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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Monday I got to perform with the choir at Trafalgar Square. We did a number of Christmas songs, along with the Hercules medley. I really enjoyed seeing everyone else from the choir, as well as getting to perform with them all. This was my only performance for this term, and I technically shouldn’t have done it as I didn’t make the dress rehearsal and I missed three weeks of normal rehearsal. I did a lot of extra studying so I felt good about the content. I was also able to get a nice hot chocolate at the Christmas market beforehand and I got Steph some chocolate covered marshmallows afterwards.
Tuesday I went to the show “Hold on to your Butts,” a Jurassic Park parody. It was fantastic and did a beat by beat parody with great callouts for where the film made no sense. I went with a few people from work including Giulio and Cristina. Steph wasn’t feeling great so she skipped.
Wednesday we helped out at the Lifesavers course acting as casualties. Steph and I got dragged around the pool, and had a good time. We showed off some of our Red Sea dive trip.
Thursday Steph and I walked around King’s Cross area looking at the lights and stopping by Canopy Market and Lower Stable Market. I got some great pictures of Steph, and we ran across a company handing out free drinks called Mixton. We also had a nice stop by St. Pancras Station to see the Wicked ‘Christmas Tree.’
Friday night Steph was making some clotted cream to go with the blueberry scones I was going to make Saturday morning. Here is the amazing recipe from Steph.
The scones turned out great and Saturday I took them to Atlas’s birthday party. There were a number of young kids there, and I had good conversations with everyone. Steph wasn’t able to join as she was too sick and didn’t want to spread things. I did take some food back to her, as Nancy and Punit were leaving for Canada on Monday.
Sunday was a chill day with a visit to the National Gallery’s special exhibit on Van Gogh. They had over 50 pieces by Van Gogh there, including several different mediums. We hung out by the Trafalgar Square Christmas market afterwards and had some hot chocolate.
This week was a great taste of why I love London. It had a show, a museum, choir, dive club, markets, interesting and pretty things in public spaces, and getting to spend time with friends. I also loved that on my walks to work I see coots, Canadian geese, Egyptian geese, mallards, morehens, cormorants, seagulls, crows, and magpies. I am amazed every day at the vibrancy of the place despite the constant grey weather.
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.
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.
We got the Egypt and it was pretty easy with the e-Visa. We were in the wrong line for a little bit, of people buying the visa on arrival. Once we got through customs we called an Uber, and as expected they told a story of fees that we had to pay. Fortunately I saw the actual fee sign and we only paid the real fee, which I think made the Uber driver disappointed.
The hotel we stayed at, Jaz Amara, was really nice and had about 30 pools. Unfortunately the pools closed down at 5:00 p.m. so there wasn’t any evening pool activities for when we got there. We had a nice dinner and then walked along the beach out to the pier. The hotel seemed about half capacity and I’m guessing it was the offseason. The next morning we slept in a little bit, and then went to have breakfast. Shortly after breakfast we got into the ocean and we’re able to pretty quickly find the dugong. This bay, Marsa Mubarak, has a resident dugong named Dennis.
Dennis clearly has a big fan base because it was easy to spot where he would be based on the number of snorkelers. So we were easily able to find him I just following the largest group of snorkelers. This day he was just munching on the seagrass and eventually ran off when one of the photographers got too close with their giant camera. We also saw a good number of sea turtles both Dennis and the sea turtles had remora friends, and some of the sea turtles had small yellow and black fish that were hoping for things to be kicked up from the sand when the sea turtle pulled out the grass.
We came back in for lunch and relaxed a little bit before going out for another snorkel we didn’t find Dennis this time but still had a good snorkel and spent more time at the coral bomes. We did get to see some cleaner wrasse stations as well as some batfish and triggerfish Steph even saw a school of squid go by her rapidly.
We set the pools for a bit and swam up to the swim up bar. I don’t know why but I really love the idea of a swim up bar and so having it at that hotel was nice.
We worked out for a bit and then took a walk down to the ocean right about sunset. I was trying to make a call to Michael just to talk so Steph went out to one of the points on her own. I saw her running back which is so out of character for stuff I decided I had to go meet her to see if something was wrong. Nothing was wrong she just felt like running and wanted to be back before it really got dark because the sunset made it dark really quickly.
Paul in Yutong showed up pretty late and we greeted them as they arrived. We did another walk along the beach and then they went to bed because they were exhausted from their long travel from California.
We got up early the next morning and met them for breakfast, unsurprisingly they had already been up for hours due to the jet lag. Shortly after breakfast we went to go search for Dennis the dugong again but we weren’t able to find him for a long time. Eventually one of the snorkeling boats showed up and they took a zodiac around to try to find Dennis. The managed to find him and the people the doc pointed out that that’s was where Dennis was. We swam out to him as he snorkelers were getting in the water. Dennis decided it was time to move and he was going pretty fast despite not looking like he was trying at all. He was more animated than the day before rolling along the grass sea sandy bottom and looking like he was having a good time playing. I was the only one really able to keep up with Dennis as he was swimming quickly, and eventually I stopped to join back up with Yutong and Paul and Steph. Steph wasn’t far behind, Paul and Yutong where further behind, and the tourist snorkeling group was way back.
We spent a little bit more time looking at the coral and then hit it in to clean up before checking out. We had a long lunch waiting for the van to arrive, it picked us up to take us to the boat.
Our group was one of the first arrive on the boat and we got to settle in for the evening in harbor. Who walked around in the harbor of it but it was still under construction in large parts and the small trinket shops weren’t all that interesting.
The next morning we went north a bit to one of the nearby reefs for our checkout dive. The reef was doing well and Steph mentioned that it was much better than when was in the Red Sea in September. On one dive Steph found a dive computer, but it was from one of the other boats, so they gave it back.
After two checkout dives the boat moved to the brother Islands. Once we left for the Brother Islands we were out of contact until we got back from Daedalus Reef three days later. We started at little brother and did a few dives there where Steph saw a thresher shark, which he pointed out to me. Unfortunately not many others were able to see it as they were further ahead, and Steph had the macro lens on so we didn’t get good video. We then moved to the Big brother Island where the lighthouse is. The current was pretty strong around the Big brother Island but we got to see a couple large fish being cleaned. One of our divers lost a weight pouch as they jumped in the water but then Steph managed to find it at the bottom. Steph started referring to her finds as her treasure, and she was hoping to find another dive computer that was not claimed.
That evening we had a long journey to Daedalus reef which took about 10 hours, there was a lot of rolling and I got a sea sickness prevention patch from Yutong, which made a huge difference. Amusingly it also made me not able to see well up close as a side effect.
Next morning we woke up to the Daedalus reef lighthouse in view, and the reef itself which is really pretty. Three has some pretty steep drop offs on all sides to go down to maybe 100m. The guides focused on blue dives which means we were away from the reef trying to find some of the more pelagic creatures like hammerhead sharks, silky sharks, manta rays, and longimanus sharks. We managed to see pretty much everything on the list although many of them were just shadows in the distance. Like we could tell it was a hammerhead shark, but it was 40m down and moving pretty quickly away from us. The one major exception to this was the longimanus shark also known as the white tip oceanic shark. We found one that was very curious about us and came quite close almost close enough for me to reach out and touch it, but since I value my hands I did not actually do that. We also got to see some clown fish in anemones and large Napoleon wrasse.
We were able to go to the lighthouse for sunset and I got a silly hat for mystery prize for dive club.
The evening we spent on the reef let us see a large school of cornet fish or needlefish it was hard for me to tell which one. They were attracted to a large spotlight on the boat and it was fun covering up the spotlight and then revealing it to see them move away and move back real quick.
In our downtime on board we were able to do some yoga and have great conversations with Paul and Yutong learning a lot more about them and their past and we had known before.
The second day diving Daedalus reef I skipped the first morning dive. On the second dive we got to go to the anemone city which had many clownfish.
The final dive was just right under the boat. I was hoping to find some of Steph’s leggings that were blown off our drying line the previous night, but no luck.
We then had a long boat ride back to the coast. We got into range in the morning and found out that a diving live-aboard by the name of Sea Story had sunk just a little to the south of us the previous day. I had a number of messages to respond to assuring people I wasn’t dead yet. There were four confirmed dead, and another 7 missing presumed dead, including two British tourists.
The final dives were really nice, especially the dives with just the four of us. Steph led us well, and we got to take our time on some of the smaller things. I was also slapped by a turtle on one of our last dives, which was hilarious.
Once back at the port we had a short walk around, but nothing much is there and most of it is still under construction. We got picked up the next day to head to Luxor, which is a 6 hour drive away. I was surprised by the number of checkpoints we had to go through to get to Luxor.
The hotel in Luxor was amazing, Steigenberger Nile Palace. We checked in then immediately headed out to the sunset camel ride. We took a boat and a motor-cart to the camels at the edge of the desert. In Egypt, the landscape is either the fertile area by the Nile, or desert. There isn’t even a transition zone, just an immediate transformation to bone dry desert. The sunset ride was gorgeous and we had a good ride back to the hotel. We had dinner at the Lebanese restaurant, and a few of the dishes were absolutely amazing.
The next day I stayed in as Steph, Yutong, and Paul went to two of the better preserved temples outside the city. The first was amazing, and they had great pictures of it. The second still sounded great, but not as amazing.
The next day Steph went sailing and had a spa treatment, while Paul, Yutong, and I went to the local Temples. Karnak is the largest and most complex temple. It was started about 4000 years ago, and was built over 1900 years. There are still many parts of it that have nicely preserved paint and carvings, due to the roof on some sections not having fully collapsed. A large portion of it was also covered in mud, and those sections are distinct in color, with little remaining paint. The large display room and the entry pylons were the most impressive parts. We then went to Luxor temple, or the south temple which was smaller and built over a shorter period. However it was converted to a Greek temple, then a church, then a mosque. The remains of each period are left over the older periods, and it was interesting to see how they differed.
We just relaxed by the Nile after the trips, and Yutong got a spa treatment like Steph’s. We watched the sunset over the Nile, the headed to the Lebanese restaurant again for a lighter dinner this time. We had a great last meal. In the morning Steph and I had to get up extremely early to catch out flight to London via Cairo. The rest of the trip was thankfully uneventful to get back to some kitties that were happy to see us.
Some thoughts on Egypt travel:
The way the tipping works in Egypt is annoying and at times hard to handle.
In many cases it is implied that the tour or boat ride is paid to the company and then the tip is the only payment the guide or driver receives.
There are many cases of people desperate to provide small services, like bellhops being insistent on taking your bags.
The worst in my opinion are the bathroom attendants. They rarely clean the bathroom, and instead stand by the sink with the soap dispenser so you must ask them for soap, then they stand in front of the paper towel dispenser so you must ask for paper towels. It is really obnoxious, and then you have to tip.
Having approximately right denominations of currency was difficult, as the ATMs gave out mostly 200’s which is what was recommended for a full day’s tour guide, not a bellhop.
Very rarely will you be able to find out ahead of time what the right range of tips are.
At restaurants there is a ‘service fee’ it isn’t the tip, and goes to the restaurant.
Some of the people trying to sell things or get tips will tell you to do things instead of offer or suggest. It will be along the lines of “Come down to these tables to have a drink.” Or “Come this way, it has the best decorations.” Some of the people acting in this way are security guards at the temples, which makes it hard to know when they are telling you rules or just trying to get tips. We just said “no thank you” and were left alone in most cases. We have heard that they will offer to take pictures of your group, and then not give the phone back until they get a tip, so we just didn’t give them the phones.
There is a lot of security theater.
Entering buildings, airports, and driving along the main roads. If you don’t have a guide or driver to deal with this it would be very difficult.
At the airport we had an instance where I was planning to check in and get boarding passes at the airport, but to get into the airport we needed boarding passes. The person checking for boarding passes at the security stop wouldn’t let us go to the check in desk inside the airport without the boarding passes. Then once I had checked in online, gotten the digital boarding passes, gone through two levels of security just to get into the airport, the checkin desk printed us boarding passes anyway.
Guide quality varies massively, even at the same companies. Look at the google, trippit, and trip advisor reviews to know which guides to request from which companies.
Overall, just have a good guide with you, and google translate with Arabic downloaded and ready to go.
It's an Exciting World 