30th September 2025

Just landed in Manchester. I say landed, we drove here. My colleague drove me and another down here for a work event. It's called FSM Live and we are setting up a stand at the Old Trafford Cricket Ground. The journey wasn't too bad honestly. It was about 3 hours of driving. We stopped at a service station near York which I had been to many times already as a kid. Grabbed some food, I looked for antihistamines but they only had Benadryll or another one that I already tried and made me sleepy. We ate a Burger King, I got a latte which tasted absolutely disgusting, it tasted like a cappuchino (or to be more blunt, it tasted like diseased rat urine).

The hotel is quite nice, though nothing will top the hotel in Birmingham that I stayed in Septemer 2024. That hotel was a SERIOUS business hotel and it was actually amazing everywhere you went. This hotel is quite nice too, though the outside front bit isn't as good, just has the car park and a few benches. I haven't looked around the place properly yet, we just checked in and went to our rooms. Peering around some hallways to the restaurant looked quite nice though.

As you can see from the pictures, it's quite nice! I appreciate this office chair which is very comfy and swings back really far. Unfortunately I can't adjust the height, so I'm writing this at the smaller circular desk. I did try getting onto my work laptop to do some emails, but the VPN wasn't installed and I couldn't login to my account, so Tom (the IT guy) had a look and we just decided to wait til I was back in the office.

The TV is not a smart TV, so a bit useless for me. I'll have to either just use the iPad, or maybe the laptop? Or I might torture myself into trying to screen share with the TV. Haven't used the shower yet, but it looks alright. One of my colleagues was sad that there is no bath and honestly, baths are overrated. When you bath, you sit in your own filth. Don't care what anyone tells me, showers are the GOAT.

Overall, decent! And the balcony is a nice touch. It's a shame you can't vape on the balcony otherwise this would have got an easy 10/10 from me. I get that you can't smoke, but why not vape? You lured me in with this appealing balcony, then you put a "NO SMOKING, NO VAPING" sign on the glass. But, at least the walk to go outside and vape isn't as long as the Birmingham hotel. That was actually a long ass walk. You would leave your room, walk down a long corridor, go down a lift, take another long corridor, then another one past the bar, then walk through the whole lobby and THEN you get to go outside. This one, you leave, walk down the hall, elevator and you're basically right next to the front door. Much quicker.

Not quite sure what to do now. I've just been sitting upstairs in my room, waiting to call Kira. At around 7 I think we are going for drinks at the bar downstairs so I wanna try and call her before I go down.