Happy Birthday to Chris! Today, after breakfast in the Lounge, we caught the public transport out to Casa Loma. The public transport in Toronto is fantastic, you can get all around the city using the trains, street cars and busses and each one seems to come along within 5-10 minutes! And all on the one transport card too.
Continue readingDay 10 – Ripley Aquarium and more exploring of Tornoto
Today started very early (for Danielle anyway) who got up at 5.30am local time to watch the royal funeral. This wouldn’t have been a big deal, she fell asleep by about 9pm the night before, but was awake again from 1.30am until close to 5am. Jet lag is a thing for both of us on this trip!
Continue readingAfter a good sleep for both of us we enjoyed the hotel breakfast and finished packing. Today the focus is on logistics, we need to move into Hilton in town and return the rental car to the airport.
The drive into town was intense. Fortunately Apple Maps works great with very specific lane guidance. Without this we would have been very stuck. It’s the kind of stuff that Danielle’s mum’s nightmares are made of… LOTS of lane changes across 10 lane freeways. It feels a bit like LA where you can’t hesitate you just need confidence.
Continue readingDay 8 was all about waiting (for Chris) and MORE traveling (for Danielle)
Continue readingOk so Day 7 is Friday here and my LAST day alone. Back home in New Zealand, Day 7 is departure day for Danielle!
Today i visited the Scandinave Spa in the Blue Mountains. https://www.scandinave.com/blue-mountain/en/
The website doesn’t really do it justice and as a digital detox there are no phones or photographs allowed. This is something they don’t make a big deal about on their website, but is a central theme of the place. If I get time I’ll try to write a more complete review, but for now here are my fleeting thoughts. (Spoiler, I really loved it)
Continue readingToday was very chill. No set agenda nothing needing to be done so after a pretty good free hotel breakfast I decided I needed to get over my new found fear of driving.
I mounted my faithful steed pictured and drove to a local mall. It was *MUCH* better driving in daylight without having just flown in from DC. While it’s still a lot harder than driving at home as you need to be always concentrating it wasn’t so bad.
The mall was big but nothing special except for it contained a Legoland. Normally this would excite me a LOT but previous research found that they have a really weird policy that you must abduct a child before they will allow you in as an adult! No opportunity arose to snatch and grab a child so I stuck that one off the list.
Continue readingToday marked the start of my actual holiday. I know with all the conference parties it might have looked like i was on holiday but you would be mistaken. That was all very serious work!
Today after a sleep in and MUCH less of a hang over I decided to explore. With the death of the Queen and the 1 year anniversary of mums death I felt that a trip to Arlington cemetery would be appropriate.
Continue readingAs indicated in yesterdays post today started off rough. After getting to sleep around 3am I woke feeling very sorry for myself just before 9. I hurried to the conference to catch the morning keynote from the FBI deputy director on the cyber landscape.
After the first session I returned back to my hotel to top up on fluids and have a nap. The map ended up being longer than planned but I did feel a lot better for it.
The afternoon keynote was GaryVee (Gary Vaynerchuk). He lived up to the hype and was very motivational. The best take away I got from him was:
Basically stop wasting time on your hiring process because your still going to make mistakes regardless, trust your gut and exit someone sooner rather than letting issues become the normal and drop this concept everyone has to do the slog before they get promoted. If someone is excellent they will do you more good in a role with more autonomy.
Continue readingDay 3 is the first full day of conference and the first real test of my liver. It currently midday and I have still not recovered from yesterday. It’s fair to say I am questioning my life choices right about now. I am very pleased that I brought antacids and enzyme replacements.
My Day 4 post which will cover today is expected to be pretty brief!
Ok so Day 3 started with a conference breakfast loaded with bacon, we then all filed into a massive event space where over 3000 of us sat for some very American style presentations.
Continue readingMy first full day in DC! I woke up really early. I waited for daylight as walking around DC in the dark is considered… stupid. It was lightly spitting so figured it was a good time for a walk.
Continue reading