I can not have enough of Oxford. Being there is like being in another world: a timeless, self-contained, engrossing, and intellectual stimulating one. And you don’t even need to be a student or to attend a lecture to feel it. On Sunday October 4 I visited with my wife, my son and my parents-in-law.
I took them to the college I attended and others, enjoying their architecture and gardens, marveling at the incredible amount of cultural events (mainly concerts and lectures, not so much art, though) going on for such a small town.
Tuesday September 29 I had a couple meetings in London’s City Hall and the London and Partners office, to prepare for the BioJapan mission and to learn more about apprenticeship program in the UK. The views were quite nice, specially at sunset.
This summer London became the setting for more than 20 giant sculptures inspired by the DNA double helix by some of the biggest names in the world of art and design, including Ai Weiwei, Aston Martin, or Zaha Hadid. Last Wednesday my wife and I were invited to the auction of those pieces at legendary art auction house Christie’s.
I was surprised, or rather “appalled”, to see that Ai Weiwei’s sculptures went for only around £20,000 each (he made two).
Last week I visited the Imperial War Museum of London with my father-in-law and my son.
I am a pacifist, and I believe the military-industrial complex is a very scary and abominable reality. So anything related to military makes me cringe. But I must admit I was pleasantly surprised by this museum. It did not glorify the military, nor it played the over-sensitive card of victim’s suffering. It was detached enough to be “objective”, while human enough to transmit the horrors of war.
Everybody is too busy. It’s the “toxic work world” we live in, according to the New York Times. But some days are more ridiculously packed than others.
Last week I had so many meetings, it was hard for me to keep track of them. Some that I remember off the top of my head: meeting with a General Partner of Google Ventures, meeting two executives from the National Health Service (NHS), an executive from Accenture at their posh London offices, being interviewed by an Editor from The Times, being picked up by a driver in a hybrid car with wifi who took me to a media event (Haymarket Group’s Create 2015) to present and participate in a panel along two other accomplished “entrepreneurs” from TechHub, and minutes later participating at another event (Connected Health) at Simmons & Simmons.
These past few days have been quite “playful”.
On the one hand, I have just discovered, right around the corner from our apartment by London Bridge, a free and public playground that has an artificial grass hockey field, half a basketball court, 3 pingpong tables and even a beach volleyball court with sand and all! So obviously, the next day I went with my son to a sports equipment store and bought a soccer ball, a pingpong set, a basketball, a volleyball and a badminton set.
