Mark Carroll's Journal

On a recent visit to Edinburgh, R. and I chose Edinburgh Street Food (ESF) for lunch, on our way to the botanic garden. ESF features diverse vendors around an eating area. Initially, I was unimpressed: very much, oh, they reinvented the food court. Admittedly, I am a fan of food courts: they tend to be cheaper than restaurants and allow people their separate choices. Anyhow, it turned out that one can order online from any combination of the vendors in one transaction, providing one's table number, then the food appears in due course, delivered to the table in somewhat random order. So, much nicer than queueing then waiting at multiple counters. The Polish vendor was decent and, across the vendors I noticed, the prices seemed reasonable. R.'s Peruvian food was adequate but they undercooked the rice.

When we were moving between the Philippines and Singapore, it was amusing that we would have to switch side for standing on an escalator. Perhaps this mirrored the difference in the side of the road on which one drives.

No such excuse within Britain, though: in London I am used to standing on the right of an escalator but, in using Glasgow's Central Station today, I stood on the left as the signs instruct. For extra dilemma, two different trains were leaving from the same platform at nearly the same time, fortunately they mark their destination on the sign at the front. This is in good Glasgow tradition, given that, as previously noted, local buses with different routes, operated by different companies, can bear the same route number and leave from the same stop.

Despite some difficulties, I managed to get a work project running reasonably last week and it is a relief to have the initial delivery behind me. The remaining to-do's can wait until next month.

This weekend's quite windy. I am now back from a walk over the squiggly bridge into the city centre to buy a few small items, at least it is more sunny than rainy right now. I returned home over the pedestrian suspension bridge near St Enoch Square. Especially near the Clyde, I had my hat pressed quite firmly over my head lest the wind take it.

Over the holiday, we will have a quiet time. My kids are in the US, R.'s are in Asia, it's just us and the animals for Christmas while our kids see extended family. It's great to take a breath, catch up with things, and enjoy being together.

( I was busy with a family visit. )

( The rented Volvo was a little annoying. )

I have also been involved with a major product launch at work and have been somewhat covering as colleagues have also been taking some days off. At least work stuff has gone fairly smoothly and I have enjoyed getting back to writing some code. My work-life balance is back under control, at least to a first approximation.

Given the above activity, last weekend was my first reasonably free one for quite some time. I spent the Saturday with family visiting from Dundee. Now we are to ready the flat for relisting for sale through a different agent. Among all that, we will try to find another weekend for camping, not that the current weather is encouraging.

( Our dog's a good weight, I am finally dieting to improve mine. )

( Money's tight at the moment. )

Last weekend, the recent rain had passed. On Saturday, we had a cool, sunny day which was perfect for a couple of walks. In the morning, we strolled a little in Glasgow Green then headed over to Barras Market. After lunch at home, we walked in the other direction, and I picked up more books at the Mitchell Library. For some parts of our walk, there was a strong wind. I wondered why the sun and wind felt so familiar, and I realized that it was from having lived in Cornwall, it reminded me of visiting the coast.

The next day, I visited my kids in Dundee, and rode on a Ferris wheel for the first time in ages. I expect that I must have before but I don't recall when. It was great to get to talk with them and hear how they are doing.

Monday saw me flown to London for meeting my new colleagues in person for the first time. I took the bus to the airport and, after arrival at Stansted, took the train to Liverpool Street from where I could walk. The weather was nice, I joined one remote meeting from a bench in a small, pleasant park before meeting people for lunch then going on to do some work with them before heading back home.

Tuesday we had the property maintenance engineers visiting to check into the recent water ingress into our building. It turned out that the gutters hadn't been properly maintained, they had blocked and the rain overflowed into the wall cavity. We will do what we can to make sure that doesn't happen again. In the evening, my throat didn't feel right.

Yesterday, I felt as if I had a head cold. However, I had wanted to make at least some progress with my work, and I finally managed to make a proper start on my current project, with obvious points for continuing.

Today, I felt unusually dreadful, and took my first sick day for many years. I don't even remember when I was last off work sick but it was at least three jobs ago. Testing tonight, an expired COVID test showed my first positive result. That's entirely my own fault for finally letting my guard down and not being careful enough in travelling to London. It's an education that I ought not have needed but perhaps I can at least learn to try to avoid subsequent reinfection.

The Firth of Clyde has a few beaches along it. Previously we visited Lunderston Bay, last Saturday we drove to Prestwick Beach and I judged the water warm enough to swim in. Once I was in, others followed, and we had a nice time in the sea for a good while. The beach turned out to be rather shallow so one can go some way out before gaining much depth. Looking out toward Arran, the blue sky and white clouds reflected very prettily off the surface of the water. I hadn't noticed that from the beach, perhaps it helped to have my head closer to the surface. I expect the sea to stay warm enough into the autumn.

I am not sure of the nomenclature for bodies of water. When I swam off Cornwall, it was fairly clearly the Atlantic. Off Aberdeen, I thought of it as being the North Sea, and since our move we have been visiting the Firth. However, I wonder if those are technically also the Atlantic. Either way, they all seem more than adequate to me, just as I was happy enough to be swimming in Lake Erie, it has a distant horizon and waves and such.

We had a band of rain moving through Scotland yesterday so I am glad that we had chance to visit the beach before it arrived.

Last Sunday, I went to the Doctor Who exhibition at the National Museum. I realized that I have been to such in England, Wales, and now Scotland. This one was a modest, restrained affair, with a fairly linear path through it, and a focus on alien creatures and, somewhat, technology, with plenty of relevant scientific background from this planet, including on the strange creatures we have here. It was worth its correspondingly modest price.

This morning, I dreamt of being a young man in a large group of such who were in a large building occupied by cybermen (from Doctor Who, these seemed late classic era). The cybermen were forcing us to work at various things for them but not in an organized enough way to stop me accidentally falling through the cracks, I did okay as long as I looked busy. Though, if any did become suspicious, an issue was that it was then difficult to avoid those because they all look the same.

A later dream involved the appearance in the sky of a large fleet of alien spacecraft. Even more peculiarly, there was a subsequent phase where the sky mostly showed some kind of cartoon based on science fiction and spacecraft material. I had the sense that this had happened a few times before but had faded without trace, this time I was able to capture much of it on my cellphone. I was with R.'s youngest who was also witnessing the display but I was careful not to say what I was seeing because it was so incredible that I wanted to see if they said they had seen much the same.

We have been exploring Aberdeen's festival of light. It is over a few evenings which, judging by queues, doesn't seem to be quite enough. Among other things, there are giant glowing figures, and apparently a dance routine where we arrived around when it finished. One of the glowing figures suffered technical difficulties but we remained for long enough to see it restored to its former glory.

Yesterday evening, we walked back down to attend the maybe largest part of the festival, in Union Terrace Gardens, that we had previously postponed in view of the queue, which is probably at least an hour long. Before joining the queue, I picked up some takeaway Taco Bell, and ate as I waited. Here in the UK, the seven-layer burrito remains on the menu, a favourite of mine among their fare. Once we were finally admitted to the gardens, we found that the festival site included some nice clanking trees whose glowing orbs' brightness was related to the clanks, and a glowing fox and owl. I also noticed some drones high in the air above.

Queueing rather less, we have also visited woodland and the like. There may have been interesting animals but I am bad at spotting those, at best I managed the two small deer that crossed the trail right in front of us. Maryculter Woods is one of the closer such destinations. We were generally lucky in getting a parking space in what were mostly small, busy car parks. The weather in recent days has been most cooperative with such expeditions.

One nice thing about Aberdeen is that parking at the beach is easy and free so, yesterday afternoon, we returned and got to see plenty more dogs being exercised, some getting into the water, also the usual couple of people in wetsuits out swimming or surfing. Graffiti asks, is the water real? The woodland trails also see a fair few dogs being walked.

My return to Scotland went approximately to plan. ( I set off from Metro Manila, )

( connected through Dubai, )

( on Emirates, )

( then traipsed across Scotland. )

Once home, I headed out to Spar for easy food and basic groceries. Then, I slept for over ten hours.

Update: amended with strikethrough to correct for my fallible memory

This evening, we shopped in Mandaluyong, finishing at the SM Megamall, which is where I once had a shawarma burrito from Taco Bell. What I hadn't previously noticed is the Japanese automated car lot outside, there are metal towers in which cars are parked on individual platforms that slowly travel up and down. We watched it while waiting for our Grab^* six-seater to arrive. Some of our cars home use Waze to navigate which requires verbal correction on our part. Our impression is that Waze is inspired by the routes motorcycles take, not distinguishing them from cars when routing, which can guide drivers onto some of the local roads in Bicutan, etc., that are not comfortably passable in something as large as a car.

^*like Lyft, Uber, etc.