wasn’t much of it left, but still neat to see. They did a really good light and sound show for it. We then headed to Covent Garden for Dishoom and only had to wait 10 minutes. Then we went to see Choir of Man, which was a happy pop musical. The show was so wholesome, and I really enjoyed the choir aspects of it as well. We did a bit of a pub crawl around Islington; stopping at The Old Queen’s Head, Camden Head, and then grabbing food at Marketo.

Adam was tired so he headed to the hotel, and I joined Craig and Sergio at some bars in Soho. It was interesting as these bars weren’t my scene. I still enjoyed it, especially one bar that was full of Ameritrash. They had terrible American beer, and were playing 90’s and 00’s American pop music. I called it after the second bar.

Sunday Adam and I went to Camden Market and did the escape room, similar to what I did with George and Michael. We didn’t do as well, mainly because the rooms we were in this time were really dark, and both of us had a really hard time seeing and hearing things. I was tired, and crashed for the afternoon, then did chores to finish the day.

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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.