Issue 10 - making calls, booking seats, performing reviews
A possibly weekly email about what's been going on in my brain
22 - 28 January 2023
Each day is getting increasingly stranger for me as I become slightly more unhinged with the realisation that in just over a week I'll be going away for a quarter of a year. People ask me if I'm packed and I have simultaneously been packed for over a month and not at all.
Throwback photos from my 2018 visit to Japan.
Prep
I've used InsideJapanTours for all of my visits to Japan and, for obvious reasons, I've peppered my travel agent with questions and thoughts throughout the organisation of what they've called "2023: A Japan Odyssey". I sent an email at the beginning of the year with some trivial concerns but didn't hear back immediately which of course sent my catastrophising into overdrive. I had done the whole Covid vaccination validation process online so I now have QR codes to show upon entry into the country, and logged in to the airline to check on my booking (which did exist! more on this shortly), so I was relatively certain I could enter and exit the country, but everything in between?
I eventually relented and called an actual person on the telephone and, surprise! everything is fine. It has apparently taken a "small army" to organise and print my info pack that is being sent to me at the beginning of next week, but any hotels that were waiting for the new year to accept bookings are now confirmed, and all travel arrangements locked in.
Which means I just need to turn up.
It was definitely a weight off my mind. But that's meant my brain has had to find other things to worry about. Cue a frankly tragic amount of hand-wringing over where I should sit on the 13+ hour flight (usually only 11 hours, thanks Russia). Prior to this trip I was a "turn up at the airport and ask the person at the check in desk for a specific seat" kind of person, but you can pre-book your seat choice online. For a fee of course. And the exit row - with all that premium leg room - is of course more expensive to book than any other row. This is all a long-winded preamble to confess that I spent £92 to book an exit row seat because I'm weak and throw money at problems apparently.
In a similar vein, I have set up Timeshifter to see if its plan can help with jet lag. Historically I've been fine after a couple of nights but I'll take any help I can get so that I can dedicate my all my thoughts to the ailments I could pick up in the recycled air of the flight. Timeshifter did send me a charming email with the subject "Before your first timeshift" that momentarily made me feel like a future time-travel tourist.
Reviews
I've spent an awful lot of time over the past few weeks trying to ensure that my absence from work is as uneventful and mundane as possible with lots of handovers, meetings, and documentation. The most exciting part of the last week has been an on-site visit to one of our clients - quite the novelty. The meeting itself seemed to go well, but we also got a tour of their factory and warehouse which not only put faces to names for some of the people I've only spoken to on Slack, but also gave me some context for why some of the arcane business processes I've painstakingly modelled in code exist. I also got to see large industrial machines making clothes which, if you've seen any of the most recent YouTube watches, is definitely my jam.
Unfortunately my quiet decline into madness at work is broken up next week with reviews for my team, meaning I need to be capital-P Professional with a huge amount of emotional preparedness for the magnitude of setting the course of several someone's career for the next six months. This at a time when I've been otherwise jettisoning my work responsibilities like parts of a rocket heading into orbit.
Future newsletters
If next week's newsletter is anything more than incoherent ramblings I will be amazed. Beyond that though I'm not 100% sure the format my on-the-road newsletters will take. I'm expecting photos and diary-style thoughts but I've no idea of the frequency or structure. I'm hoping they'll provide the same kind of calm writing and producing them as these past ones have but I'll see how things shake out.
YouTube watches
- How a brick and rock battery is changing storage - effectively "just" storing heat to be used later which reminds me of the storage heaters my parent's house in Scotland used to have
- Why fuel injectors are awesome - some slow-mo fuel injection
- Can a Lego air engine power a truck - fun little build, especially after all their engine tests
- Elevated Dread playthrough by Elajjaz - a super creepy indie horror game, the TV commercial part of the way through is haunting
- John Wick Chapter 4 trailer - I rewatched Chapter 2 recently and was reminded of the diminishing returns with each subsequent entry in the (ugh) "Wickiverse"
Random links
- Actually, Japan has changed a lot - a rebuttal to a widely shared BBC article on the stagnation of Japan viewed by one person, using data to refute a lot of the claims
This was hand-crafted by John.