After four weeks of delays (mainly caused by the range of weather from abysmal to mediocre) and many months of me forgetting to book, I finally managed to capitalise upon an eagerly anticipated birthday present from my other half - a microlight flight experience!

For the last four years at school I was involved in our school's Combined Cadet Force (CCF) in the RAF section and as part of that, won a gliding scholarship where we learnt how to fly motorized gliders over a four day course. At the end of it, I successfully soloed the glider. In addition to this, for my sixteenth birthday, I started going for flying lessons and solo-ed a Piper Aviation PA-28. Unfortunately budget constraints prevented me from getting my private's pilot's license but it's definitely on my life 'to-do' list.

These were both completely unlike the experience of flying in a flex-wing microlight. The closest analogy I can think of is that of riding a motorcycle versus riding in a car. One is so completely raw and exposed and the other is relatively comfortable. You sit within three feet of the engine and you can see just about every component of the plane that matters. When you're on the ground, you're barely a couple of feet above the ground and it's very obvious that there's not much separating you from being shredded by the tarmac - no safety net.

I exercised my voucher with microlight school Clearprop at the Blackbushe Airport in Surrey. It took a few attempts to actually get flying - this sort of vehicle is very weather-dependent (and especially wind-dependent).

As for the actual experience, after a short briefing, we took off in what seemed like mere metres. All it took was a gentle push forwards on the bar and we were up in the air. In some sense, the control system, although different from most fixed wing aircraft (no joystick or yoke), is more natural - it's directly connected to the wing. This is called weight-shift because the action of manipulating the centre of gravity shifts the wing itself and this causes you to turn. There is no rudder so yawing is non existent. This makes flying in windy situations difficult.

Turning is much more physical (or feels that way) than most fixed wing aircraft too - requiring you to pull down on one side of the bar. This felt quite unnerving for me too, having dislocated my shoulder several times before - in the brief period between having my hands on my lap and holding the bar, there was a substantial amount of pressure on my arm from the wind. Luckily it stayed in its socket and I managed to approximately steer the aircraft in the right direction.

As for landing, this was a terrifying experience. There's no safety (as psychological as it might be) of having a big shock absorbing undercarriage underneath. As we came down to land, my eyes grew to the size of lightbulbs as we rapidly approached the ground.

An epic experience and one of the best birthday presents I've ever received. I'm definitely considering picking up the lessons again this next year.

Photos on GeekOnABicycle.

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So after a (very) long hiatus, I decided to cycle into work again on Monday, cycling from Watford to Old Street. This is not an inconsiderable distance but compared to my summer internship commute to Canary Wharf from Watford (26 miles each way), it's easier at just 21 miles. Sunday evening was, as always, a series of minor and major procrastinations where, although I was meant to be getting my bike ready for the journey in, I decided to go visit friends, listen to music, watch television and tidy my room.

Waking up bleary eyed on Monday morning, I somehow convinced myself that today was going to be the day I cycle in (the first time is always the hardest - both from a logistical and a psychological point of view). In my pyjamas, I started rummaging around my 'box of bits' in our garden shed looking for my sturdy pannier rack which went with me from Cairo to Capetown (on my bike for the first four weeks and in my suitcase for the last four months when it became obviously useless). I came out, defeated, with another, much less sturdy pannier rack that attaches to a seat post. This loyal pannier rack was what had taken the load of my school books and uniform when I first started commuting in the fat days.

Grudgingly attaching the pannier rack to my carbon seat post (and ever conscious of the increasing probability of my seat post shearing in two horizontally), I managed to fill my panniers with all sorts of 'necessities' - almost everything I needed except for a hoody which I decided would take up too much space. Walking out onto the road in my cycling Android jersey, a delightful gift from my friend at Google, I realised that short sleeve was perhaps a bit short sighted.

Rolling twenty metres down the road, strange noises already started coming from my bike and when I braked to a halt, there was an unnerving juddering. Investigating further, the pannier rack had already come askew and the edge of one of my pannier bags was rattling against the spokes. This is something I was very used to when commuting to school but it took a small leap of faith that my panniers would make it to work in one piece. As for the juddering, it merely seemed to be alignment of my brakes and in true Kenyan style, I figured it would be fine to get me to work.

Sure enough it was, and really the only difficult I had was that the pannier partially unclipped itself at a couple of points during the journey. The handling of the bike with a seat post mounted rack was quite sketchy - my road bike is much lighter than my mountain bike was and the pannier rack must have moved the centre of gravity much higher. Every time I stood up to cycle, the bike was start oscillating quite wildly.

As I got to work, it became harder and harder to unclip. I realised somewhere near Euston that my left SPD clip was missing a single screw. This meant that when I twisted my foot to unclip, the cleat would stay where it was and just rotate around the single retaining screw. When I finally got to Old Street it took a good five minutes of hopping around on my bike to unclip.

The commute overall was pretty damn slow. I left home at 08:30 (admittedly late) and reached work at 10:10. Normally I leave home at 08:25 and reach work at 09:15 when travelling by train. While the distance was slower, the traffic was pretty horrendous and there was no real clear stretch of road. Part of the reason for the traffic is that I was on Euston road - which skirts the congestion charging zone (and presumably carries a higher volume of traffic after 07:00). The frequent traffic lights also kill average speed - at least the route to Canary Wharf has relatively few interruptions!

In a nutshell, I'm not convinced that commuting to Old Street is worth it for me - I might do it a few times a week because of the fitness element but it certainly doesn't compare to public transport when it comes to convenience. At least not in the same way that commuting to Canary Wharf did.

People who knew me well at university know that for a short while (about a term), I graphed my sleep in order to figure out the relationship that my productivity (and enjoyment of life) has with my sleep levels. Anyone who's studied at Cambridge knows that terms are notoriously irregular - you'll start off with no work and then a week later find yourself trying to finish three sets of supervision work in one night. This makes it almost impossible to have a 'normal' week and to sleep the same amount every night.

When graphed and analysed, I noticed a few interesting facts-
- At that time, I used to sleep in multiples of 1.5 hours - and if I woke up a multiple of 90 minutes after I went to bed, I'd wake up feeling good.
- One day of good sleep often wasn't enough to reset my fatigue levels - I needed three nights of solid sleep to feel at the top of my form. This rarely happened during term.
- Even if I slept for 12/13 hours after an all nighter- it still wasn't enough. All nighters were disastrous for my productivity for the rest of the week.
- Generally 7.5 hours of sleep was good enough if I hadn't been training (i.e. cycling). If I had trained, I would require 9 hours.

This worked well for a few years and I've been tweaking my 'rules' as I go - I know the effects of caffeine and alcohol on my energy levels and try to adjust where I go. The irony is that, lately - mainly since starting work, I don't often get very good sleep. I've always been a light sleeper but generally I've always managed to sleep through the night.

It's been hard to pinpoint the reason and during a routine medical, the blood test revealed my thyroid levels were a bit off. To cut a long story (spread over six months) short - I've been diagnosed as hypothyroid. Standard treatment of hypothyroidism is the synthetic hormone levothyroxine. This is working, but with some annoying side effects. I've been finding it harder still to sleep - waking up in the middle of night regularly. I've also had some sort of headache constantly. Now with enough time, my doctor will probably be able to tweak the dosage so that these can be avoided. But the point being, I can't adequately control my energy levels as I used to, which is most likely now going to be the case for the rest of my life.

The constant process of diagnosis, especially for a condition like this has got me thinking - it must be very difficult to be a doctor indeed. Not purely from the sheer amount of knowledge you need but the feedback loop you have from your patients. Administer some medication, wait six weeks, take a blood test, look at a number and re-evaluate. On one hand it is a straightforward process but on the other - it is slow, prone to error (I was almost misdiagnosed when the wrong blood test results were used) and there's no instant gratification. Software development on the other hand gives you an answer in minutes, occasionally hours and very rarely days. There's no waiting required. And finally - there's always a logical or rational reason for something to happen the way it does. This is not always true in the human body and there's still a large amount of the 'unknown'. The human body is non deterministic.

That, dear readers, is why I'll never be a doctor.

Anyone who knows me well knows that-
1) I love biscuits.
2) I have to drink milk while eating biscuits or cake.

Mid last week I had a (mini) epiphany. I was at my cousin's house for her birthday party and for the first time in an immeasurable amount of time, I had cake without milk. Surprisingly, it was good. I spent much less effort trying to coordinate milk-drinking with cake-eating (it's the same really as the cereal and milk problem - you don't want to have extra milk or extra cereal left at the end...). Only concentrating on the cake meant I was able to really enjoy and appreciate it.

I guess this points to a wider trend in my life - that of multitasking. I'm notorious for doing multiple things at the same time and not just while at work. At home I've got a ridiculous three screened set up (and four if my laptop is up) and normally I'm doing a dozen things at the same time. It's probably because I spent so little actual time at home but I can't help thinking it's detrimental to the quality of how well I accomplish various tasks.

Admittedly a lot of what I do at home doesn't require much intellectual concentration - the last couple of hours I've been editing photos while watching television and catching up on reading - but I worry sometimes that this way of working carries itself over into other parts of my day.