T-SQL Tuesday 134 - give me a break

OK, so it is Vaccinary (13th month of 2020 or 2020+1) and James McGillivray (blog|twitter) is inviting us for another #TSQL2SDAY. This month the topic is a break.

Break at home

Children – can break things 🙂 but also help to take breaks from work.

Watching children grow and learn

One of my favorite activity is to observe and listen how the young human is learning things. Speaking is particularly funny, as we both are Polish and our child is learning English at the daycare, bringing home new words every day. For example, he has lots of friends and their common name is … “Careful”. That’s the answer when we ask him about other children

– “Did you play with Tommy today?” – “Yes, Tommy…careful”.

LEGO

Toy blocks – can be the famous Danish company or some no-name wooden bricks. Building stuff with a child is great and when he falls asleep we have all the toys to ourselves. Very relaxing 🙂

Recently we’ve got three heads full of brick graded 4+ years (he still has some time to play with them, but we will make sure they are well tested 😉 )

Exploring – in between lockdowns we tend to drive to different places like beach, forest or simply a new town. Then we look for interesting shells or pebbles or gulls or dogs or ships or horses… or anything. Something that we would normally ignore – it is fun how all these obvious things are new and interesting to a child.

Break somewhere else

Before the whole pandemic we loved to travel – mostly Italy, but other places were nice too (Lisbon !!).

Mexico

The best break I remember was in Mexico. That was the time when I was between the jobs and in Mexico we met with my almost-former (still on a notice period) coworker who came from the cold-as-ice Minnesota.

A great soft and not too hot sand not and warm water and the food… While we were there we also did some sight seeing which was great, although we did not need to buy the mosquito repellent as it was way to hot for the mosquitos!! (it was also the Zika virus time in Mexico).

Portugal (and France and Spain) and bit of a SQL

A few years ago we had some time off planned but did not now where to go. Finally decided on going to Lisbon, but there were no direct flights from Poland or were too expensive. After some research we’ve found that we could fly to Marseille (France) for two days, from there to Valencia (Spain) and finally to Lisbon.

That plan not only agreed with out budget but also we have visited more great places.

One thing to note is that during that trip I have got an email from SQLSaturday Kyiv that I was invited to speak at the conference. Totally unexpected and shocked – it was my first time presentation at the conference ever.

When we came back to the country on Sunday, I was already packed to take off on Monday to the UK for the final interview for a new job.

Italy

We have visited Italy number time, but one trip was particularly interesting. It was our honeymoon in Rome and I got food poisoning the first day we landed (probably got it earlier, just it kicked off after I ate the best pasta that day).

Back to the hotel and on a water and biscuits for the next three days. Finally, got full recovered so we could enjoy the rest of the trip.

Future break

My dear friend from Minnesota insists we go to Thailand, but there was never a good time. Hopefully one day we can meet there like we did in Mexico.

The most realistic next break seems to be either Poland (visiting families this spring) or staying in the UK and exploring the west coast.

Thanks,

Mikey