RIP Matthew Perry – Chandler Bing – the original Transponster
In the Friends sitcom episode “The one with the embryos”, a quiz that will decide who will live in the big apartment is, spoiler alert, won by Joey and Chandler when Monica and Rachel cannot answer the question “What is Chandler Bing’s job?”. (See this clip). The nearest word, that Rachel can come up with is, “he’s a transponster!”, (which Monica points out isn’t actually a word), because Chandler works with numbers and “transponding” something.
This scene has always resonated with me because, due to the rather specific roles I have performed in my career, most of my friends and family would, have and do struggle to describe what I do for a living!
My roles over the last eighteen years have all been based around data management, data analysis, process and systems analysis & quality and generally a lot of work in Excel, databases and business intelligence dashboard software. My current role focuses on maximising the benefits of data from our New Product Introduction project management software to support business intelligence & reporting and data driven decision making. I hope that makes it clearer!
Or as, has been coined by some of my friends in reference to all the above, I am a transponster!!!
As I am returning to this role next week, I felt it would be good to get back into this mode by analysing the spreadsheet I have maintained throughout my sabbatical of the activities I have undertaken and places I have been. Yes, I maintained a spreadsheet because of course I did! Thus, here is an analysis of that data, written, to an extent, in the style I would present it to the business.
Dashboard
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Data Sourcing
The following data is proprietary to me and is completely of my own definition and of no use to anyone else. It was sourced from my activities during my sabbatical between 1st November 2022 and 31st October 2023. The analysis was completed in November 2023.
It doesn’t include how many “British Rail” trains I went on during my travels, which is a massive oversight, but I do have the routes captured separately as part of my overall tracker of railway journeys that I have taken in the UK in my lifetime. (Yes, I have a spreadsheet of this too because of course I do)!
Executive Summary
I went to a lot of football matches, places of interest, ate sausages, watched Star Trek and have eclectic taste in music.
Overall conclusions: Firstly, I maybe useful at quiz nights and secondly, I do like travelling around the UK, particularly by train!
My top five highlights were:
- The Singapore Grand Prix
- My day visiting Loch Ness
- The Talyllyn Railway and Dolgoch Waterfall
- Blur at Wembley
- The beautiful Norman Chapel at Durham Castle
There are many, many more wonderful memories that I have from my sabbatical.
Singapore
I had an amazing trip to Singapore. It was long, hot and busy but worth every penny and is a proper item ticked off my bucket list. I described it in this post so I won’t repeat myself but I am very grateful for the opportunity to go and so pleased to have done so.
London
Click here for full size view of above
(Link to TripAdvisor trips mentioned above)
My data shows that, like much of British politics, although I have moved around the country, overall, I am pretty London centric! I really enjoyed exploring some new parts of London during this period. The Roman London self-guided walk was excellent, but the highlight must be visiting the Palace of Westminster. I was fortunate to have an eccentric and engaging guide who really bought the amazing history of that location to life.
Football
One of the items I defined for my sabbatical was to watch a lot of football. Its safe to say I did this! I watched all 64 games of the World Cup, at times requiring two screens going at the same time. The final was brilliant. I dread to think how many games I have watched overall on the TV.
I have attended 46 games in this period. 40 home games for the men’s teams of Arsenal, Enfield Town and England seen in the North London section of the dashboard. The remainder have included away games and Arsenal Women fixtures.
The games had a 50% win ratio for my teams with 24% draws, leaving 26% losses. I have seen 147 goals scored, excluding penalty shootouts, the best of which was Reiss Nelson’s winner against Bournemouth, the crazy and joyous aftermath of which can be seen here!
Places of interest
As can be seen, nearly 60% of my time has been at cultural places of interest, from great cathedrals and palaces to humbler locations, like the eclectic Hull Wall of Fame, Northampton Shoe Museum and Hereford Cider Museum!
And, as could be expected, I spent a lot of time chugging through the countryside on heritage railways behind a steam engine!
How do I summarise all of these things? Simply to say whilst in the UK, inspiration is just round the corner. I have learned so much about the context of place in understanding history, art and also the search for insight and mental & spiritual renewal. From beautiful beaches to great portraits, there is a part of each of us that can be found in the story of the place we live in and the world around us.
Counties
I’ve covered many miles in this time by plane, train and automobile! I’ve captured the counties of Great Britain that I have stopped in to visit a place on the dashboard. However, I have of course travelled through many more, to get to these destinations.
From the Scottish Highlands to the Jurassic Coast, from Pembrokeshire to Norfolk there are some truly beautiful places in this country both in landscapes and in villages, town and cities. I can think of nothing better than watching the world go by from a train window. It is good for my soul.
A side note on the data for this – location data is often the most difficult to get to work properly and, in this case, even Bing, i.e. Microsoft, have some errors in their UK county data. So Microsoft, if you’re reading this, please add Merseyside and Perthshire to level 2 location data on Bing! It would help!
Premier Inn
I have no affiliation to Premier Inn but I do find them to work well for me when I am travelling around. The rooms are comfy and purple. I like their breakfast too and hence the 50 estimated sausages consumed as part of an English breakfast included on the dashboard.
The calculation method is two per breakfast minus a rounded 10% because even I’m not that bad and sometimes have other things for breakfast! To be fair most of those nights were followed by days where I proceeded to do a lot of walking with a heavy backpack on so I think I can relax about that number. It’s less than one a week!
Star Trek
In one of my early posts, I wrote about my love of sci-fi and Star Trek and how I take immense joy in this genre. I also mentioned that I was starting at the beginning with The Original Series and working forward chronologically on each series and film to rewatch it all again. I am a good way into this although there is still quite a lot to go. My approach has basically been to watch one episode with breakfast and at least one other on a day. Some days had none and some, well let’s say my productivity for that day was probably low!
The 690 episodes value is compiled as follows:
The first 10 movies – Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Star Trek: Generations, Star Trek: First Contact, Star Trek: Insurrection, Star Trek: Nemesis.
Then the 80 episodes over 3 seasons of Star Trek: The Original Series, the 22 episodes over 2 seasons of Star Trek: The Animated Series, the 182 episodes over 7 seasons of Star Trek: The Next Generation, the 174 episodes over 7 seasons of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the 172 episodes over 7 seasons of Star Trek: Voyager and by the end of October the 50 episodes of the first 2 seasons of Star Trek: Enterprise!
At the time of writing, I am part way through season 3 of Enterprise, with one more to go, then the 3 Kelvin timeline movies and rewatches of Discovery, Lower Decks, Picard and Strange New Worlds to follow. I estimate a completion some time in the middle of next year!
Gigs
I was an unintended but ultimately enjoyable part of my sabbatical that I attended 11 music gigs. Looking at the list of artists, it struck me how different they are from each other in some ways and yet I felt it was important to do the proper analysis!
Thus in the first chart, I assigned a genre rating of 1 (low) to 5 to each gig in the categories of Electronica, Acoustic and Alternative. These are my three favourite genres of music, particularly based upon my Spotify recommendations! It is intriguing how they almost balance out but trend slightly towards Alternative. I would have guessed this to begin with, but it is interesting to see it numerically. Basically, I have eclectic taste overall!
The second chart can be said to represent the time of my life that I am in. My sabbatical hasn’t quite been expressive of a mid-life crisis – I didn’t by a Porsche during it for example! – but having turned 43 in September, and considering the crowds at the different gigs, I thought it would be interesting to assess how much I am being driven by nostalgia or youth.
A set of three conclusions jumped out:
One, the Pet Shop Boys gig happened at Wembley Arena on the same night Harry Styles was at the Stadium. As the crowds separated down Wembley Way with the Pet Shop Boys crowd peeling off to the right, there was a noticeable difference between the ages of the clientele. That one definitely fell into the nostalgia category!
Two, I guarantee that my “down with the kids” rating is over optimistic!
Three, in the end, this music is all contemporary and therefore I’m still cool! If you want to confirm this for yourself, feel free to listen to my Sabbatical Playlist on Spotify containing my favourite tracks from each gig!
Blog
Finally, not shown on the dashboard, but I wanted to include in this summary, has been the response to my blog. My posts have been read over 2,000 times around the world since I began writing. I have been amazed by the response, particularly to the more emotional and difficult posts. People have been so kind and supportive, but most of all, I have been so pleased by the responses I have had relating to the affinities with the challenges of grief and healing and emotional growth that I have received.
So, to everyone who has engaged with me through this blog, through my social media posts and in person during my sabbatical, a big and heartfelt thank you. I have learned so much about the human experience in this year.
Has it gone as I was expecting? In some ways yes and in others not at all, but I am very proud of myself for taking this time to take a different approach and now as I return to transponstering, I can see what the future brings with a different set of perspectives than I had a year ago.
I plan to continue writing a blog. It will be different in some ways but ultimately, it will be about my perspective on the world as I find it. In that spirit, as I often have, I shall finish with an all-time favourite quote that summarises where I find myself:
“You never can tell with bees.” – Winnie-the-Pooh – A.A. Milne.
Life moves pretty fast 
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