Tuesday, 1st of July of 2025.

This is the first post of this project. Probably nobody will read it, but I've decided to start writing random thoughts/feelings/observations of a broad variety of random topics. Maybe it will help the future me to understand what I was in this point of time. So I did a quick query in Chatgpt about the different platforms available for a blogging type journaling, and among the suggested I've ended up using notions.so. The title is a reference to the second track in Pink Floyd's epic “The Dark Side of the Moon” album.

Still getting familiar with it, I'm writing from Doppio cafe in North London in a very hot day (34C in the mercury). Yeah, climate change seems merciless, yet the current world leaders can't care less, it's all for the profits of big corporations.

Things are quiet at work this week, with most of my team enjoying unplug week. Got a chance to catch up with some pending stuff in the Apache HBase project, meanwhile. In the UK politics this week the main topic has been the welfare cuts the government is planning to pass in parliament, the big question is if there will be enough labour rebels against it. It’s been a quite frustrating labour government in the recent months, flirting with sheer populism after the infamous defeat to Reform on the last local elections. I wonder how much worse would we be if any of the self proclaimed right wing parties were in power. The disgraceful wars around the world just kept going, it's a complete failure for humanity.

At least we have the Fifa Club World Cup happening as a good distraction. I won't lie, I've been watching many games, and there's been a long time I didn't use to follow football on such a regular basis. It's been nice to see the Brazilian (and some other non-European) teams growing up against the traditional, super wealthy giants. Last night I've watched a surprising well played Fluminense defeat Inter Milan. If that wasn't enough, woke up today and read that Al-Hilal had knocked out Man City, epic! The dream of a Brazilian in the final (Fluminense or Palmeiras) looking even closer. Let's see for how long it lasts. Apart from football, my chess matches with Eliza every night are getting more exciting. She's being consistently improving, it may be a matter of days until I lose the first one without any replay. It's nice that she got interested into it, I think it's a hugely beneficial intellectual activity. And it's fun too!

On the personal life matter, it's almost time for the school pickup. A nice twenty something minutes walk from here, and then back home. Hopefully, she had a great time today, most of the time it is. The conversations with a five year old are always amusing. Depending on the mood (or the phase of the Moon), she will talk her day through, or I will have to come up with indirect questions about what sort of activities she had. It’s an art. Then there's the evening routine: dinner/shower/bed time.

And that's another ordinary week day in the life of someone privileged enough to be in a stable country in 2025. Why it can't be like that for everyone in this world? Should we feel guilty?