Annapurna Circuit Trek - Part VI

[Read the rest of the annapurna story here.]

Day 11. Muktinah - Marpha
Finally! after that well-deserved shower we headed out towards Marpha.



The first part of the day was very beautiful, especially since we went through the village-fortress of Jarkot.




We wondered around Jarkot and even got lost. We really had to pass that small alley.





We really hated this day also, because the area we passed through was barren and full of dust.



However, the mountains still dominated the valley and river bank:



That and blue-horned yaks:



Our progress was slow because of the wind and the dust so we arrived in the evening at Marhpa. Marpha is a gem of a village, with white-washed rock walls. In the morning, the locals remove the manure from its stone paved streets with a small knife. How is that for cleanliness?



They also had natural apple cider!



And a budhist gompa that offered very nice arial views of the village.




Day 12. Marpha - Kalopani



The scenery improved drastically with Dhaulaghiri our main follower for the day.

Bogdan decided to wash his underwear and let it dry.












I am so sorry we did not go to this gompa.



The road was mostly flat, but, as opposed to the previous day, it had a lot more greenery and less wind. Still, the presence of the newly built road (where road equals a dusty, earthy path fit for a jeep) still made its presence felt sometimes. I am really glad we went at this time since the road changes the scenery for the worse.





Again, the river bank.




We found this little fat boy with very big paws that I so wanted to take with me!



Probably he would have changed into this. We noticed that most dogs in the valley were of the same "brand". Could this have been the father?




And finally, we reached Kalopani! Guarded by Dhaulaghiri on the right and the Annapurna's on the left, this is truly a gem of a village. We ate like pigs but not before going into the forest to do some pull-ups. As we could not find any trees with horizontal branches, we settled for two trees shoulder-wide apart, that we pinched and did many sets of 5. I think we did about 40 pull-ups that day. Jensen are you proud of meeee?

And of course, the Annapurnas made for a fantastic sunrise:



Notice how the mountains are so tall they obstruct the sun:






Day 13. Kalopani - Tatopani
We move towards Tatopani and the promise of hot springs there! Gradually we are saying goodbye to the mountains and hello to tropical lands.



And water buffaloes



Stick insectsPraying mantis:



These were actually the highlight of the day, because otherwise you just walk and walk on that road until you die. Of course, unless you are accompanied by a porter, in which case you are spotless clean (not full of dust like us), and only carry a teensy-weensy little bag.


And of course, the hot springs!

One picture Tuesday

And of course I said that I wanted to come to Europe and as such I will be (hopefully) joining the University of Adelaide, Australia as a lecturer. I mean, isn't that normal? It's gonna be for a two-year period first, while Marian finishes and we decide what we will do with the rest of our lives.


Also, it is VERY VERY close to singapore, and i suppose Marian, San, Doris, and Jensen will want to come to climb next year in Australia. For san and doris: this is mandatory, yeah?

Stress

While flying back from adelaide, I watched a documentary called "stress, the silent killer". It documented how people and baboon lower in an hierarchy have higher stress levels than the chief enchiladas. And how higher levels of stress lead to high blood pressure, increase in the bacteria that causes ulcer, and to clogged arteries, in other words to many visits to the doctor, etc. This is all old stuff and it is not what I wanted to talk about, but something else.

The stanford prof doing the baboon study was saying that a zebra in the savanna has short moments of very high levels of stress, and its two hormones, adrenaline and another one, whenever it is being chased by a lion and running for its life. After the chase is over, the zebra is either dead or has survived and the stress is gone, and therefore the zebra is no longer stressed. 

However, the same high levels of stress have been identified in humans when they are, let's say, stuck in traffic or have a report deadline of some sort. Therefore, the prof was saying that the zebra in the savanna running for its life would NEVER understand how people stuck in traffic can be as stressed as it.

So my little piece of Aussie wisdom: remember the zebra!

Stupid is as stupid does

I now have 79.45 AUD. This is ALL I have for my 3 day stay here in Adelaide, Australia. This is because before, I had 104 SGD. By accident, in my brand new wallet that I luuurve. Yup. My cards do not work - that is, I cannot draw money from an ATM. I normally change money before I go to a place, but this time i decided to follow Marian's advice and just draw from the ATM (please notice how i subtly made it sound like it was his fault. Because IT IS, THAT'S WHY!)

Anyway, I can't draw money from the ATM - i think it is because it is a debit card or something, and they only have withdrawal from credit cards. Luckily I had 104 SGD in my wallet. Or else. I bought bulgarian feta cheese (OMG IT'S DELICIOUS) and fresh baked bread, plus fruits, so this left me with almost 80 bucks. Sadly, i think i have to pay for the intewebs, unless they are covered too (15AUD for 2 hours WTF?!) Hopefully I will have enough money left to buy prezzies and ahem, cheese.

One picture Tuesday

And ladies and gentlemen, yesterday, to celebrate V-day (I guess), Marian has cooked for me!! I am very excited about this, since the extent of Marian's average cooking is ... toast. With butter and honey. Oh. And he sometimes cooks me breakfast: fist of oats with cold milk dumped on top. His french fries are amazing though, and he can whip up most potato based dishes in no time. Which is why I told him when I sensed that he was going to cook for me: "only mashed potatoes, please! :)"

Anyway, he totally outdid himself and surprised me: 5-Beans Chili! Totally vegetarian and mostly from scratch (the beans were already boiled). The picture is totally crappy because we were very very hungry.

Ah well...

Grrr. I have never had a proper job interview in my life. All the jobs that I had were either "come on, we just need some people, can you program? yes? ok, you'll do!", or were "do you want to join our group?" or "i will take care of you until you find a job - kinda thing". I had phone interviews. I failed 66% of them, which means that i had 3 and failed 2. In one it was not my fault, in the second i was came out as too noob. I passed the third in the sense that I got invited to come on site. But then again, the third was just a "let's see if you can speak english" kinda thing. Looks like i can speak English!

Anyway, tomorrow I am flying off to Adelaide, for my first, ever ever ever proper interview in my life. I am almost 30 for crying out loud!!! Anyway, I have never been more scared in my life, not even while I was contemplating death on the face of the matterhorn. And now I know what our school really needs: a post-graduate career office, to help graduate students find jobs!! I most probably will fail this interview, but the experience i will get will be priceless I think - also, Adelaide will be my second Australian city (for free some more!)

Doing what you love

While mindlessly surfing the web today I just found an amazing story about somebody doing what they love. Maid Marian is a baker and a seller of muffins in Brooklyn. Nothing special with this, but get this: she is selling them off her bicycle. Pedaling through brooklyn, selling muffins. ZOMG how cool and inspiring is that? I instantly had a feeling that I could also do this! Bike through brooklyn and sell TOM YAM!

Here she is on Brooklyn bridge!



[I love to teach. and climb. and do research. and eat. cheese]

Annapurna Circuit Trek - Part V

[Read the rest of the annapurna story here.]

Day 9. Yak Karka - Thorung Pedi
We left early in the morning and took it as slow as possible to Thorung Pedi, 4500m.


We are moving slow and steady to ensure that we acclimatize properly.

Even with the slow walk, we still manage to run out of breath sometimes. Was it the beauty of the trek?




At last, after 3 hours or so we manage to reach Thorung Pedi.



We settle quickly in one of the basic rooms and proceed to enjoy the mid-morning sun.
Marian takes out his solar panel which immediately makes him the target of curious stares, questions, and even requests for charging.
Some people near us do not feel so great, they have headaches and are grumpy. We are doing nice and dandy, although a bit short of breath. Claudia is complaining of headaches and at times we lie down inside the room.

We eat dinner around 5 and go to sleep quickly, not before selecting the music we are going to hear the next day.

Day 10. Thorung Pedi - Thorung La - Muktinah

We wake up at 4 am and I would have slept for at least two more hours- because Marian's sleeping bag was less thick than mine, we put his underneath and cuddled up with mine on top. Of course, both of us slept bad like this.

At 4 am, we quickly packed our bags and left the room around 4:30 am. At first going up was hard for me, because as we all know by now I am a bit of a sloth when it comes to early morning exercise. It did not help that it was cold as hell so when we stopped at high camp (4800m) one hour later, we all decided to drink some tea (without even having discussed this before). After high camp follows an exposed hill face where the wind greeted us with all its might. My hands, face, feet were frozen in a matter of minutes. Claudia's face was swelling pretty bad.



We stopped again at a high tea-shop where we met an old man with his guide. He really inspired us as his guide said that he was over 70 years old. Way to go!! The tea-shop (basically just some tin plates against the wind) induced us to eat some breakfast. I had a cereal bar although I did not feel like eating.

And of course I should have stopped eating it but the glutton in me persevered. Needless to say, the cereal bar proceeded uphill in about two minutes after we started walking again. However, to my credit, I managed not to puke it out.

By this time Claudia was feeling pretty bad so we had to stop every five minutes or so for her to rest. These breaks were more than welcome for the rest of us as well ... you know how it is ... the reason why weaker members are welcome in a trekking team is that everybody can say they are waiting for them when it's actually themselves resting ... It was a good exercise for Bogdan too, because I don't think he was used to helping her out in these situations.



We walk, we stop, we take pictures... We settle in the altitude routine, only disturbed by some Chinese kids who find it funny to shout and laugh and then nearly faint for lack of breath.


We next see the tibetan flags flapping in the wind and we know we have reached the pass. Marian makes a fatal mistake and tries to dash for it, but stops five steps later with a monstrous headache: altitude victim number 2! We are happy to arrive and take lots of pictures. 5416 m UHA!!!






The descend is horrendous. Our knees are tired, and the two victims are slowly recovering from their plight.







After 1300m descent, we stop at the first sign of civilization. A coffee shop where water is heated by natural means as well.


it takes us another 4 hours from Thorung La to reach Muktinah, a holy city with hindu and buddhist temples.







One cannot stay in Muktinah but right next to it is Ranipauwa, were we stopped at the first hotel that caught our eyes:



Good thing we did stop because it was the first hotel on the trek that had HOT water! Hot enough for me to sort of wet-clean my hair after 10 days.

One picture Tuesday

I was too busy to post yesterday about my birthday celebrations. Too busy trying to digest the inordinate amount of food that i ingested that is, which can be summarized using one word: CARBOHYDRATE!! 2xCARBOHYDRATE!! Anyway, I got a blow your mind kind of present from san and dor, that I want to show here for one picture tuesday.

Initially my graduation present, I give you .... Comfort shoes!
Notice the "ang moh" in front, and the stamp with the three stick figures ... guess which one is me!


Not only they are comfortable, and they encompass the last four years of my life, but also they have comfort food on them: the tom yam bowl and the three durians on the left!


I luuurve them! I was even careful while walking in them yesterday not to brush my feet on various stuff in case the paint runs.. Also I envision myself wearing them for ages to come and probably taking them off if it rains.

Because I am a glutton, I also got a prosperity pack (did i get it right?) from Doris, and at least half a kg of bak kwa from Jensen! And being such a kind, food sharing soul (never never never no no no no I do not share food!) I even shared it with my lab-mates (picture taken AFTER opening, i re-assembled it back, so sadly you can't see how pretty it was)

2.9

Well. at least I am not thirty! (HAHHAHA but I will be next year!) and 29 IS a prime number! Today Marian has insisted is going to be all about me, so as such in about 20 mins time I will be dragging him outside in the scorching heat to run, because ruthless, I am. And later, I think I will actually have him call the restaurant to make a reservation, because I am too shy to talk on the phone.

Last year was all about graduating and graduating... I want to make this year better: climbing, running, finding a job!

Gong Xi!

Yesterday was Chinese New Year's Eve. The plan was to go in the morning to my colleague's flat to leave some mushrooms I had prepared for the BBQ celebrating her birthday later [mouthful, yeah! now say it twenty times!]. After that, I was supposed to go to the lab, work for a while, and then come back to the BBQ. After that, it was supposed to be Reunion Dinner at Doris' place and fly kite in the nite.

Well, it all went tumbling down when I met a kitten while delivering the mushrooms. She was in a bush an meowing at the top of her lungs. Rescued the kitten from the bushes, had Marian deliver the mushrooms, get some meat and some milk and come down. For the next hour or so I pondered what to do. Should I a) put it back in the bush and hope that her mama would return? (not really, kitteh was apparently meowing for ages; b) put it back in the bush and pretend it never happened? c) take it home?! So I force fed the kitteh for an hour or so while the thought that I cannot take it home sank in. I cried (like for real tears) and pleaded and thought but yeah, could not bring it to the lab as it would be too disruptive to the other peeeps (it had some lungs!!); could not bring it home as flatmates are allergic and I am leaving Singapore in 5 months; could not put it back, and hence the crying.

In the end, I texted doris and asked for advice. And texted several other people that I knew lived by themselves and could give even a temporary home to it. Only one of them called back, angry that I guilt-tripped him; he also called back later in the night to check on the kitteh situation (brownie points for him!). The rest gave either "awww would love to have it but you see the landlord does not allow it, why don't you take it to SPCA?" - where nobody would take it since it's fucking CNY and people do not go out to adopt kittehs and then it would just be killed so wtf am i doing with it right now?!, or curt "I am very sorry but I cannot", when I know that they could only if they wanted just a teensy bit [below the kitteh finally sleeping in my bag]



This and the fact that while I stayed there and force-fed the big-lunged kitteh about 30 people passed me, and at least five kids and nobody and I mean NOBODY came to see or even looked at wtf was I doing there? totally killed my trust in human beings.

This trust got restored later by Doris, who was my hero of the day. She called her friend who called another friend who has a gigantic house with 14 other cats, 2 dogs, and a maid to take care of everybody. The kitteh, who we named "Gong Xi" hopefully will adapt and live happily ever after there.

One picture Tuesday

Because I know that I should write the next chapter in the Annapurna trek soon!

Audiences

For me, what makes or breaks a presentation I give is whether I can find a friendly face in the audience to which I can look at. For my Phd defence, my audience had the following specimens (the room was divided in two, with the right-hand side containing the yawner, and the left, everybody else; committee was distributed evenly)

• The Committee: front rows, use sparingly, limited interest, but still, most alert. Engage sparingly to avoid annoyance.


• The Yawner: could not contain his yawns; caught him yawning twice and as such I never looked in his direction again (too bad he was sitting next to Marian and as such I have no recollection of Marian during my talk.


• The Frowner: right behind the last member of the committee, this one would frown deeply (not helped by her dry forehead skin) in three different ways: (a) I have no idea what you are talking about; (b) hm ... is it so? ; (c) WTF?!?!?!!?!! I found her deeply disturbing but still I continued to look in her general direction because she was better than the yawner. Also, she was a constant in the presentation, as sometimes I would look at her to make sure that yes, she was still frowning.


• The Stoned: to the bone. This one was Doris, who looked like she would be zonking out on me any minute now.


• The Positive: Always giving me a thumbs up whenever I looked his way. Used sparingly for re-assurance.


• The Intellectual: [Daffodil] Looking like she understood perfectly what I was saying - helped by the specs!

Never say never

1. I used to say I will never get married. And here I am, getting married in May.


2. I used to say that geeks are seriously pathetic. And here I am, marrying one.


3. Similarly, I used to say that weddings are for idiots. I still think so, but now I understand that some people actually might want their entire family and friends to be there for them on this day (seriously, what's so special about that day?) . And here I am, having a wedding.


4. I used to feel superior to people that went to school during uni years instead of getting a job and fending for themselves, like I did. And here I am, five years later, envying their obviously superior knowledge about CS stuff.


5. I used to despise people that went on to get an even higher degree (i.e. master's, PhD). Used to say that they are afraid of facing real life. Who wants to be in school for yet at least five years or so? And here I am, Dr. Claudia.


6. On a more positive note, I used to say that going to the Himalayas was not for me, as I was a smoker, a drinker, and a fat whale. And here I am, came back from Nepal only a month ago.


7. I also used to say that I will never ever eat polenta. And here I am, enjoying it tremendously whenever I have the chance.


8. I used to say that this blog is about photography and graduate programmes. But it was not. It was about climbing, running, stupid little things that I did everyday while trying to piece my obviously distributed and scattered brain into something resembling a human being. And here I am, changing the title.
   

And yes, there's a DR attached to my name now, although the DR is only of Philosophy, hahahaha!

And this is how I get abused everyday

Yesterday and for reasons that will be explained here tomorrow, Doris got a chance to be alone with my computer and my Facebook account. Where she posted lots of things about various stuff most of which will be discussed tomorrow. However, she also did this to my desk, which I am actually going to keep. That is because the surface of it is a bit rough and it sort of scratches my forearm a bit. And my desk was clean by my standards!! sure there was a bunch of papers on the left hand side, and there might be a gecko living behind them, but it was damn clean! I can still find things on it!


Also notice that I might need to clean the keyboard, as you can distinctly see two white-ish smudges on the space bar where my thumbs press it. Ahem.

One picture Tuesday

Sorry for the lack of updates recently, come Wednesday (tomorrow) things should pick up one way or another. Until then, let me share with you the reason for which I want to spend all my days in the lab from now on.



Yes ladies and gentlemen, an expresso machine. Yup. A colleague and I are sharing the cost (ONLY 200 SGD) although I have yet to pay him. Nonetheless, gone are the crappy coffees from the business canteen!

Carmen

Last night we went to see "Carmen", by Bizet. I suppose it did not help this performance the fact that I had previously seen it in Bucharest, only recently. But still, I am most happy that I did not fork out the extra $$ to sit closer to the stage. It was a mixed performance, with caucasians and asians thrown into the pot.

I think this particular Carmen was only selected because she came from France and um, spoke French (ms. Sophie Fournier). Otherwise, her high notes were very low, and she sounded like she was an avid smoker. The quire actually had to tone it down a bit at some point because they were covering her. And here was I thinking that the biggest problem we were going to have with this opera was the fact that the French accent was a bit off. And then Carmen started her "Habanera" and I started crying. Even I have more volume than her. The sad part was that the girl playing Michaela, a Singaporean, had a fantastic voice and would have been much more suited than her French counterpart. And then disaster struck...

The toreador, a.k.a the bull-fighter, was a 1.70m and 60kg Chinese!! Mind you, he would have been very fit for a climber, but not for a toreador! I quickly nicknamed him "El Senor Mosquito" for his imposing figure ... and would burst out laughing whenever "El Senor Musquito" would make his appearance on scene. A good indication of how beefy he was is the fact that he never wore any tights at all, which would have been even more hilarious. Ah well .. good part is that at least I have something to bitch about... the singapore performing arts scene is really not that advanced, so every morsel is welcomed.

One picture Tuesday

LATER EDIT: Went to the Page One bookshop in the end. They had a lot of books, which I didn't expect for a mall bookshop, but! all of them were wrapped in plastic and you couldn't really browse ... Interesting enough, they were playing romanian music!

A lot has been happening, not necessarily in order of importance: my new shoes are giving me hot spots, the bird needs to learn to put expectations somewhere in the background and on silent, maybe the defense day is coming ... More importantly, I need to get my ass in a librarybookshop very very soon. I have been using hippo (the e-reader) for so long that I miss the smell and touch of books. So we'll be heading for Kinokuniya later and hopefully I will not buy anything!


I am putting up a picture of happy Doris, hopefully to help her with her looming depression. I hate expectations and what they do to some people, myself included. It's the expectations that landed me in open category (san's expectations got the better of her waaaay back in 2007 which left room for me to finish one route and promote although I had not been able to start on the other 4 routes and I still am not good enough for open category - plus, the prizes for that comp were pathetic) and I will never EVER forgive them for that. If the big, old, face full of zits caucasian (the one in the green t-shirt) is the face of your (and others') expectations, this, and i mean it, THIS is what you must do to them:

Decisions

I think I just made the most crucial decision of my climbing life (and no, it does not have to do with carbohydrates) ...

I (together with san) just bought an expensive, very professional, very precise, very aggressive, climbing shoe.

Behold, La Sportiva Miura VS!


Besides the ugly color, it fits like a glove. The fit of the heel is amazing, the thickness of the sole looks promising (although I am not sure it will last as much as the Five Ten Galileo I am giving up).

It also says something about oneself. And I hope it will not say about me: "Wow, that girl has enough money to buy this expensive shoe. Too bad she can't climb for nuts." or "Wow, that girl has enough money to buy this expensive shoe. Too bad, that even with its precise tip, her footwork still sucks."

Basically, i gotta start training and climbing to live up to my shoes.

And also to get Doris to paint something on them because now the THREE of us have the same shoe, in its puky, ugly, yellow color (not pictured).

Numerology

[And probably the only mushy lovey ovey thing you are ever going to hear from me with respect to the wedding]

Wedding date: 14.05.2011

14 - the number i had back in secondary school when i used to play basketball.

05 - prime number. Also, may is in spring, which in romanian is "Prim-avara". So it also starts with prime :))

2011 - PRIME NUMBER WOO HOO!

One picture Tuesday

Recently, the NUS climbing team has grown to a number that is approaching 40. Gigantic! I remember the days when the girls' team had seven members, namely: Sandra, Mei Fen, Nita, myself, Eli, Kayilin (hope I got the names right) and Cherlyn. Then we grew into this:

And then four of us left (san, me, zx, keok) but many many more came. Hell, I still remember when Regina could not do a pull-up (and did not want to try), Ely was heavier and harder to help during campusing ... but I digress...

What I wanted to say is that the team is ginoromous and it needs the gym. Full stop and that is that. And as such, the rest of us can only climb on Monday/Tuesday before 8 pm, and on Friday. This is really a bummer because if we end work at six, by the time we get to the gym is 6:30 (AT LEAST - san has to travel 1 hr or so), so we only have around 1.5 hours of climbing time. That being said, we tried it last night to see how it would be.

We arrived at 6:30 sharp and started climbing right away, but had to stop because the girls needed to warm up for their training. Five minutes later we could resume again. I must say we really climbed intensely: one warm-up route and after that it was full-on with hard routes (for us ahem), no excuses, no resting, TRY TRY TRY TRY quickly! I can still remember the routes, which is something that has not happened to me in a while. It worked pretty well and by the time the girls came to claim their gym we went upstairs to do some strength training. The two sets we did were horribly hard, as we had been climbing a bit harder and our skin was rebelling. Or we are weak and haven't been doing this in a while. We came down again and the girls were shacked thanks to Jensen's training ( you know when the training was good when the gym is quiet, despite there being 15 or so girls in there). Thus we could do two or three more tries, but by this time I was out of juice and so was san and we had a work day coming up so we left.

That being said, it was nice and intense but I don't think our Mondays will be as cool if there are suddenly 10-15 of us that want to try the routes quickly, without stop, because we only have 1.5 hours to climb. There were some random team people as well in the gym. They were climbing on one wall and really not disturbing us, but I do think that if there are more dinos the team people will get lynched for hogging the walls :)

Also, I want to do endurance on Fridays during lunch or so. First, set up the endurance route, and then climb it ... am taking this opportunity to ask any of the girls reading this (and willing to climb on fri during the day) to tell me what time!

Annapurna Circuit Trek - Part IV

[Read the rest of the annapurna story here.]
Day 7. Acclimatization in Manang
Well, what better way to spend the rest day cum acclimatization day in Manang (3500m) if not by doing some light treks? You can't find romanian trekkers around the world, mostly because a) few people have enough money to trek "internationally"; b) those people that have enough money usually by this time in their lives do not want to spend 3 weeks in the middle of nowhere, carrying backpacks and generally feeling miserable. This is why i always try to show face and give romanians a good name in general.
This went down the drain on this morning, when seeing this from the window of my room made me rush outside in the middle of the street in my thermals (they are tight, yeah?) and sandals. Luckily, it was 5:45 am and nobody, except a few yaks here and there, was actually outside.


After a quick breakfast we strolled outside to take some pictures. We took the time to identify the places that had the best apple pie, by sampling each place. Ahem.








We strolled some more and in the end decided to go for a quick trek to a glacier lake that was near our hotel. Pictures below for our drooling pleasure.




I want to paint my house this color:


We finished the day by going to the cinema: a windowless room at the basement of a shop, with a big wood-stove in the middle, benches covered with yak skins and rats (yes, rats) doing sprints from one side of the room to the other. We saw "Into the Wild", which Marian and I had not seen before.

Day 8. Manang (3500m) - Yak Karka (4250m)
We woke up around 6 plus only to notice that a slow and steady snow was in the process. The day before we had selected a coffee shop with nice apple pies to serve as our breakfast HQ for today. It looked like the coffee shop was the chosen one for everybody, because we found most of the trekkers we knew already there. Most of them were really apprehensive about leaving saying that the snow is going to get heavy, and OH MY GOD YOU CAN'T PASS!! and the like..


We continued our breakfast and didn't say anything, but it was obvious we were leaving since we were in full gear. In the end, when we got up to leave, there was a silence in the shop, and finally somebody wished us good luck.




Needless to say that the snowing stopped in one hour or so, and we reached Yak Karka safely but very early, only to be followed by the rest of the trekkers later on. Ah well, it is good to be cautious, but that was ridiculous. After one hour of snowing, the snow was only about 1 cm thick! Anyway, the lack of people on the trail allowed us to see many animals.




We spent the day in Yak Karka walking around, drinking a lot of water, and taking photos of yaks! Of all of us, only Claudia was a bit swollen (see next post to see how this turns out)

Resolution Day

I must admit that my initial intention was really to blog about the Annapurna circuit trek, with which I am still two reports short, but, inspired by one of my friends' latest decision, I decried to talk about resolutions. New year's resolutions at that, since, after a tiring new year's night, I am finally coming to terms with the fact that the new year is indeed, coming. And of course, with this realization comes my need to plan and list the stuff that must be done this year. Like get married, graduate, loose [some of] the butt and so on and so forth. A bit more thinking and the list changes. As I am slowly and surely approaching 30 - zomg I still think like an 18 year old, I realize that some things about me need to be changed. So I am replacing the usual new year's list with the one below.

• Give people second chances - I always decide in the first 20 seconds of meeting somebody whether I like them or not. Regardless of the answer, this changes only very very rarely. If I decide that I don't like somebody, I almost instantly raise my guard, and it shows. Similarly, I am very quick to dismiss former friends that have wronged me. And once I see one wrong, the rest are soon to follow - because let's be honest, if one opens her eyes big enough, one is sure to find we all suck.


• Do not checklist my life - I do not do this, but I know that A LOT of people do, especially here in Singapore, and I guess in many other worlds: car [check], wife[check], kids [check], house, possessions, money... I know a lot of people need this for self assurance, and for evaluating their lives, and I hope I never fall in this trap.


• Live everyday by itself - I lived last year between four important milestones: new Zealand, going home, submitting thesis, and going Nepal.  Secondary milestones were going chiang mai, the kl trip, and the kinabalu trip. I lived between these milestones only by looking forward and thinking about the next. This was wrong. And other than the four things, I dun remember much about last year - did I get my ears pierced then? I want to have my life made up of days, and each individual day with it's own stories and life. Not only will i definitely live longer, but i think i will feel more fulfilled. For example, today is obviously Resolution Day, whereas yesterday was work-till-u-drop day- should have as little of these as possible too!

One picture Tuesday

Here's looking at the New Year. 2011, I am watching you!!

A happy announcement

So, to keep it up with the great announcements of the day before, I have one announcement to make that clearly wins over the one that we climbed Mt. Kinabalu.

I am coloring my hair pink!!!!

Wait, no, I am not. I be too old for that. But!

Marian and I are getting married! Yup. It's been around for a while, but we have just bought the tickets to Europe and so, providing any unforeseen circumstances such as death or hot mistresses, the two of us will be getting married on the 14th of May, 2011, at the Sf. Apostoli church, in Caracal*.


*Those of you that know me and read this blog, if you can make it to Romania, COME!! I mean, how often can you see me in a dress? And willingly in a church?

** I wanted to tag this post with "lime ju", which is what I normally use when i am happy-chappy. However, I realized that this deserves more than just a "lime ju" so, wishful thinking ahead, I replaced it with the hottest, most spiciest, lovely thing that I know I will never ever get tired of. I find good ones, I find bad ones, I find horrible ones, but I never ever give up on it. Yup, you got it, the tom yam soup!

Back!

And a happy new year everybody! Climbed mount Kinabalu (again) and descended a via feratta (for real, not the plastic-y, fake one in Singapore), all during the night of the 31st December -1st January! A tiring, but still exhilarating way to start the new year! My charity project, in which I sometimes take people mountaineering, was not a stupendous success like the Nepal trip, but it wasn't a horrible failure either. The two people we were with were unfit but complaining, which by now I am really intolerant to. Nonetheless, it was great and we ALL made it in the end. The sad part is that I still have to accompany 2 more people to Kinabalu, which only means that I have to descend those horrible stairs again.

The only problem with having such a great start to the year is that the rest of the year must match the start. Hopefully, this year I will (finally) manage to graduate and find some poor sucker to hire me, for real money in a real job :)