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Weekly notes 10/2024

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Life Sydney Weekly notes weekly-notes movie
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Thumbnail image: A view of the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge from McMahons Point Wharf.

What’s been happening #

  • I’m flying back to Bellevue, will be there for a week for a work meetup. Flying to the “past” from the “future” trips my brain so much, especially things like birthdays/anniversary wishes - I’m like is the day over yet? No?

  • I had to visit The Trade Desk’s bigger office at Barangaroo for a training. My usual office is at Castlereagh street and I’ve been taking the bus/train to that office but the Barangaroo office is very close to the ferry wharf and so I decided to take the ferry to office. I’m glad I decided to do this - taking the ferry to office was so refreshing.

    A view of the Sydney Opera House and the Harbour Bridge from McMahons Point Wharf

    Views from ferry to Barangaroo

    Views from ferry to Barangaroo

    Views from ferry to Barangaroo

    Views from ferry to Barangaroo

    The views from the Trade Desk’s Barangaroo office is fabulous!

    Views from TTD Barangaroo office
    Views from TTD Barangaroo office

  • I dropped by the Sydney Serverless meetup and had a good time meeting and talking with some familiar folks. Peter’s encouragement to put in a CFP got me motivated and I’ve submitted a talk proposal for ServerlessDays ANZ! Let’s see if that gets selected.

  • And just before taking the flight to Seattle, Jo & I went over to the last Sunset Cinema screening for the season. Sunset Cinema screens a movie every weekend at the North Sydney Oval cricket ground. This weekend they were screening Wonka, and Jo wanted to watch, so I joined in. The screening had some technical issues at the start but overall it was a good experience!

    Views from Sunset Cinema Screening
    Views from Sunset Cinema Screening
    Views from Sunset Cinema Screening

Media Watch #

I finished watching below series over the week/during my flight

  • Clarkson’s Farm: Jeremy Clarkson buys a piece of land and tries to run a farm. While Clarkson fails miserably in a lot of things especially around the farm, I really love they put the spotlight on a lot of the people running the farm: Kaleb, Gerald, Alan, Dilwyn and more. Clarkson’s flair for evocative story telling makes you angry for all the pain he runs into, even though you’re a million miles far away from what he’s doing. And I also love what he does to Kaleb - the fast car drives (showing his driving prowess), the helicopter rides as a birthday gift - truly elevates the series. A must watch. I can’t wait for season 3.
  • James May: Our Man in India: I found James May: Our Man in series truly amazing and was excited and nervous when I saw he was coming to India. In Our Man in India, James May does a west coast to east coast tour that is stuffed into 3 episodes. My opinion is that’s three episodes is too short. I found Aditi to be insufferable in the series and nearly stopped watching the first episode because of her constant “oh a Brit, let’s make the colonial jox” narrative that was most of her dialogues. I don’t get why they added the bit about visit to the painter and astrologer either. I wish they’d done a South tour instead of the cliched-seen-thousand-times Agra-Udaypur-Delhi-Taj Mahal run. On the other side, the parts of Darjeeling and Kolkata were much better. Still would recommend watching to see how giddy James May gets about various machinery shown throughout the series.
  • Wonka: Watched this movie at the above mentioned Sunset Cinema with Jo, Wonka tells the origin story of Willy Wonka, a character from Charlie & The Chocolate Factory novel/movies. I must say I enjoyed it more than I thought I would, especially since I was not happy to watch the movie (but didn’t want to be away from Jo the evening before I left for the US for a week). If you haven’t seen the movie yet, give it a watch and you just might go from being grumpy to not-so-grumpy.

Music of the Week #

Jason Isbell and the 400 Unit’s If We Were Vampires is probably one of the best songs I’ve heard yet.

Aki Ito uses bots to apply for jobs in this economy. Read up on the results she gets.

Subscribe to my posts #

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