They woke up early at 7.30 ahead of A’s presentation at the ADB Impact Webinar, due to start at 9am. A put on a shirt and trousers for the second time that week as well as shoes to make him feel more legit. L tried to make herself useful but didn’t really. She made him a very slow coffee and ran upstairs to hide whilst he practised, and then came down for a last minute good luck. A was feeling nervous but good. L logged onto the Zoom upstairs on 4G because she was worried about the wifi going out. Her mum asked if she could join and she said yes when she realised that A wouldn’t be able to see her name pop up real time as an attendee. Meanwhile, the webinar started prompt at 9am and started with Nagraj (A’s mentor) introing the challenge followed by A’s 15 minute presentation of dData and the nowcasting challenge. He smashed it and even L’s mum said she understood. L was super proud upstairs and couldn’t wait to run down and congratulate him (but she had to wait until the second presentation on financing MSMEs and Q&A were finished). A got time in between to answer questions and then the Chief Economist asked him some and he answered really well. The second presentation was really different but quite interesting and they had a fully fledged team and were asking for lots of money. After the presentation, A’s dad sent him loads of screenshots and the fam sent nice messages. A looked at the attendee list and realised loads of people had called in, including some people he hadn’t spoken to in ages or expected e.g. ex girlfriends! After the presentation was over, they headed out to have coffee at Redemption Roasters (because Caravan was full) but L was disappointed because they didn’t use Oatly. She went and had a gross coffee from S&D and read the news outside whilst A worked inside Redemption. She then came back and they headed home ahead of afternoon calls.
A was supposed to have a call with his Partner at QB but it got cancelled last minute. Instead, he wrote a really long stakeholder mapping and sent it over to them but as of yet (Monday morning now), no one has responded yet. L spent the afternoon finishing off work and realising how much she had to do that weekend but she hadn’t slept well and wasn’t feeling that enthusiastic. She stopped working at 7.30 and they tried to plan their evening. A wanted burgers so they googled lots of places and then L suggested Exmouth Market as a celebration for the presentation. They headed off, but it was super windy and A decided he wanted to get burgers from Waitrose whilst L decided she wanted to make it to EM because she knew A would prefer it. They headed off in separate directions until A gave in (ofc) and called L, despite his text message 3 minutes prior telling her that he wasn’t going to give in. They arrived in EM and immediately got a table at Berber & Q’s Shawarma Bar which is crazy hard to get into, and everyone that came after them was told it was a 40minute wait or no tables til the end of the evening. Feeling super lucky, they settled into a meal of babaghanoush (which is quite different to shakshuka, A learnt), cauli wrap with added tahini, and an aubergine dish. L spotted some friends from GS and they were planning to go for a drink with them but decided not to in the end. Over dinner A tried to convince L to go and work for a mayor in Columbia and they talked about moving countries and trying new opportunities. After dinner, they ambled back to 27G.
Coffee, Wine and Isolation 