Personal

Another short week in Germany 🇩🇪. On Monday, we had a holiday, Easter Monday, and, as the day was beautiful, we took tinyScientist to a park. It was his first time on a swing (for babies), and he loved it!

I like visiting different places, but I hate traveling. A simple 3-hour flight means a whole day of preparations, trains, airport, security checks, etc… but we don’t have teleportation yet, so…

Working? Vacationing? Hacking? Partying?

This week we had our Workation and almost all of Nord Security traveled to a resort in Turkey 🇹🇷; more than 1000 people flew from different parts of the World to our 2023 gathering. That’s not a typo, 10^3+ people traveled to our event…

Wednesday

For me, it all started with a train ride to the airport. Although the airport is far from the city center, public transit works and the express train runs from the Hauptbahnhof to the airport terminal in about 20–25 minutes.

Thursday

We arrived at the resort around 2am after a long flight and bus ride from the Antalya airport to the hotel. The main restaurant and bar are open until 6am, so after checking in, we headed there for dinner.

I missed the city tour in the morning, I was exhausted and barely remember turning off the alarm. I woke up around 10am for a late breakfast, followed by a visit to the Sea. And then back for lunch.

There’s an hour time difference between Antalya and Germany, so after lunch I FaceTimed home to watch tinyScientist having his lunch.

In the afternoon, I worked on my omg.lol for macOS with the most amazing view, and spent the rest of the day chatting with folks from work. Implemented the WebpageNetworkService for the Webpage feature, responsible for all the network calls.

After dinner, I went to my room to FaceTime scientist and tinyScientist again.

Friday

On Thursday, I went to bed around 9 or 10 pm, planning to wake up earlier on Friday to see the sunrise. I got up around 5:30 am, packed my things and walked to the private beach. Since almost everyone was partying on the night before, I was the only one on the beach in the morning.

Once I was done taking pictures, I sat in a chair, listening to the Mediterranean Sea (and some birds). Priceless. I can’t remember when was the last time I did something like this. Good thing my AirPods Pro had no juice.

Another good reason to wake up early: breakfast before everyone else. I didn’t make healthier choices and ate scrambled eggs, egg with vegetables and boiled potatoes.

I spent the rest of the morning socializing with teammates until lunch, which I skipped. The good thing is that all restaurants in the hotel are open 24/7, so having a late lunch is not a problem.

I found time to do some more work on my omg.lol client. Implemented the WebpagePersistenceService and the WebpageRepository. The first responsible for storing the webpage (and history of changes) on Core Data, and the latter the abstraction on top of the network and persistence services. The glue.

Found a Starbucks inside the resort, next to one of the pools. Since this is an all-inclusive resort, Starbucks is also included. Perfect for cold drinks next to the beach or a pool.

At 4pm, we had our Q1 OKRs meeting with the entire company, followed by dinner and the OKR party. The OKR meeting was the only work part of the workation.

But before the party, I finished the Webpage Feature implementation and can now update otavio.lol using it.

Saturday

I intended to take more pictures of the sun rising, but I overslept and woke up at 6:30. At that time, the sun was already out there, so I went straight to breakfast. Omelet, bread, and cheese.

And then headed out to my favorite spot in the whole resort.

Implemented the SwiftUI previews for the Webpage UI and then joined some folks from my team by one of the pools, drinking an Iced Coffee Americano from the hotel’s Starbucks.

I felt guilt for my food choices and decided to eat better during lunch.

After lunch, I must have coffee, so I did. After grabbing another Starbucks, I took the opportunity to walk the resort a bit and found this cat – one of many cats that live in the hotel – staring at me.

I spent the rest of the day with my team, chatting and having dinner and some baklavas.

When the party started, I went to my room to talk to scientist and tinyScientist, pack my bag, and sleep.

Sunday

Homecoming day. I woke up early again, and had a nice walk on the beach, followed by a long, unhealthy breakfast. Our bus was scheduled to leave for the airport at lunchtime, so I might have eaten more than needed to make up for the lunch I was about to miss.

Spent the morning with the folks from the team and left the resort to visit some shops and buy souvenirs and Turkish tea to take back home. My bag was already packed from the day before, but I had to take everything out and repack it to make room for the tea set I bought.

I traveled with a single backpack (a big one, the limit for taking on the cabin), but after putting the tea set in it, it weighed about 10 kg. The limit is 8 kg, and I was afraid someone would weight it at the airport, but no one did, so it was fine.

I was so exhausted I didn’t feel the trip home. It was almost like teleportation finally existed. The workation was spectacular, something I’ve never done before, but it’s good to be back home. I missed scientist and tinyScientist, and seeing them again was a relief. The day ended with us giving tinyScientist a bath.