Week 10

Feeling overwhelmed

This new week didn’t come without its own bite. I started it feeling overwhelmed by everything that is meant to happen this week alone - I need to attend my German class on Monday, and keep up with the research concerning the new project/team at work so I won’t be behind when the actual work starts. I also need to practice some Rust ahead of my Engineering mentorship meeting on Wednesday and most importantly, I need to prepare for the trip to London on Wednesday. I feel very uncomfortable when I have to make decisions in a burst at this period knowing I’m still managing most of the stress and changes of the last few weeks. At this moment, it seems I can’t wave one and I have to be quick in making up my mind and committing to action since I only had Monday and Tuesday before I travel.

The worse part of this is making me unexcited about the fact that I’m travelling to the UK - a place I haven’t been before for which normally, I would be excited. In retrospect, I’m happy it’s gone now and feels less difficult.

Trip to the UK

I finally made it to the UK on Wednesday evening but everything that happened before that is full of stories. I had selected priority boarding for my flight just to see what it's like for the first time. In summary, you don’t get to stay in long queues with priority boardings. Dropping my bag has never felt so easy since I didn’t have to stay behind a battalion of other individuals that I met there, I just went straight for the bag drop without the queue. This also applies to the security checkpoint. There was a place full of people and there was this other place for people with priority boarding that remained very scanty and the queue moved faster. Next time, I’ll be sure to choose priority boarding if I can just to have these benefits.

While about to leave Heathrow airport, I almost forgot my backpack, containing my laptop and travel documents in the waiting area. I had entered the train before I realized I had left my backpack behind outside of the train. I ran out to grab it but didn’t carry the luggage I already put on the train, I thought to myself that if I didn’t make it back into the train, I will be loosing the hand luggage too, so this whole situation I suddenly found myself has turned into a moment I had to be running while still thinking if I should go back or run faster. Although I was able to make it back on time into the train and didn’t lose anything, I can’t seem to think how devastating it would be for the whole trip if I had forgotten that bag indeed. I also imagined that in the context of a U-Bahn (underground train in Berlin), I won’t even have enough time to get off the train since they only wait for about 30 seconds. So, it's safe to say I was lucky to quickly realize I didn’t carry the bag and that the train waited enough time to carry the backpack and come back into the train.

While heading towards my hotel in the Taxi, it didn’t take long for me to notice some differences in the narrow size of the roads compared to Berlin. For a city, this large and populated, having narrow roads, to me, feels like a bad deal as it wasn’t so difficult to see the hold up in some parts as the taxi proceeds deeper into London. The last time I experienced so much traffic as this was back in Lagos Nigeria. I think if the roads were wider, more cars should be able to pass with lesser traffic jams. This was one of the things I complained bitterly about with some of my colleagues.

I finally arrived at my destination and it was nice getting to see most of my colleagues physically after a long time of working with them. Although I don’t think I would still prefer a physical office based on this, I would still recommend a physical meetup for fully remote teams from time to time. The best part for me was getting to have more time for conversation with my colleagues beyond work and not on Google Meet as I get to see their reactions at different states of the conversations.

While in London, I also got to meet my mentor in the current Engineering mentorship program. We get to have an all-round conversation about the mentorship program itself, work generally as well as some life-related things. Eventually, we went to eat at a restaurant and finally said our goodbyes. This was part of the favourite part of the trip for me.

Speaking of restaurants, I had to adapt to eating most of the foods my colleagues were eating most of which I’m new to. It was hard finding a match in the restaurant booked for our trip and what I’m familiar with in eating since most places don’t offer African delicacies. This is something I will need to consider the next time I’m on a trip like this.

I also had the chance of meeting Pipe and Ope - my friends back from Nigeria who moved to the UK some months ago. It was nice to see them after a long time. We were together for a long period where we got to gist ourselves about the matters around moving to a new country and how it gets to change us.

I finally pass the night before my flight back to Germany at Trojan’s place.

Learnt Ring making

While at the Hotel, we came together for a workshop in Ring making - a process I’ve always imagined how it works. I was happy to be part of this as the whole process seems less of a mystery to me now that I was able to make a ring myself.