Weeknotes #28: virtual queuing

Week commencing Monday, 31 July 2023

Mandrill Mayhem at Chessington World of Adventures
New for ’23: Mandrill Mayhem at Chessington World of Adventures

Quantified Self

  • This week: Stand 7/7; Exercise 6/7 and Move 7/7. (95%, best for a while). Morning walks: 0/2 (days in the office don’t count). Office days 1/3. Total steps: 85,826

Life

  • In a work virtual conference, we were asked to write our names as many times as possible with our non-dominant hand. Harder than expected but it was legible (I managed two in the given time). It was something to do with embracing challenges and changes: ‘Anything worth doing well is worth doing poorly at first’.
  • On the train to work on Tuesday, a loud Property Manager on the phone discussing that three portfolios were unmanageable and why, when talking about staffing levels, did his boss keep forgetting about Lauren? And I wanted to know the rest of the story.
  • Family arrived on Wednesday. All the arrangements worked, including the inflatable bed. Although I wish I had realised that if you don’t use the adapter on the pump then it fits much better. There were little people in the house.
  • Chessington World of Adventures opens at 10am and we were ready for Mandrill Mayhem at 10:30am. It uses a virtual queuing system which worked well. Worth doing. Vampire does not operate such a system and I wonder why we stood for 90 minutes (still a fun ride). Zufari seemed a shorter ride then last time. Gruffalo is fun with a 7 year old.
  • News spread amongst future colleagues and my phone buzzed while hurtling around the tree tops from people who were only getting the news this week.
  • Technically, AC was 7 on Friday. Vauxhall City Farm was a nice treat. I fed lambs from my hand to prove it wasn’t scary. Not sure what she made of the Imperial War Museum but her brother enjoyed it.
  • The Speedboat Bar’s food is spicy for kids. OC stuck to his guns and ate all the Minced Beef with Holy Basil in spite of the heat.
  • PY and I saw the Brokeback Mountain play. Impressive performances in an equally impressive new theatre. I’d forgotten how sad the story was. We didn’t have the heart to tell the fans at the stage door that one of the stars was having a chat in the theatre bar. The younger ones saw Matilda the musical. It comes with a 7-year old seal of approval.
  • Saturday we looked after kids so parents could party. Learnt interesting things on the Horrible History boat – nicely done – but learnt a foot splinter can’t be cured by Uncles. Discovered that trying to direct people back to Raynes Park using the night tube is harder than expected.
  • Sunday, much more to see at Kew than I remember. The need to buy a hat because of the sun was unexpected. The Hive is fascinating. The Palm House is hot. I still like the bamboo gardens.
  • Related, Kew Village Market is on the first Sunday of the month. It all looks delicious.
  • Introduced everyone to Raynes Park kebabs. Consensus is that the chilli sauce is hotter than other places people have tried. Tip: get it in a tub on the side.

Media

  • To calm the spirits after Saturday night’s splinter, PY and I were introduced to Miss Trunchbull and Matilda via Netflix. It was sufficiently distracting to soothe although it did not remove the pain. It’s quite dark in places, isn’t it?

Archive

To save the links getting lost in the future I checked the Internet Archive to see what they had saved for the posts linked here. If the original source above no longer works, these should.