Month: September 2024

Last Week Of Summer

There are many ways to decide when the summer ends. I have already posted more than one “End of Summer” blog. Before I left for London I thought that my swimming season was over (having that I would miss the next weekend and one after) so I washed and stored away my swimsuit and beach towels, but I was happy to pull them out again last week.

I want to say explicitly that although we have an ongoing situation now, and my weekend plans had to be canceled, I can’t say it was a bad week. In fact, it was a gorgeous summer week, filled with all these bitter-sweet “last” gelato, “last” balm evenings, an incredibly warm lake, and fun in the sun. Also, I want to see ‘Harry Potter” and the opening of the season of the Chicago Symphony with a violin virtuoso Benjamin Beilman.

I have nothing but thanks to the Universe for this gift.

TIME Magazine: Dining Solo

I always encourage people to go to plays, concerts, or restaurants by themselves if they do not have company but want to go, and I always thought that it was just a personal decision. However, according to this Time Magazine article, the restaurants do not like solo diners. It was interesting to read about why there are more solo diners these days than before, why restaurants often do not like them, and why they should 🙂

I think that in the nineteenth and early twentieth century there were more people dining out on a regular basis and solo, and it was absolutely normal back then. However, back then, these solo diners were male only, so possibly the issues which the article lists concern women more often than men.

Continue reading “TIME Magazine: Dining Solo” →

A Quick Update

…for friends because the family already knows. Mom fell during her Friday morning walk and hurt her head really badly. She was taken to the ER, and since I had my phone in her phone as an emergency contact, somebody called me, so I went there right away. Fortunately, that was this once-a-month thing when I worked from home (I had a seasonal furnace tune-up).

We thought it would not be a big deal because although there was a lot of blood, they didn’t even need to stitch her, just glue the wound. However, the CT scan showed brain bleeding, so she was left in an ICU overnight. I spent eight hours there yesterday and came there in the morning. They released her home with 24/7 supervision, so now we are figuring out how to make things work.

Harry Potter And The Cursed Child

This show just opened last weekend, and I saw it yesterday. I have just one word – FANTASTIC! Everything they write about this show, and better! Everything you can see in this promotional video, but better because it’s had to capture the fire on stage – it is way cooler than it looks!

Flying Back And More Delays

The only flight that was on time for this trip was my flight back from Amsterdam to London. As for the final leg, I saw the announcement that my flight was going to be three hours delayed a day before, and I was only hoping it wouldn’t be another overnight delay.

That time, I had no option of going for a stroll in the city because I had my carry-on with me. Actually, if I had acted a little bit faster, I could have jumped on the previous flight to Chicago, but by the time I checked in with customer service, they were already boarding, so I decided – whatever!

It ended up spending another six hours staying in the lounge because there was already almost an hour gap between flights, but at least I was able to catch up on reading and blogging:)

The flight landed in Chicago at about 9 PM, and the good part of such a late arrival was that there were no lines at the border control, and also, there was no traffic on Sunday night, so I was at home at 10-20. I am proud of myself that I didn’t unpack but went to bed right away 😀

And More Amsterdam

I planned to spend an extra day in Amsterdam just to wander around without any particular plan. It would have been a great idea, except that this extra day was Saturday, and the streets were crowded beyond any imagination. Still, it was a nice and relatively warm day, and the city looked gorgeous. Boris wanted to take a boat tour “if it will work,” so we took the one which departed “in three minutes” from when we reached the boarding place.

Notice.s “seagull scarecrow” similar to the ones I saw in Helsinki
Seven bridges
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PG Day Lowlands

Friday, September 13 – the Pg Day Lowlands team was brave enough to have their first event scheduled on that day :). And it went really well! I liked a lot of things about it, and I definitely want to use some of them for PG Day Chicago, including the rule that Boriss Mejias mentioned about always leaving a space for a fith person to join a group of four. I also loved the idae of Sponsor Passports, which encoraged the participants to visit all sponsor tables.

I started this post three days ago, but never had time to finish because the moment I returned to work, I had no time for anything else. But now, I have pictures taken by a professional photographer, so instead of posting whatever pictures I took, I can post really high-quality ones. So now, there just a couple of mine left :).

Here are some of them (of cause, I am shamelessly posting the pictures of myself:))

Speakers gifts
Sponsors
It was a different photographer than two years ago, and Boris was not even in the front row, but still 🙂
Sponsor passports ready for drawing

Amsterdam

One more time visiting Amsterdam, and one more time taking the same pictures :). Interestingly, this blog started with one of our Amsterdam trips, so it is interesting to compare then and now. I should probably do it, but not today! I came back home last night, and I was in the office at 7 AM today, and life is going, an going, and running… So just pictures for now!

Hotel Jakarta

Just making sure I post everything about my trip before life gets intense! Boris also flew to Amsterdam on Thursday; we met at the airport and headed to Hotel Jakarta. I chose although it’s not the cheapest one because 1) there were no cheap hotels around 2) we’ve been there before and liked it 3)they allowed 24-hour cancellation with full refund.

Jakarta was great. I didn’t take as many pictures as I did two years ago, but some are below. The view from our room window was stunning day and night.

The gym still opens at seven, but when I said that I remember that precisely because I wish it would open earlier, they asked me “When do you want it to be open?” and on Friday, they opened it a half-hour earlier, just enough for me to exercise and have breakfast and be in time for the conference.

On Thursday, we were planning to attend the local meetup, but both our flights were delayed (yes, that’s a theme of that trip!) so it was too late to go to the meetup, and we needed some dinner. The hotel restaurant was overbooked and they told us they won’t have space until 9 PM. I think I looked very unhappy because they asked whether we wanted to sit at the big tables, and we said yes. The food was super-delicious, so we didn’t regret we missed the event 🙂

I Biked In London!!!!

My flight to Amsterdam was at 3-30 PM on Thursday, so I had time in the morning to visit my colleague in our London office. It was an unofficial visit, but we had things to discuss, and so he booked a room, and we talked for several hours straight. When we were done, there was still time until lunch, and my co-worker asked me whether I would like to go for a bike ride. He told me later I looked completely startled, and rightly so! I do not bike in Downtown Chicago, because I do not feel it safe (except if I venture there early in the morning on a weekend). But in London?!… However, I knew that he was a biker and he biked to work, and he reminded me that he had a foldable bike, and he said we could rent a city bike and that he could give me his helmet, so I decided to get out of my comfort zone.

I am extremely thankful to him for making this suggestion. Also, since I didn’t feel comfortable on a city e-bike, he suggested I take his bike, and he took a city one. Obviously, I was following him closely, but he was great in waiting for me and showing directions, especially because going on the wrong side of the road added to my discomfort.

The pictures below are the ones I took during this bike ride and the ones he took, including the one from atop his shoulder.

If somebody had told me two hours earlier I was about to do this, I would never have believed them!