Day in New York City

I had a full day free and was based near Grand Central so headed out to some of the mid town sights.

Rockerfella centre.

Radio city.

I had organised a tour about Manhattan architecture and art. It was weird. It was supposed to be great for bad weather as it looked at some of the underground parts, but we wondered seemingly randomly about and even in a few cases into some ones office. And were told to leave. Really awkward.
Some of the art was cool.

Atlas outside Saint Patricks.

Last time I was in the city, Saint Patricks was under scaffolding so it was really nice to actually see it.

St Patricks

Pretty.

The end of the tour required me to walk through the Trump tower. I felt sick and needed a shower! Though I did appreciate the couple of guys selling anti-trump badges right outside. 

After the tour I grabbed some lunch from a food cart and headed into Central Park to chill out. Turns out the weather was pretty nice. 

View from the park

I had to move hotels on the Monday so after lunch headed back and moved to the new hotel but wondering out to Grand Central. I do love this train station. And more importantly I found the market again and stocked up on loose leaf teas. I got a load last time and was sad when they ran out.

Ceiling at Grand Central

The meetings were in the RELX New York offices which go over a road so the views from the windows were very cool.

I spend the rest of the week on work things but did enjoy a few very nice meals (a lovely chinese and a seafood night with oysters and ceviche) and spend a couple of evenings in the gay piano bar over the road from my hotel. 

Ax Throwing

Last week we had a data science chapter meet up. During the day we did some charity work and on the evening we went ax throwing. Why not?

We were some of the first there and the noise of the axes hitting the board was slightly intimidating.

They showed us how to do a one handed throw and a 2 handed throw. (I think most preferred the one handed). Along with another 6 people, we had 4 lanes and got to do some practice before going into a tournament between the 24 of us.

Taking my turn

And the most amazing thing: I won! I wasn't the best but somehow I mangled to beat everyone else in  the matches. And ended on a bull's eye. (I don't think a few of the young guys were very impressed by this.) 

After this they even let us try throwing 2 axes. (My left arm is useless!)

Trying a 2-axe throw.

Team photo.

After we went for dinner. I had had to find somewhere (Friday night, in London, day after pay day) on the Wednesday as our other reservation cancelled. Thankfully the last was really nice, and I had some of the best octopus I have ever had.
Since then I have just been working. But hopefully I get to do something else fun some time soon.

Last week at NOTHS

So last week was my last working week at NOTHS. I start my new job on Thursday! Very excited.
We had a hackathon the last 2 days. With the weather being mazing, the company got an ice-cream truck to come in and free ice-creams!

Most of the evenings were spent on the green with drinks and snacks from nearby pubs and Sainsbury's.  We had to keep moving as some love the sun (like myself); others, not so much. 

We had some leaving drinks on the last day. There were 2 other people also leaving that day so there were a lot of people out. My group sat inside (we had a lot of the sun haters) and just relaxed. And I am happy to report I didn't get drunk! :) Though mainly because I had to be up early the next day to meet some friends form the States. 

Quiet leaving drinks.

Coding and Cocktails

It's been a crazy busy week as usual. Not helped by my bad planning of putting an astro talk to the company at lunch and then a training session in the evening all on the same day.

On Thursday, I organised a Coding and Cocktails session to introduce SQL to as many people in the business as I could. Especially those who have never done any coding in their lives. The idea is you are taught SQL and complete queries. For each complete query, you get the element of a cocktail (or two) of your choice. (Well, one of the 8 I had recipes and alcohol for.)

We set up a bar in the top kitchen and had about 10% of the company show up, including one of the execs! There should have been more but for various reasons I can't go into, it has been an extremely rough couple of weeks for the company. But the ones that did show seemed to really enjoy themselves!

My team helped out with checking the queries, and making the cocktails, which they enjoyed a lot more by the sounds of them at the end. ("One for you, one for me" maybe?)

Our bar.

Geek joke

Everyone said they really enjoyed themselves (not sure if it was the coding or the cocktails - I am going to go with the combination). Afterwards my team certainly enjoyed themselves making up some cocktails. I have never seen a mojito make someone blink in shock. But they do when made by my team. (At least they weren't giving those portions sizes to the crowd - they would never have done any coding!)

Hopefully we will make it a regular-ish thing. Though as much fun as it was, I can't face organising that every week.

NOTHS sports day

Thursday was the summer party at NOTHS. The theme was sports day and they take competition very seriously. The 4 houses were named after the four locations the office has been at and each had its own mascot. I was in House Kew (we ended up with a cucumber because we were just too cool! And couldn't think of anything else). The others were Bardolph (dolphin), Mortlake (duck) and Red lion (guess). The psychological warfare started early in the week!

trying to psyche us out.

We even got T-shirts. Like quite a few people, I had to change mine for a larger size - they were designed for midgets! Not sure if a left or cucumber is a better mascot. Neither really inspire terror in the enemy.

House Kew!

Some took it more seriously than others. Well to be fair, everyone took it more seriously than our team. In school we would be the kids seeking off to smoke (or in my case, to the library). We tried but we also found the bar pretty early on in the competition.

Stretching

We tried some team spirit.

The ducks doing their warm up - with flapping arms.

Clair and I did not really get into the spirit of racing, so snuck off to the bar quite a few times, despite being different teams. My knees were not going to like it so I decided to just focus on the photos and occasionally cheering. I don't think the rest of my team believed I have bad knees (despite limping heavily all around the office last Friday - it was real!). They kept giving me dirty looks when I didn't volunteer. We were the smallest team as well, so when they needed 20 people for the race, there were only a few of us left. Very dirty looks. But no way was I messing my knees up doing this! So I brought other people drinks instead. :)

My team spirit improving - free pimms.

Getting ready for the first race.

The races were, for the most part based on the normal sports day games, though towards the end they gave up on that.

Giant egg and spoon race.

Skipping - this guy had been practicing!

Trying to psyche the other team out with close quarter cheerleading. 

I think my favourite was the sack race. There were some interesting styles, great faces, and a few accidents.

Concentration.

And we're down.

High jump?

Close (-ish)

Cowboy style.

The three-legged race was a disaster. The bands kept falling off.

There-legged race.

More concentration.

Hockey

After a point, it just got odd. There was a giant feet theme.

Big foot football

The oddest was 2 big feet with 5 people on them, walking. Some of it looked more than a little awkward and uncomfortable. Some teams figured it out. Some not so much. It got a bit painful to watch.

Walking big feet

Not getting it.

The last was the tug-of-war. People really got into this. The rules were 3 girls, 2 guys per team (which considering most of the company is female makes sense).

Going for it.

Go team!

I had to move pretty quickly after taking this photo.

Nearly there - we lost!

Kew House got 3rd places. But we missed out on second by only 1/2 a point! (And there was definitely some cheating going on!)

Winning team celebrating.

After the games (and awards), there was food (BBQ) and a school disco! Plus an ice-cream truck. Honestly, that was the best bit!