I find the whole US election circus fascinating. Utterly baffling, but fascinating. Terms like 'Caucuses', or 'Super PAC', or 'electoral college' would be things I'd hear but not really understand. Having now spent a few years here, I'm starting to get the hang of things, so I thought I'd write some things down.
So, now that we've covered our Civics 101, looking at Congress, the President, voting and the Electoral College, let's start looking at what's actually going to happen this year.
I find the whole US election circus fascinating. Utterly baffling, but fascinating. Terms like 'Caucuses', or 'Super PAC', or 'electoral college' would be things I'd hear but not really understand. Having now spent a few years here, I'm starting to get the hang of things, so I thought I'd write some things down.
Immigration is a son of a bitch
Writers Block: New Adventures in Blogging
I posted a throwaway remark the other day suggesting America ban all guns. A wholly simplistic and unrealistic proposal today, and probably, for the foreseeable future.
I come from a society where this is the norm, and tragedies like those last week are consequently exceptionally rare, so it does not feel in the remotest bit controversial for me to feel that way. It’s what I’d personally like to happen, but I do recognise the challenges involved in even getting close to the possibility of it happening in the US are very difficult, complex and fraught.
Friends. I have some pretty big life-news to share. Rather than metering it out in 140 character bite-sized Tweets, short on context and detail, I’m writing it up long-form. Strap in.
TL;DR - We’re moving to Seattle. I’m excited and terrified.
Come December, I’ll have been working for Yammer for five years. When I was hired back in 2011, the company were still an upstart startup, pre-Microsoft acquisition, and they had lofty ideas about how they’d build out our engineering presence in Europe. The first step was finding someone game enough to take on an indeterminate, jack-of-all-trades role based out of a scruffy, shared, temporary co-working space in a run-down office block in Shoreditch.
I want to prefix this long diatribe with the disclaimers that I am not an expert on politics, I am not an economist, and I’m not even a particularly smart person. For reals.
This will be my second ever political blog posting. I’m almost ashamed of myself for doing it. I’m sorry. I’ve just never felt so compelled to write about things like this before - I’ve been on the losing side of every major election I’ve been able to vote in and I’ve brushed it off with a sigh and just, y’know… got on. Four years, we’ll go again… Notsomuch today.
Not normally a political animal, me. I’m not someone who’ll generally preach either - you vote for whoever, or whatever you want to - I’m not here to judge. However, I find myself drawn to write something about this upcoming European Referendum.
Friends, family and co-workers have asked me how I’ll vote - which surprises me as people tend to be quite secretive about their political voting habits - like, you wouldn’t ask a colleague at the office who they were voting for in a General Election, right? The Referendum vote is fair and open game though - are you in, or are you out?
Our visit to Wild Turkey was sadly a short one. We had a packed schedule that day and if we were to make all of the stops we’d planned, we’d need to have arrived bang on time to hit the tour running. As it happened, we arrived just as the tour minibus left the car park. Bummer.
What wasn’t a bummer, however, is where Wild Turkey are located - above the Kentucky River valley, and this fabulous view:
If the Woodford Reserve distillery was an example of big-business trying to run an authentic shop the modern way, then Town Branch is the same concept, but taken fully modernised and industrialised - albeit on a small(-ish) scale.
The Town Branch distillery is an offshoot of the Town Branch Brewery, which itself is a sub-division of the Alltech livestock and poultry feed and nutrition company.
The what-what now? An animal feed company making whiskey? What fresh madness is this?!
Our visit to Woodford Reserve presented an altogether different kind of approach to the distillation process.
In stark contrast to Buffalo Trace, everything at Woodford Reserve is spotless, new, and highly finished. The entire tour environment is geared for visitors, whereas at the ‘Trace it definitely felt more like you were visiting a real-deal workplace.
Even the welcome centre is styled like a modern, colonial homestead, and the gift shop and waiting area is furnished with beautiful leather loungers and an impressive feature fireplace. Inside, it all looks a bit like a fancy drinking club for smoking-jacketed gentlemen. It’s a world away from what we’ve seen before.
The Buffalo Trace distillery is a huge facility located on the outskirts of Frankfort, KY.
Buffalo Trace don’t take part in the officially endorsed ‘Kentucky Bourbon Trail’, preferring to stand alone. It’s not like they need the marketing assist after all, as they produce the now-legendary Pappy Van Winkle line of whiskey, which is so ridiculously in-demand and in short supply that bottles exchange hands for many times their true retail price - that is, if you can even find any at all.
So I wrote up that nice story and promised joyous updates from our travels, right? Then… radio silence. I’m such a cad.
As much as I’d like to have been able to give blow-by-blow updates on our adventures, I’d also kinda like to - you know - enjoy them too, so I’ve been holding back the details for a bunch of upcoming posts.
I’m planning on writing a bit about the cities we visited, distilleries and whiskies and some of the things we saw. There’ll be (bad) photos. If it sticks, then I’ll take it from there.
Hello friends. It’s been a while, right? I could apologise for my extended hiatus from spewing forth into this webular blog, but quite honestly I have no excuses other than laziness and inertia, and any apology would be frankly, insincere. Anyhow.
When I was a hazy 16 year old, I hung with a group of friends who mainly partook in playing football in the park, obtaining ’teenths of draw at the lowest possible cost (or ideally on tic), and cracking open cans of Tennents in someone’s living room. Typically after their parents had gone out for the night - and listening to CDs and watching MTV. You know - back when it actually played music.
I’ve never really gotten Valentine’s Day.
I’ve always viewed it as a saccharin-sweet Hallmark day, commercialised to maximise the sale of cards, chocs and flowers, to tell that someone special that for this one day, you love them more than everything else. More today than any other day. Like the other days don’t matter.
The other days do matter. That’s why this year, my Valentine’s card isn’t a card at all, it’s this blog post.