This week’s update comes to you live from Bucharest, fuelled by pastrami, palaces, and yet another chance to indulge my not-at-all-unhealthy interest in dark history.

I’m trying not to compare every client challenge to a diplomatic standoff with Vlad the Impaler—but some weeks do feel like they need a pointy solution.

This week at work

A week of three halves. Or maybe thirds. Maths was never my strong suit.

Slow but steady progress on work to help a team with alignment and ways of working around their digital transformation.

Meanwhile, cracking on with content development for another client, where every draft is a thrilling journey into “what if we just said it like humans?”

Also: quite a lot of time on a new secret-squirrel project. Can’t say more for now, which obviously makes it sound far more exciting than it probably is. But still—watch this space.

Also this week

Faced with a dangerously empty weekend and an allergy to sitting still, I panic-booked a solo trip to Bucharest. Because why not? Romania becomes country number 81 on the list, which is a very normal number of countries to have visited, thank you for asking.

Highlights included:

• A walking tour that packed about 1,000 years of history, coups, communism and chaos into three hours and one coffee stop
• Discovering pastrami is one of the few foods Romania can claim as its own—then heroically eating my bodyweight in it for research purposes
• Marvelling at Bucharest’s architectural approach, which seems to be: yes. Neo-gothic? Sure. Brutalist? Why not. French chateau next to a 1980s concrete monolith? Go on then. A city that feels like someone shuffled the architectural deck then played every card at once
• Taking a bus out to Transylvania to gawp at forests, palaces, and not one single vampire, which frankly feels like false advertising

Consuming

👩🏻‍💻 Internetting

I had a play with the new GPT image tools like everyone else, because if you’re not anthropomorphising your inbox or reimagining your cat as a 19th-century general, are you even alive in 2025?

📺 Watching

I finished Adolescence. As everyone else has said already, tough but important telly.

Also most of Series 2 of Slow Horses.

📚 Reading

I like to learn about the places I visit, so I’m reading Children of the Night: The Strange and Tragic Story of Modern Romania.

It’s part travel writing, part history (so, you know, right up my alley), tracing how Romania ended up where it is today. Full of unexpected turns, grim humour and sharp insights, it’s a useful lens on a country that’s often misunderstood.

Connections

I met up with Stephan van Bolderik, who I met via The Breakfast app. We chatted about startups, exits, working culture across the generations, Burning Man, LinkedIn, and much else besides.

Travel

🇷🇴 Back from Romania tomorrow evening

🇩🇰 Copenhagen next week for IntraTeam

This week in photos