An audible sigh emerged after I re-ran a Jupyter notebook and saw a result meaning I will have to delay some work. Loud enough to turn TK’s head.
I got (only) one question wrong in our tech all-hands quiz, and am feeling slightly salty about it.
Quite hyped about a few new features and bits of tech that are going live soon.
Over the week I had a side-quest to assemble what I’m calling “lo-fi black-tie attire”: Including a casual black jacket, a clip-on tie and grand court 2.0s. With student discounts the whole set was silly cheap.
Thursday evening I went to the Business Book Awards where my mum’s book “From Grenades to Griddles” won the second place award (“highly commended”) in its category - the judges were super complimentary and I'm so proud.
The awards were a gala dinner pulling in interesting people from all over the world. Dinner was a selection of Indian cuisine; naturally I binged on chaat. It was too spicy for some but the staff were under the impression it was mild leading to a funny back-and-forth with the staff: Sorry VRG, I really tried!
My group was a little less into talking to strangers about their books than me so I kept the old """networking""" to a minimum. Recognised a few books and authors that I’d actually read - but the person I really wanted to meet (The Parts Unlimited guy) couldn’t make it, which allowed me to uphold my networking embargo. I did eventually break it at our table to talk about research on the behaviours of oligarchs - because how can you not?!
Friday evening I caught up with the one-and-only OB at The Banker, including talking about travel and life plans, an impromptu papers review and lots of chatter about our old friends - and we also attempted to revive a few group chats of yore. Genuinely a treat.
What began as a hangout turned into a surprise birthday celebration for VQM. While it included legendary Pilaf, Romanian milk and a silly amount of Just Dance - my standout moment is captured in the 20 second video clip I now have of MT reading/preaching The Communist Manifesto.
The journey home was the first time I’ve talked to the cab driver the entire way (about an hour) in a very long time. He had some real takes, but not the type of takes that you usually hear and immediately feel compelled to write-up on the internet.
Very late last week I got an email saying I was put in for an exam on Monday this week. It’s a highly detail-oriented exam and I had no time to meaningfully revise so I didn’t even attempt it. That wound me up a bit.
(Small personal victory on Sunday)
The mosquito bites are finally gone, replaced by a very angry heel injury from attempting to wear formal shoes this week. Pray for me.
