This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 7/7 and Move 7/7. (100%). Morning walks: 0/5. Office days 0/5. Total steps: 68,697
Life
It seems appropriate that the 100th weeknote is the week before Christmas. I can’t believe I’ve completed 100 of these, although this run only began with weeknote 22 back in June 2023.
I saw the Wallace and Gromit projection on Battersea Power Station and thought it was great. The £9 mulled wine wasn’t worth it.
Gave blood. Interesting chatting to the staff; they will be making up the Christmas holidays with extra Sundays because two days less blood in the system isn’t great. Give blood. Don’t miss your appointment.
Walked to ‘the big Tesco’. It’s full of different Christmassy things.
I made a shepherd’s pie using parsnips as the mash. It was delicious.
Friends’ Christmas dinner in Wimbledon Village was saved when E persuaded the staff to move us out of the middle of somebody else’s Christmas party. The food was excellent.
Christmas shopping in Kingston. It was busy (good for the shops) but not manic (so, good for me).
Looking back at my Instagram pictues – this one is all about travel. But where did I go?
Yesterday we had Christmas, a Royal wedding, the Olympics and Nico Rosberg to sum up my first 4 years on Instagram. Let’s dive in to the next few years and see what we can find.
From late-2012 through the March 2014 I spent some time in Australia. The company that was a start-up in the 2010 picture had grown and been acquired in the years since and one of our largest customers was based in Melbourne, a city I fell in love with over the time I was there. I spent weeks on-site with them – one the nicest organisations I had the pleasure of working with – right up until we turned on the software about 10 days before this picture. I feel blessed to have been able to visit Australia and see some wonderful things: Melbourne, The Great Ocean Road, Sydney for the Opera House and Mardi Gras and The Great Barrier Reef. By this point, I’d completed the project and, deep down, I knew this would be my last visit as I was pretty certain I’d accept a job offer from another company when I got home. Looking back, the caption hints at it. It was my first ever Uber ride, booked from the hotel to the airport, and as I saw a view of the Melbourne skyline behind me, I knew I should take a picture to capture the memory.
We used up our holiday allowance early in 2015 with a trip to Vietnam (including time in Cambodia and Hong Kong). Hoi An was the third stop on our visit. It’s beautiful and was quite different to Hanoi where we’d started the visit. One of the unexpected finds was a teahouse, in the heart of Hoi An, staffed by speech and hearing impaired people. Nobody really speaks, there are these little blocks and a notepad to communicate your order. It’s a tranquil oasis and, even though there were some memorable assaults on the senses elsewhere on the holiday, the peace and quiet of this teahouse, with a view of the street, really sticks in my mind.
I went to France to give a presentation about native advertising on Facebook. I recall the team arrived fairly late in the day on the Thursday and went straight to the office for a rehearsal and equipment check. I think this was my first big presentation for them, so I was a little nervous. As we were leaving for the evening a group of people were pulling apart a section of the office reception. We went to dinner and thought nothing more of it. The next morning, a car, props and video backdrop had appeared, seemingly from nowhere. After we had finished our presentation and could all relax a little, I got to wear a silly hat while waving in a static car. It was the first video I posted on Instagram. I remember the talk went reasonably well, the lunch in the canteen was excellent but I most remember everybody on the team having a go in this car.
Right, I’m only doing three years this post which is, primarily, a reason for another post tomorrow but also because today was my last day in the office for the year and I’ve already has a glass of wine so I don’t trust myself to sit here and go through any more.
When it comes to understanding the impact of sexual preference on our daily lives we are – unsurprisingly – not like our straight counterparts at all.
A year ago I noted that Armistead Maupin, author of the Tales of the City series, “helped me understand a bigger world where gay people live and have fun but are, deep down, just like their straight counterparts”. There’s an interesting debate over at plasticbag.org about when you should – or should not – declare you sexuality. It all started when Tom drew up a “Tongue-in-cheek-ish slightly-bored early-evening version of what I would kind of like my business card to be like” which spawned other conversations relating sexuality. It appears, kids, that when it comes to understanding the impact of sexual preference on our daily lives we are – unsurprisingly – not like our straight counterparts at all.
