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.
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.
I met Steph in SFO for our trip to Hawaii. She had a martial arts friend who works at the airport meet us at one of the restaurant bars. They chatted for a while before he got called away. In Hawaii we showed up pretty late at the hotel and immediately crashed. The next day I did laundry in the morning, then we went to the beach party before the wedding. It was lot of people and the beach was nice. We took some of the Hawaiian style mochi that Steph really likes, and it went over well. The peanut butter filled mochi is especially good.
We left a little early and went to a beach where Steph could snorkel and I could just relax for a bit. We then headed to Bonnie’s house to help out with the flowers and pupus (appetizers) for the wedding. Travis had a dozen octopuses that he had shot, and I helped to gut and clean them for the cooking. It was a lot of salting, massaging, and washing to get them prepped. Noah joined me in the process and we had a great conversation about him working on an ME degree. Then we helped fold wontons, which I wasn’t too bad at, but I was extremely slow compared to the others.
We had to return the ZipCar and I could tell which sandals were mine in the dark, so I just walked back barefoot. The sandals that Steph had bought for me earlier that day were there, I just couldn’t recognize them, and the tags had been rubbed off in just the one day.
The next day we had our book club call, which was nice. We lost track of time, which was hard to keep track of given the time zone changes and daylight savings. Steph then had a call with the Delta Fliers and I had a nice walk along Waikiki.
We took a bus to the wedding, which was at a nice resort. The venue was gorgeous, and they had done a wonderful setup for the whole wedding. I got a temporary tattoo that said “No Ragrets” but it was in reverse as well, as all the temp tattoos were. There were a lot of people doing the entire arm with a temp tattoo, and they all looked really good.
The ceremony was lovely, and one of the songs they chose for it is one we are performing for choir this term: Can’t Help Falling in Love.
The party was the best wedding party I’ve been to. The dancing and singing, and everyone just joining in was wonderful. I got some good video and made a music video with a Suno generated song.
The day after was a little rough, but not nearly as bad as I was expecting it to be. We went spear fishing and free diving with Travis in the afternoon, where Steph got a fish.
Our last day there we got out early and did some snorkeling and saw a huge turtle. We then went to the Zoo, which had lots of gorgeous birds. In the afternoon we hiked up Diamond Head, and got a great view over Honolulu.
In the evening we had dinner with Steph’s cousins and Aunts and Uncles. Then we said goodbye to Steph’s parents and got to sleep really early for the LONG flight home.
What would be the first part of week 100 in London.
I got in Friday and went straight to work. I had a big Demo set for Monday, and I ended up working almost all of Saturday as well. The demo went really well, and we’ll have to see what comes of it in the follow up. Saturday night I got dinner with Adam, Paul, Yutong, Michael, and Michelle. Then we went to play a round of mini golf. I had a great time, despite being worn out.
Then Sunday I had a mostly relaxing day doing some follow ups with work. Paul and Yutong were kind enough to have me over for dinner despite them being under the weather from their vaccines the day before. Yutong cooked an amazing dinner and we also had some tacos from the place nearby.
I went on a run Monday morning out to the little hill along the bay. There were a lot of other people out, and I saw a coyote there. There was a woman walking her tiny mini sheltie, and the coyote started stalking them. I ran up to them after the coyote got to about 15 feet from the mini sheltie, and it stopped and backed off. It had been looking for rabbits, and I bet the mini sheltie was just about right for a nice brunch.
Monday’s demo went great. Then that evening we went out to eat as a group.
Tuesday I did some volunteering with StartX, then Tuesday evening I went to George’s for Frosthaven. I took over Adam’s character, the BlinkBlade.
Wednesday was a good day in BUR and I got most of what I wanted to done. I then went to the normal Wednesday at George’s where we played a round of Mysterium. I did another round of work in MPK, then BUR before heading to SFO on Thursday.
I went to NYC for work as part of a three week trip to the US. This was the first week for a summit about prototyping. I really enjoy chatting with the other prototypers and listening to the talks. True to form for me I didn’t go to most of the talks live, instead listening to them at 2x later.
The first night I got in I just relaxed around the hotel. Monday I went to work, but most of the people I was hoping to meet with didn’t end up coming into the office. I had a great time that evening meeting Rotem and Evelyn for dinner at the same little taqueria that David took me too the last time I was in NYC.
Tuesday evening was a fun party at a indie arcade game bar. They also had karaoke, and I got to sing two of my go to songs. It was great fun watching everyone else do karaoke, and I was surprised at how good everyone was.
I took some time away from the proto summit to go to the accessibility summit, and presented some there as well.
Wednesday evening was great with a simple group dinner, with great conversations about the future of our work and how we were thinking about it.
I did a two hour game jam on Thursday with a partner, Xenia. We didn’t finish, and I chose the format poorly as the partially completed project wasn’t set up to run well. It was still amazing to get as far as we did, and I am pretty sure with three hours we could have completed our ambitious project.
Thursday we went to a show called the 20 Sided Tavern where they did D&D based improv. They had a great crew doing the improv and had good audience participation points. I had a great time with it and enjoyed getting to chat with the people who were there.
I had a really chill week for week number 97 in London. This week was spent close to home taking care of things. On Wednesday we took the kitties to the vet to get them checked up. They are doing well, and I just need to brush their teeth more often.
Giulio joined me for choir on Wednesday, which as great. We went to the pub after with the choir as well and it was great talking to everyone there. I really enjoy talking to people in the choir because they aren’t in tech. It is a breath of fresh air and I get to hear what non techies lives are like.
I ran into the canal cats a good bit this week. There is a new Tortie and the Orange Tabby near Kaki was out and about again. It is also truly turning to fall this week. The trees in the courtyard have gone golden. They are gorgeous, but in a few days they will be bare. Other trees are turning as well, some golden, some red. It is a pretty if dreary time of year.
Saturday I ran errands in the morning then we went to dinner with Ricardo. We then went to Camden and tried to find some live music, but the only major show was sold out. We got a Guinness at a pub and then walked along the canal back to King’s Cross.
Sunday Steph organized a trip to Dover Castle. We had a few detours along the way, but made it there and then toured the castle. It was a pretty quiet day, but the weather was perfect for it. The castle is big, and has a ton of history. They also did lots of period pieces to show what it would have been like in the 1200’s. We walked down to the beach and had dinner by the water.
It's an Exciting World 