Princi (London)

I was packing up the sandwich from the hotel breakfast (I am Fero and I do things like this, nice to meet you) at the bench outside the Travelodge when I saw him coming towards me. He wore a reflexive jacket and some sort of headphones/earmuffs/ear protectors around his head, and my first guess would be that he was some sort of construction worker or airport engineer. Equally likely, he could have been homeless though, as I judged from his rather haggard look and long beard. Either way, his face showed a certain signs of determination that I found strange right away...

Although he was walking towards me, his eyes seemed to be focused on a point somewhere beside me. And he was speaking. But to who? I could not see any phone, hands-free device or cables coming down from his "headphones", which did not really look like headphones anymore, now that he came closer, and more like some of those ear protectors worn by airport engineers and the likes. And close he came - too close for comfort in fact, standing just half a metre away and saying something along the lines "you cannot touch me now darling".

"Ok, just some weirdo" I thought, putting my backpack calmly on my back and about to make my way. I moved to the right to walk past him but just as I did, he moved along with me. I then moved to the left. So did he. I tried to the right again but he'd mirror every of my steps. With a slight warning sing flashing in my mind now, I tried to force my way past him. And then it happened. The eyes, as so far focused somewhere in the distance, suddenly turned the attention to me. "You touch me?!!!" he shouted and straightaway followed with a kick to my ankle, effectively tripping me down, me falling at my backpack with two laptops in it. "What the fuck are you doing?" I somehow unnecessarily spurted out, now it being clear that that this person is a bit psycho and that I am unlikely to get a reasonable answer.

"You touched me first, the camera has seen it!!" he shouted, pointing a finger towards the Travelodge's entrance. Be there a camera or not, I decided not to investigate, or get into "who started" discussions and hang around any longer. For all I knew, the man could be pulling out a knife should the whole thing continue, and so I started to quickly move away, the psycho luckily keeping to his spot. His screams of "You touch me one more time! One more time!!", however, echoed through the long street all the way till I finally turned behind the corner and shook my head in disbelief.

Part of me was obviously happy that nothing really happened: the ankle was fine and all the other stuff in backpack (including a yummy breakfast sandwich) seemed to do a good job protecting the work laptops. Another part of me was however curious and would have liked to know - Who? What? Why?

Ok, the man seemed to have mental issues, possibly a trauma from the past. But going through the busy streets of London, observing the ever more complicated structures built all around, the rushed flow of people in the underground, the inconspicuous bombardment of advertisements from every corner and the constant feeling of pressure - get more, do more, be more - I couldn't help but feel that cracking down is now easier than ever before..

Another spark to these thoughts was a presentation of Nvidia's representative at the first day of the hackathon, which was actually the reason I was in London. "...so we're doing our bit of good in this world..." the NVidia rep says, referring to the fact that they participate in a cutting-edge research on self-driving cars. "Good", the word now resonated in my head, and I couldn't help but wonder... Cool? Definitely. Useful? Likely. But is it really "good" ?

I tend to think of it as a magic circle. We live in a world based on money, the need to make money and the fact that if you want to make more money, there's one primary way of doing it: to improve something. Advance a technology, make something more efficient, automate... Self-checkouts? Awesome, people don't need to do it anymore! Better search engine? Perfect, you can find things more quickly and efficiently! Automatic translation? Neat, no more of that tedious shit! If someone in 1920s was told we now have all these things, he'd probably go all jealous, imagining how we all hang around the corner and do a spitting competition for the mere reason that there is just nothing else left to do...!

Yet, that does not seem to be the case. For one, I have never participated in a spitting competition. But also where is the time we save those cashiers from dull scanning of the goods, or those hopeless folks from aimlessly walking around and trying to locate a hairdresser or that poor Spanish dude who just received a letter from German autorities (with no less than 2 paragraphs full of frightening and long German words) and spends hours to translate it? How come we still work ~40, or even more hours per week? Why isn't there a 3, or even 4 day long weekend already? Why?!!

My take on it is that we, as humanity, spend too much time improving, making things better, faster and more efficient. One way to look at it is to say "Ok Fero, but where would we be if we stopped all the progress 50 years ago? Hah?" which is fair enough. On the other hand, maybe the real question to ask should be "are we really happier now?" .

If we take Google, for example - it unquestionably gives you some sort of an edge and opportunities. Instead of spending hours in a library going through books, you can now say "OK google, how do I construct minimum spanning tree?" and get the answer in seconds. On the other hand, since this "edge" is given to all of us, you not only can take advantage of it, you are expected to. In other words, you are unlikely to satisfy your employer by saying "gonna check this in the library, see you in couple hours", when you can just use Google, get the answer, and move to the next question.

Similarly, you may be now "expected to" keep in touch with many friends just because the social media give you such option, or to keep up to date with all the news because news aggregators provide you just the digest you need.

So is it really "an edge" that we gain from the new technologies? Or is it just another speedup of our already fast-paced lives, on the way to the next one?

Thoughts like that were still whirling through my mind few days later, when I was again in London, this time on the way to an ESSNet meeting in Vienna and also using the opportunity to see some friends, mainly former colleagues from ONS and our Big data team. Getting off the Tube at Piccadilly Circus, soon the vibrant atmosphere of Soho took over my mind and when I entered the lively and bright interiors of Princi, it was time to switch to the pizza mood.

The place being packed, we waited for a good while to get a free table, until finally a chatty group packed away and we were seated. Conversations were varied, but with the impending vote on Theresa May's Brexit deal (this was back at the end of November) and Simon working in the department for exit from EU (effectively the Brexit department), we were drawn to the subject like Gollum to the Ring. Also Simon seemed really like the right person at the right place, clearly enthusiastic about his job, and I straightaway felt that Brexit is in good hands. At one point, he even said something along the lines "moving spreadsheets around gives me energy". This forever changed the way I look at him.

The waitress came soon and, for a moment, we were forced to ponder less heavy topics such as what pizza and what wine to get, Alessandra and Alessia acting as main advisors using their Italian DNA. I went for a white-base pizza (fior di latte) with slightly spicy sausage and some funny green vegetable looking like spinach. The hustle-bustle of the rush hour soon calmed down and so it did not take long for the stunning, charred-crust beauties to land in front of us.

The AI camera on Honor 10 makes excellent pictures, albeit identifying Simon, me and Kim as background...!

Ok, it got it right the second time.

And the beauty did not lay just on the outside, but also inside! It was indeed a proper treat, great quality and tasty ingredients, delivered on a solid-sized base with typically soft crust with touch of crispiness. As this was not a pizza hunt for the sake of pizza hunting, but rather a by-product of meeting friends, I did not take too many notes, but one mental one stuck with me - it was all damn good. Add the excellent (and quite strong) wine, friendly (and authentic) service and super vibrant ambiance of the restaurant literally decorated with the most colorful food, this experience rated well above the average pizza hunt! Not to mention the great company! Yep, shall be back.

We later moved on to a bar for some more pints and discussing questions progressively closer to the core of our existence. This should come as no surprise, given the composition of our group, with people having backgrounds in fields such as geology, data science or even cognitive science and formal logic! Inevitably, we concluded the evening with the following 3 core life advises, that from now on form the rock-solid foundation of our lives:

• Don't give a fuck
• Follow your calling
• Ask questions

But it was eventually time to say goodbye and I shuffled towards my hostel near Liverpool street station. Here I had enjoyable 3-4 hours of sleep in a dorm room with 8 or so other people, some of who were snoring louder than an Airbus 380 about to take off. Once woken up, I set off to meet Martin at Stansted for a super early Ryanair flight to Bratislava, unfortunately not exactly an Airbus 380 experience, but definitely "low fares made simple"!

By now I also finally came to understand the steps of boarding a Ryanair flight at Stansted. It goes like this:

• "go to gate" - Ryanair is looking for an airplane and trying to hire pilots for the flight
• "boarding" - the plane just took off from its previous destination and is on the way to Stansted
• "final call" - the plane is about to land in Stansted in about 40 minutes

Somehow, however, all the passengers like to queue up from the earliest possible moment, thus creating even more peer pressure on everyone else to join the queue - much like people joined the queues for the sake of there being a queue under the communist regime in Czechoslovakia.

in Bratislava!

Anyway, getting off in Bratislava, now freshly sprinkled with snow on 1st of December, Martin had a lovely (thankfully indirect) encounter with Slovak hospitality. As we entered a public transport bus, a Spanish lady came to ask the driver if he can wait a bit, as her husband was buying a ticket in the machine on the stop. Having a complete understanding of her request, the driver nodded "OK", promptly shut the door and set off. The lady screamed "stop! wait!", the driver indeed stopping, angrily getting out of his seat and shouting at the Spanish lady in perfectly fluent Slovak: "JA NEMAM CELY DEN" (I don't have the whole day!), pushing her out of the bus and leaving. I thus turned to Martin and said: "Welcome to Bratislava".

But bright sides of my motherland showed themselves too, as we had a fun night with some of my friends and their friends, who were not only welcoming and open, but also helped me get Martin drunk, a true mission of this trip, even if officially we were sent to an ESSNet meeting in Vienna from work. But don't get fooled - that was fun as well. For example, we even conceptualized a big data framework for mobile phone data!

But more on that perhaps later ;-)

PS:

Dough - 8
Ingredients - 9
Sauce - 9
Atmosphere - 9
Service - 9

Ask Italian (Cardiff)

Times are changing.

It was a funny February. This time last year, Cardiff was covered in snow, traffic stalled, schools and offices closed and shelves in the stores depleted after panic reactions of Britons to the scary white substance falling from the skies. Almost exactly one year later, a heatwave swept through the UK, temperatures soared almost to the twenties, sun shone brightly and people had picnics in the park as if it was mid-July.

As the weekend was approaching though, Mordor's clouds would once again form on the horizon and eventually fill the sky for what was to be the second named storm of the year - Freya. And so Martin decided to pack up and leave.

Ok, it was not entirely that sort of decision, but the dude sitting on my left for close to 2 years was indeed saying goodbye to Cardiff and moving on to brighter future in Home Office in Croydon. Now if you don't know Croydon, here's a fun fact about Croydon: when you type in "is Croydon" into Google, the autocomplete suggests: "is Croydon safe", "is Croydon rough" and for just "Croydon" the autocomplete goes "Croydon cat killer". Martin will be in good hands.

Anyway, we gathered on Friday evening to ensure he does not leave Cardiff without sufficiently high state of inebriety. But first, we went for a pizza. The original plan was The Stable, but since it was booked out, Ask Italian came as the second choice.

As for the pizza experience, there's not too much to say. Ask Italian is one of those modern chains with shiny interiors, well-thought out menus with fancy design, expensive drinks (>6 GBP for a beer!) and young professional service. It works well, is hassle free, but if you want a unique original pizza prepared and served with love, you'd have to search elsewhere.

Anyway, all of us opted for a pizza, some of us upgrading it to a "Prima" option, which was promoted as being a longer version of the original pie and also baked using a different technique. The result, however, did not really look bigger than the original circle (more like the original base being squashed), and the main difference thus remained the higher price tag.

It did not look particularly impressive either, although overall it was a tasty one with a nice soft crust, and a touch of crispiness - definitely enjoyable dinner. However, with a quite a thin base and relatively underwhelming size, I thought 19 pounds (including one beer) was a bit too much even for Cardiff's city centre.

We then moved to The Stable for beers and ciders. Here we discussed heavy topics such as Target operating models, mainly as a result of Alex's unshakable interest despite warnings from Phil that once that door is open, it cannot be closed, leaving permanent marks in your life. On a similar note, Martin enlightened us with a surprisingly clear and well structured narrative (considering the amount of beer he went through by then) of what shall happen once we go past a tipping point in terms of climate change. Adding that we have actually probably already gone past that point, we decided to finish the ciders and whiskey and off we went to the moon for some green shit.

If you're now thinking the last sentence sounded weird, you may be right. But The Moon is indeed a unique place and they indeed sell a drink called Green Shit, that, to a great success, Ellie and Ben introduced me to weeks ago. Likely the best thing about that drink is being able to go the bar and ask for a "green shit", something you don't get to ask for in your every day life, unless you have a certain perversion. The taste is then of secondary importance, but please be reassured that it tastes better than it sounds. Unfortunately, Moon was a bit empty, without live music and, instead, with quite a loud DJ who seemed to eventually drive everyone out of the place, us including. And so it was time to go.

Times are indeed changing. While e.g. my mom would have the same job throughout her whole life, living in the same city for past decades, I have already changed jobs 3 times since I graduated and moved countries as many times. And the same thing happens all around - people move for work with almost frightening simplicity. Martin is not the only one and few more people have either left Cardiff or are about to in near future. And while this means that wherever you go, you are more likely to find a friendly face, it also means you're losing those friendly faces around you in your everyday life and have to look for new ones. And despite all the Meetups, Facebook groups and social opportunities we have today, the process of getting to know someone and eventually calling them a friend has not become - and I think will never be - quicker.

And so we did not say goodbye to Martin, rather a "see you later". Good luck in Croydon!

Times are changing and people come and go. Maybe next one will be me.

PS:

Dough - 7
Ingredients - 7
Sauce - 8
Atmosphere - 7
Service - 7