Today was a big day! We finally let the cat out of the house.

He’s been housebound for quite some time. For multiple reasons, including the few holidays we’ve been on recently, and the lack of time where myself and my girlfriend are both in the house together.

But, today we were finally both in, it was a sunny day, and in the afternoon we were having a cat flap fitted. He absolutely loved it, and it didn’t take him long to be out circling the block. Luckily he came back though.

So in the afternoon we had my girlfriends family round. Her dad fitted the cat flap, and everyone was doing some kind of work, whether it as housework or gardening.

In the evening we went to my aunts house for a big family party. And that ended up lasting until about 11 pm! So hopefully that won’t affect me tomorrow at work.

It was a very nice day today, and turns out I spent most of the day inside!

My girlfriend was at work, so I had the day to myself pretty much.

I started with some World of Warcraft and Fifa, but eventually I got around to do so some chores. I got the lawn mower out and trimmed the grass in the front garden, so that’s one thing I don’t have to worry about for another few weeks.

Seeing as it was sunny outside, I enjoyed the afternoon sun by watching Stormy’s Glastonbury set on television. It was really impressive, and I can certainly see why he was the headline act.

In the evening, I basically played more games, entertained the cat, and relaxed with some television!

Finally, it’s Friday.

After a long week, it was surprisingly a more relaxing day at work. There was a lot of discussions about things, but it was more an issue of time rather than effort. Which can be annoying sometimes, but I didn’t mind as it was a Friday.

After I got home, it was my turn to make dinner, as my girlfriend was working a super long shift. Basically all day. So I made a chilli con carne, and it was pretty tasty!

Not long after I ate that, I went out for a drink as it was a pretty good day still. It appears summer is finally arriving in England.

In the evening, I was still on my own, so I spent that time playing Fifa, and watching an episode of The Origins Podcast. It’s hosted by the theoretical physicist, Lawrence Krauss, and the first episode was with Ricky Gervais. It was a mix of intelligent conversations and humour. And it’s also the first thing that I’ve ever become subscribed to on Patreon, as it’s only $2 a month for full video access, and they tend to be over an hour long.N

I was slightly more productive today than the rest of the week. Work was okay, and I made some good progress in a new service we’re building. So that was pleasant.

When I got home, it was still sunny, and my girlfriend was cooking dinner. So I made the effort to get the lawnmower out and cut the grass in the back garden.

After dinner, we had my mum and sister round for coffee. Once they were gone, it was basically time for bed!

Today was just like yesterday. Work, home, dinner, sleep.

I desperately need the weekend to refuel.

Today was a really boring day to journal, so I’ll keep it boringly short.

It was the second day of work after the trip to Cyprus, and I’m really not used to the early hours yet, so I was tired nearly all day.

After I got home, I managed to watch one episode of Good Omens while eating dinner, and then I had to go to bed.

See. Boring.

I’ll start with what is essentially the prequel to what should be my journal entry today.

Technically, today started on a plane. It was only 0:45 when our flight from Larnaca, Cyprus, landed in Stanstead.

We then took what I always find as being a strangely long duration of time, to simply get up, grab hand luggage, and make it off the plane. Then there’s the maze around the airport, leading up to passport control. Where usually only around 25% of the electronic passport machines are operating, which are then removed of their efficiency by having two or three people members of staff getting in the way. We British know what a queue is, we understand that a green arrow on a newly empty passport gate means it’s ready for the next person, and we also would all like to talk to other people a bit less.

Of course, that isn’t quite the end of the journey through the airport. As you then have to collect your luggage that has been kept in the plane’s hold. I’ve always found airports in mainland Europe to be a bit more efficient than English ones, in that by the time you make it to the looping conveyer belt of luggage, your bags are already there, waiting for you. What happens here, is you have to first make it rhgough the crowd that has already gathered for their bags from another flight (there’s never just one flight on one conveyer belt), find a good spot to be able to quickly identify your luggage and lift it off, and then simply wait until it comes along. Sometimes it involves you picking up another bag that is similar to your own, or you don’t recognise your own bag and just let it loop a few times before realising.

After this step you are basically free to leave.

We did have to get on a free shuttle-bus to one of the airports long-stay carparks, but luckily this required minimal waiting, and was pretty fast. Then my girlfriend drove us home, which took us about an hour, but luckily she let me get a bit of sleep.

Once we were home, we greeted our cat, and went straight to bed.

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Who would have though all of this so far would have been about the first 12.5% of the day.? Anyway, back to the regular scheduled content…

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I woke around 6:30. Not quite enough sleep for a full day back at work, but honestly not much less than I would usually get. I had a shower, got ready, and left for work. The commute went pretty well, which was probably helped by the good weather and lack of congestion on the trains.

However, being back at work was a bit of a weird experience. As we have quite an open floor, and there tends to be a lot of fun discussions going on, people chatting, and just a nice (for me) level of background noise. There had been a few desk moves while I was away, and this led to people just not talking at all. It was near silence all day, and I was totally not ready for it. In the late afternoon it did liven up a tiny amount, but nowhere near normal.

After I’d finished work, and completed my commute home, I was greeted by my girlfriend before she imminently left for her night shift. So I ate dinner, and then went for a coffee with a friend.

I spent the evening mainly sat in my office with my cat, learning about SwiftUI. With all of the travelling I’ve been doing, I had only watched the Keynote and SOTU from WWDC so far, so I was glad to spend some time to finally introduce myself. From what I can tell early on, it looks like it will be really fun and beneficial to work on, but I’ve still got a while to go before I can say I fully understand it and have it replace my UIKit code.

It’s our last day in Cyprus, and it’s certainly been a lazy one!

We sat by the pool for the whole day, stopping only for lunch, and drinks at the bar.

Our transfer back to the airport was at 6 pm, and it we only arrived at the airport just after 7 pm. Once we got there, we had around three hours until our flight departed for England. We filled that time with wandering around the airport and eating dinner.

That’s as glamorous as it got for the entire day. Because as soon as we got on the flight, myself and my girlfriend both watched a movie on our iPads using the pretty cool in-flight entertainment app (I watched Johnny English 2), and then tried to sleep for the rest of it!

It’s our last full day in Cyprus today, as we’re leaving the hotel at 6 pm tomorrow! So we started it the only way we knew how. We woke up early, went to the restaurant for breakfast, went back to the room to apply suncream, and pack our bags for the day.

Our activities today were a bit more adventuring around the Famagusta region.

First of all, we got a bus to the Cape Greco National Park. From there we had about a 30 minute walk in the blazing sun towards the “Sea Caves”. It’s an incredible place, with some very nice views.

We were there until about 3 pm, and after that we hopped on the bus again, and went a bit further out to Konnos Bay. It’s another beach, which is slightly more enclosed than others, so the water’s much more calm.

I was actually intending on getting in the sea for once when I got there, but we were quickly greeted with tons of jellyfish in the water. I’m sure we would have been fine, but everyone in the water was clearly being stung constantly. So we settled with relaxing on the beach.

Eventually we became hungry, so we got the bus back to the room, and immediately showered all the dust from the caves, and sand from the beach off. That pretty much lead us straight into dinner, as there was not much time left.

Just after dinner, there was a mini Parrot show in the hotel. It ‘s clearly more for the kids, but we say a few birds ring some bells, dunk a mini basketball, and the standard things. Nothing major, but it’s more a chance to make money by selling photos with the birds.

Anyway, it’s time for a drink at the bar. And after that hopefully I can get another episode of Good Omens downloaded.

We were a bit more adventurous than usual today. We went to the WaterWorld waterpark, which is apparently the number #1 themed waterpark in Europe. It was good, but I wouldn’t exactly go that far.

Lucky for us, the waterpark is really close to our hotel. So we had breakfast quite late, in a restaurant just down the road from the hotel. I had an English breakfast, so much more enjoyable than the hotel food. Once we were finished, we jumped on the bus to the park, which only took around 5 minutes, and cost just €1.50 each.

I think we arrived at the park about 12 pm, and after just over 3 hours, we’d been on every ride, and were pretty much to go. We stopped at the restaurant for some food, got dried and changed clothes, and then wandered around the park taking a few photos.

After we’d completely finished, we got the bus back to the hotel, where we’ve been ever since. I had a nap, we had dinner, and for a few hours we’ve been at the bar playing DS games.