England & Ireland / Travelin Man / Couchella Autumn Edition

So much has gone down since the last time I posted. Feels like I’ve been drinking out of a fire hydrant in terms of activities/events/things to do/work. I’m back home in California and just now finishing this draft/uploading all photos. Enjoy this post! Hope to get into a regular cadence of writing now that I’m back home.

I write from my hotel in midtown NYC. In the past two months I’ve bounced around from

  • Upper West Side

  • Woodside

  • Hell’s Kitchen

  • Lisbon

  • Porto

  • London

  • Dublin

  • Galway

  • Midtown

It’s been an equally fun and exhausting trip.

I’ve spent a lot of time

  • being alone

  • focusing on making friends/getting closer to the ones I have.

  • getting better at music

  • prepping for tourist/travel stuff

England & Ireland

Notable events from London:

  • Went on a bunch of walking tours.

    • Street art tour in Shoreditch

    • Historical tour of the City of London

    • Harry Potter walking tour

    • Choose wisely when it comes to walking tours. You usually end up lumped with other solo travelers on the tour. Some of my walking companions were amazing. Others were awkward to talk to and I’d find ways to avoid standing next to them at stops 😔.

  • Watched Come From Away with Sherry

  • Ate at Dishoom. Very solid Indian food. Note that dishoom is the sound they make in bollywood movies when someone’s getting punched (kinda like “pow”)

  • Got tapped in the nuts while walking in the theater district. Was stunned for a second but chased after the perv and yelled at him

  • Went to an open mic at The Prince of Wales Feathers

    • London seems to have a strong open mic scene. The musicians at the event were pretty solid. Mix of rappers, singers, guitarists

  • Got drinks with Mimi

  • Went to market after market. London has way more markets than I ever expected

  • Rode a double decker bus :3

  • Ate a bunch of

    • Fish n Chips (at least five different times)

      • My favorite was from Jack the Chipper

    • Meat filled pies

    • I considered trying jellied eels but… I chickened out. Of all the way to prepare eels why would you ever jelly them?

    • By the end of the trip I felt bloated. English food is so heavy. It didn’t help that I ate fish n chips almost every other meal.

London was cool. The gloomy weather got to me and when the sun finally came out on my penultimate day I was delighted to see it.

From my short time there I got the sense that shoreditch/eastern part of London is a little grimier, grittier, cooler, artistic (amazing street art) while the west is fancy. I definitely liked the west more I guess I’m posh like that.

west london in contrast

didn’t eat here but the design looked cool… next time

So many activities happening on daily basis. I had no shortage of things to do, people to meet and my only limiting factor was how tired I was by the end of my time there.

Also didn’t realize how huge London is. Coming in with no context I’d guessed it’d be roughly the size of Manhattan but it’s much bigger. Kind of like LA in the way it sprawls out into different neighborhoods/boroughs.

beautiful garden at St Dunstan

NY has 5 boroughs. London has 32…

nice lil coffee shop in covent garden that I liked. also right next to a market (seven dials)

The people were generally ok (besides that one dude who tapped me in the nuts). There’s a decent amount of diversity. I’d almost feel like I was back in Manhattan up until I’d hear people speak in the British accent.

I am a strong proponent of the British accent and a mini dream of mine is to settle down with a nice British girl.

…..

Also went to Ireland with Sherry. This was a pretty rushed part of the trip. Both of us worked throughout the trip so I don’t think we explored as much as we could.

First day in Dublin I

  • popped out to a walking tour of the city.

  • checked out the Guinness storehouse (meh)

    • the Guinness does not taste that different over there

  • went to The Quays Temple Bar with Sherry for some food/Guinness. Some bangers and mash and fish and chips.

We also took the train to Galway. The first day we wandered around to the Christmas Market and went to a bar afterwards. I had some pretty good Irish Whiskey (Connemara).

galway christmas market

I disliked Ireland overall. Ran into some rude people (server at bar, train attendant). The infrastructure was slow. There were no Ubers/catching cabs was not a guarantee. The food/architecture was good but not thaaat different from England to my untrained eye. By this point in the trip I was both getting tired of traveling/not used to traveling with someone so I wasn’t the best travel mate either.

But that last day at Galway salvaged it all. Sherry and I ditched what little plans we had made and wandered around the city. The night before it felt like we were running out of things to do in this small town but I’m so glad we stuck around.

This part of Galway was beaaaaaaautiful. Strong winds. Right by the ocean. Sunlight peeking thru the clouds. Water as far as the eye could see. Shrouded islands in the distance hidden by the fog.

Absolutely one of the best natural sights I’ve ever seen in my life.

We also saw a bunch of people swimming in the ocean. Old people wading around like it was nothin. People swimming freestyle against the current. A diving board jutting out a couple hundred feet into the water.

Sherry and I grabbed some coffee/pastries and walked in random directions for a few hours. We also walked down a long ass beautiful foot path hoping to find something cool at the end (e.g. a lighthouse) but it turned out to be a wastewater treatment plant 🥲

I wouldn’t mind going back to Galway some day to swim in the ocean with everyone else.

Travelin Man

I fulfilled a small time dream of mine to be a nomad. Almost twenty days spread across Porto, Lisbon, London, Dublin and Galway.

Honest thoughts—exhilarating for the first few days and then kind of meh from there.

Maybe it was

  • solitude

  • working late into the night during London.

  • missing friends back in NY

But by the last day of the trip (back in Lisbon) I was extremely ready to go back.

beautiful last night in Lisbon though

Maybe it was also the fact that I went in with zero expectations. The habit of taking things for granted. It wasn’t like I’d been dying/planning for ages to go to these countries.

I only went to Portugal on a whim after getting into sardines over the pandemic and wanting to check out some canneries.

That’s something I want to work on. Not taking things for granted and building up to something. Going into things with some form of goal/expectation.

Another theory—burn out due to roaming around so much. I haven’t had a solid base/lived out of my suitcase since August. It got to the point where being in a place with a washer and dryer became a notable event for me…

In any case I want to be more grateful/conscientious about opportunities like these. Which leads to the question of how does one become more grateful for the things they have?

NOT REALLY SURE.

BUT! I bought this Panda Planner which make m write out three things I’m grateful about on a daily basis. Cheesy af at first reaction but if it works it works (I’ll keep you posted).

My current plan is to go part time remote. I.e. have a permanent place in NY so I can build around a home/community but also do 2-4 week long trips every quarter.

Couchella Autumn Edition

The day I landed back in NY Will, Kelvin and I hosted our second Couchella. Perhaps the best event I’ve ever helped host.

Themed Autumn drinks.

A lineup of people doing music and stand up comedy.

And I played two of my songs!

To think that three lil scrubs could come together and pull this off so well makes me so proud of us.