Sometimes, I surprise myself

Last night's training was a deadly killer one for me. Not only was I sleepy sleepy, but my left elbow is really acting up and so I was back to that stage where I can do something but I really can't do anything. Forget about jumping with my left hand (and because sandra's right elbow is injured, these are all the routes that I get) ... Welcome to looser/injury land, Claudia!!! Woohoo!!

We did round on specific holds (crimps, pinches, pockets) and finally I saw some progress: on the lizard wall I hanged on the designated holds and! I only dropped about half way on the 38 degrees wall (I usually drop when I get on that section because I am so hardcoded that I can't adapt to not using the specific hold that I've been using for ages now). Then we went upstairs to do assisted one-arm pull-ups (only right hand for me, yay! and! progress!! Doris the TickCross only had to push me up for a little wittle bit :) ), hangs with weights, laddering and some locks with weights, woohoo!!).

But this is not what I want to talk about. We went to dinner/supper afterwards at some food court. And guess what! I realized that I HEART prime numbers!!! Yup. My locker at the yoga gym is always 53. Used to have 53 and 51 but I ditched 51 because I had an epiphany yesterday and realized it was not prime. Then, last night, when we sat down at our table (number 16), I remember thinking "too bad we're not sitting at the next one" (17). I am so boring, right? It could be worse!!!! I could like perfect numbers (6, 28, 496, 8128, ...) which would leave me stuck on only two lockers at the gym!! Crawling back into my hole now ...

Crazy long weekend, whew!

So. To sum it up. Ran 21 km on Friday night. For Marian's sake I took a power gel (2xcaffeine) so I ended up sleeping fitfully all night. No biggie, it's not like I didn't have a tutorial to teach on Saturday (make-up for the Deepavali holiday on Monday). It was horrible (the tutorial I mean). Attendance: 9am -10am: 3/21, 10am - 11am: 3/17, 11am - 12am: 6/20. By the last hour I was very tired and very aggressive. So much for being born to be a teacher, like my chinese sign says. I'm a dog. Sunday, two hours of yoga and then a whole day of window shopping... Wanted to go eat durians with the team but I was so damn tired. Lied to them, told them I was working. Working hard to stay awake, that is.

This brings us to Monday, yesterday, in which we went cycling in Pulau Ubin. Woke up at 6, we finally made it out of the house by 7am. Sprinted back home to get the mozzie spray that Maria forgot. I hate running in the morning and I could not have made it had it not been for "Eye of the tiger" playing on my iPod. Cycling was fun, fun, fun!! Pretty adventurous too! See this guy in the picture? Well, I was standing right in that spot ten minutes later when I didn't want to let him go fish out his camera that he dropped after slipping in the water... I ended up in the water as well, of course. So much for showing off. Nike running shoes slip just as much as Adidas ones, apparently.

It was a pretty nice trek, we even spotted wild life in the form of a pretty bored wild (?) pig and one BIG spider.


And one dragonfly from last time's cycling trip.


This is called "lipstick plant". Imagine kissing lips like these, man! Smack!!


And my most favorites of the favorites of the ever favorites, coffee beans!!



Note to self: When I dressed on monday morning I had two t-shirts to chose from: my marathon finisher t-shirt or my "beware of falling climbers" t-shirt. Took the marathon one because I reasoned it is inspirational. Morale: when you're gonna fall, you're gonna fall!

Three girls and one guy

Yup. This is the name of our climbing team for this year's Climb On 2008 festival. The unfortunate guy is Jiasheng (the one that thinks we should crimp harder!) and the three lucky ladies are Sandra, Charlene and I. This year I am planning a hard core approach. Will climb till I die. Will pack lunch. Will not leave the climbing area. Will take Bobby for some shots. Will climb till I die. Will not leave climbing area. Will ask Sandra to buy lunch. Will go with Sandra to make sure she buys the right thing seeing how I am a foreigner here and she has been living here for 21 years and thus I know stuff much better than she does. Yup.

Small world

Whoa, check out the photos here! These are the photos from the Nikon Small World Prize. Whoa! Pictured is the

Marine diatoms, Pleurosigma (200x)

Diatoms are plankton with glass-like silica shells and play a major role in removing carbon dioxide from the atmosphere.

Climbaprix 2008

Whoa, believe it or not but I wasn't last for climbaprix. Actually 11 or 10, which put me in the middle of the pack. Even flashed 2 routes!!! Yay, there is hope for me!!! And now for the bad parts.

• the 2 routes, they were easy ...


• first route taught me that I (still) can't jump/deadpoint for the life of me


• second route taught me that I don't know what to do on/under a roof. I just hanged there and kicked my legs without any clue. Must do leg raises while hanging. My ass is (still) too big.


• third route taught me that my power endurance sucks. On both of my attempts I got to the 7th tile (a green pocket) but couldn't move from there. Was nervous but hearing Jensen from the crowd ("Claud, relax!") amazingly helped a lot (until now, whenever i heard somebody tell me to relax it would only exacerbate my sewing machine feet).


• fifth route taught me that yes! I can finish two routes in a row. I was so nervous with my left hand on the shitty ending tile and with flashbacks from last week's mock comp when I couldn't match ... but I did it in the end. Could hear YX's encouragements. This is rare, cause I normally don't hear anything at all.

Watched my friend cry again. This spiked primal instincts in me, but this time there is nothing i can do. You can't bully people into getting back together and that's that. Reminded me of how lucky I was once when I was able not to meet the person that made me cry. This allowed me to move on even when I didn't want to. Cherlyn texted me this morning saying that she had dreamed of them getting back together. So sad.

A story about shoes

I don't know if I wrote this here before ... but here goes. A while back a friend of mine told me this story about a relative of his. So this relative was taking the train from the north part of the country to the capital. Or I should say, the Capital. And this was a very long train ride, in the middle of the hot hot summer. The older train models in Romania do not have any cooling, only heating. Gasp! I know it sounds impossible, but that's the story. So it is a hot hot summer day and our train has no air con.

It is thus to no surprise that our relative friend falls asleep and sleeps for the whole 4 hours it takes him to get to the Big City, the Capital. He sleeps with his feet up on his brand new suitcase. He wakes up when the train reaches its destination (probably sleeps as sound as me) only to find that somebody has stolen his shoes and his wallet. They didn't steal his suitcase because it was heavy, I suppose. So he find himself shoe-less in the middle of the nations biggest, most crowded, hottest, train station, i.e. the Capital's Train Station. In Romania, when you go on the subway and people give you the eye-over, what they will stare most will be your shoes. Being barefoot or wearing ugly/cheap shoes is like being naked. What follows is a lengthly adventure of him walking barefoot through the train station, convincing people to give him money (he is barefoot and thus unreliable) to call my friend, etc. I'll spare you that because it's not what I want to say.

Throughout his entire life, at Christmas parties, Easter specials, birthdays, family gatherings, BBQs with friends, etc., the ONLY story that my friend's relative had to say and would say was about how his shoes got stolen on that fateful train ride. Any adventure, anything that his friends would share, he would say "aah, that's nothing, wait till you hear what happened to me on that train ride ...". Do you want to have a single story to say?

Climba, Climba, Climbaprix!

A bit nervous about this year's first competition. My left elbow is acting up because i might've sort've overtrained it?! But! My plan for this competition is NOT to be the last (like I was in this weekend's mock comp and for rockmaster). I am a bit turned off by the fact that they are going for bonus system which means that after you get the bonus tile (somewhere in the middle of the route), it won't matter how far you go unless you finish. Which I know I can't finish. So maybe I'll just go for the bonuses. However, if i do this, I will end up feeling that I cheated myself (no point in joining a competition if you are not dead pumped at the end of it). I love pump.

Am planning to go down on Saturday morning to cheer for the novices since our reporting time is somewhere around 6pm. Will go armed with books and laptop, not like the last time when I thought I will die of boredom.

We have a long way to go

Just found out that the first ever official marathon took place yesterday in my home town of Bucharest, the capital of Romania. Approximately 150 people started. 150. Wow. I am number 39703 for the standard chartered marathon. We (still) have a long way to go. Here's to many many more marathons in Bucharest! Hope I get a chance to take part in one too!

Reviewing again

There are two main functional interfaces: ImageIn (client) and ImageOut (server) which consume and supply images respectfully.

I hate black sandals

Not sure if I hate this Monday's black sandals or Saturday's black sandals more. And yes I own exactly 2 pairs of fancy sandals. And, yes, both are black, what can I say? Today's ones had straps that cut deep into my swollen get-up-at-7-rush-to-school-to-have-coffee-such-that-you-don't-kill-your-students-during-tutorials feet. Needless to say I ditched them and now I am wearing formal skirt + blouse and my orange flip flops, woohooo!!! Saturday's ones made me stagger onto the stage and almost, ALMOST trip on it. Why oh why do they give the award and one end of the stage then require you to walk the entire stage to get off at the other end?! WHY?! Anyhow, I survived.

Not so many people at the awards and I don't have the pictures (yet) and the food was bad, but it was still nice. Climbed in the morning (I won't get into how I got last again for a competition) then had a quick cold shower, changed into my one and only dress (black of course) and headed for the reception. When we got there I was absolutely famished. So we (Adrian, Doris, Teck Chew, Edwin) ate TWO plates of tortilla chips. Yup. Ok, I confess, I did most of the eating. I bet they didn't know I had such speed in me :))

One picture I got off the team blog. See if you can find me, shouldn't be too difficult.

Putting my feet up

In an unprecedented attack of procrastination (with respect to running, that is) Marian and I decided to postpone our 21 km run scheduled for last night to Friday night. Friday we will run, rain or no rain, pain or no pain. The hours last night were well spent having fun and eating dinner with our two bestest friends. We will not see them for a long time starting from this December, but that is the subject of a future rant.

Part of Project Elephant, tonight I'm going for yoga AND! shopping with Cristina for her yoga pants and yoga stuffs. I so love shopping trips when I am not shopping for anything. Actually, those are the only shopping trips that I DO like. When I buy something for myself I take the blitzkrieg approach: ponder for about two weeks on what I want to buy, then go and buy it from the first shop that I enter. Dun let my eyes wonder on anything. In and out in half an hour.

Plonk, plonk, plonk

This would be the sound that I make when I try to swim. Would be because I don't think anybody is there to hear it considering that my movements are very hectic. This and a horrible coughing noise once my lungs decide I've swallowed enough water for the day. Today's climbing training was 10 laps (25m) of the swimming pool (yes, swimming, not walking around it, even though the thought did cross my mind) followed by SEVEN endurance routes in the gym (easy-hard-easy-hard-easy-hard-easy).
I think I swallowed half the pool. I don't know how to swim but I try! YAY! Also, girls here do not wear a two piece bathing suit when going to the pool. Need to remember that. I felt naked.

The endurance routes were horrible especially the last ones. Especially after last night Marian and I ran 19 km. I am now officially beat. Going to crawl in a hole and cough the rest of the water out of my lungs.

Tuesdays are evil

Seriously. Climbed with San yesterday. Yesterday was the first time in history when I went down to the gym specifically to do fingerboard/campus board. Here is a description of the exercises that we did. For the last set though, I sort of kinda fell from the campus board. Unfortunately, a flap of about 1cm of skin from my left ring finger wanted to hang around the board rungs. Like this, a loose skin flap is born. I'm going to call it Flappy. Flappy hurts like hell.

Next, while we were climbing in the super packed gym, San fell and hurt her elbow. Pretty much like I hurt mine a year or so ago. I guess with this injury and the arrival of Flappy climbing on Thursday (tomorrow) is definitely out.

Next, when we were leaving the gym, it really really started raining. I finally managed to swim home only to realize when I reached a locked gate that a) I didn't have a card and b) I didn't have a phone to call marian to come pick me up. So, I did what any other normal human being would do in the pouring rain, I climbed over the gate. Yup. Three security cameras on it but nobody came to say anything to me. Then, because i didn't want to spoil my brand new colorful slippers, I took them off and walked through the parking lot barefoot. I walked until I reached a puddle of water of course. I promptly slipped on it of course. I was holding the slippers so I tried to balance myself and hit my right forearm on some steel rails. Really bad. I even have a bruise (and I never bruise).

Be warned friends! Tuesdays are not for everybody.

Surviving the Monday

Pfft! And I thought my next post will be about how I survived the weekend when it should be about how I survived this Monday. Woke up at 7am to reach school at 8 plus just to give me enough time to drink my coffee before my tutorials start. The first tutorial group apparently reacted to my threats from the week before and were prepared. The second and third however really got on my nerves. Absolutely no preparation whatsoever. It really annoys me to the point of almost losing it. Anyhow, survived that too. I only threatened them like I did with my first group, so let's see how that will turn out. Students here have an amazing ability of memorizing stuff and an awesome knack of not being able to think. Like when I ask them what are the two types of something, they all answer instantly. But when I ask next what is the difference between them the silence is so silent you can hear a fly scratch itself.

Next came the second episode in my teacher-student mishaps when I ended up freeing one hour of my time before their midterm just to answer one student's questions. Turns out he had 2 (TWO) questions and I had to spend the next 50 minutes just hanging out outside the midterm lecture theatre. And I survived the midterm too! Though I don't know how they survived it, cause they had a lot of questions. To my satisfaction some of the questions were those that I insisted on discussing during the tutorial. I'm curious though about how many of them actually paid attention and remembered. Probably none.

I love tropical countries

Rain, rain, come again

Oh boy oh boy was it raining cats and dogs and lizards and what not this morning at 6:30 am. I love the rain. More precisely, I love the sound of rain. And the thunders, lightning and all that .... love 'em love 'em love 'em. When I am indoors sleeping/reading, that is. Not when I am outdoors climbing or wanting to climb, mind you. Then, yeah ... there are no words to describe what I feel then.

To come back to the sound of rain. I love it so much that when I was little (10-12 years old) I used to let the water run in the bathtub and sit (yes sit) on the margin and do my homework. Back then the water bill was divided among all residents of the block. I had no problems about wasting water and killing the planet back then. Now I don't do it anymore, except sometimes when I really really want to relax. Then I hop in the tub and read.

This weekend is going to be very full. Last night Marian and I ran 16 km! Wohoo! In about 96 minutes, more or less. Not bad at all for rookies. Today wanted to play tennis, but eh, the rain ... Tomorrow going climbing (hopefully at climb asia, I have a score to settle with a 6b and with my fear of falling). Meeting cristina to check out true yoga to see if we're joining. Sunday (if the weather holds) Marian has planned cycling in Pulau Ubin. Can't wait!! Hope there will be mud. I get a certain high when I think of cycling in the mud. Sounds ... extreme!

On students

yeah. Wanted to make this a nice, elaborate post but my students are depressing me so yeah. First of all, school is different here. In what? It's not free people! This means that attitudes of the profs back home (i.e. "go and study by yourself, I dun care" or "I have no idea what to talk about, I am here because I know people" or "you will all end up wiping the floors at mcDonald's") are not permitted here. I would not care very much about the latter, but sometimes, I would just love to tell my students to go stick ... their fingers in the keyboard and google it for crying out loud!

I am starting to draw the line at "oh i can't compile and I get errors like "javac -invalid flag" (this is not a compilation error) because they have problems reading and going through instructions that are longer than 3 steps. Or like "can we meet you for consultation? tuesday at 10:15 am?" "Cannot, pls meet me in the alloted slots (i.e. later than 5pm)" (my answer much longer and more polite). "sorry cannot, can we meet you earlier? this is because some of us live in the west and need to get home in time for dinner". "Sure, what time?" And then answer miraculously with "Wednesday, 10 am?" (giving them about 7.5 hours to get home... I guess they are WALKING to Boon Lay?) Top it off with some nice icing and be 25 minutes late. After I had to swim through the rain to get to school on time. Yup. I lost it for one second there. Or "I can't seem to grasp the differences between "nice to have" features and "must have" features". Brr. I do appreciate it when I see that some students really take the time to do some search before they come to me. It shows respect for my wasted time (I am not payed for consultation - I could do research watch climbing videos instead).

And the worst of it all is when I encounter teacher's pets. They annoy the hell out of me. Not really there but not really stupid or lazy either. Trying to make up for it by sucking up. I mean c'mon!!

Students are not as tech-smart (i.e. don't know how to program) as I was expecting, but this is normal considering that they don't do programming from high-school as we are used to. Unfortunately, they are incapable of thinking even 1mm outside the box, lack critical thinking and always expect an yes/no answer. Which is very difficult to give for a software engineering course. I started to tell a group how their report in order to be comprehensible should answer three questions ("what?", "why?", "how?") and they were writing it instead of thinking about what I had said. Pfft!!

I want to write things down for them (as in what's next for their project and so on) but I don't know how many people will read through it, considering that for the last long email that I wrote 50% of the people wrote to me to ask a question that was answered in the second last paragraph of the email. Brr. I wish I had had profs that cared.

Quote

From Tracy from the new Black Diamond catalogue:

In this life, pain is inevitable, suffering is optional. [Dalai Lama]

My poster

Wanted to have a permanent memory (not that I'll be able to forget - even Alzheimer won't take this from me) of our failure and success on Matterhorn, so I wanted to buy a poster. I roamed the streets of Zermatt looking for the poster. It's a specific one, with the Horli ridge blown up and the route drawn with a yellow line with markers (in English) showing the important points in the route. You see, I knew which poster I wanted because it dominates the staircase in Marius's home. I have looked at it for years now. My trouble was that I was indeed roaming the streets of Zermatt, but I was doing it at lunchtime when all the shops are closed. Except for a house.

More of a restaurant really, with a crowded souvenir shop at the first floor. I knew it was crowded and crammed because I could peep inside. My poster was shown outside and there was something written in German on top of it. Maybe 20 letter words, anyhow I was confused. The shop was locked but there was an arrow pointing to the restaurant entrance. There, at the bar, the waitress didn't know English and I didn't know German or swiss. The people having lunch were staring at me (my face was burned and because I was so damn tired I would sometimes stumble) but I really didn't care. I finally left. Didn't go far until I realized that maybe the other words written next to a bell meant "Ring really really hard if it's between 12 and 2". So I went back.

And I rang and I rang until an old man showed up at the balcony above (balcony full of flowers, of course). So he came down smelling of lunch and I pointed to the poster. He unlocked the shop and we went in. It was very very crammed with all the possible wood carved artifacts and souvenirs that you could imagine ever buying from Switzerland. Masks, towels, cows, small matterhorns, big matterhorns, edelweisses, flutes, little sheperds, everything. It also had that smell you get from really old, woody houses. The old man asked me if I really wanted the poster, I said yes, payed and left happily.

Today I put it up in my lab. It does take away half of the precious light from my window, but I don't mind. The markers are written in German. It's not the same angle so it doesn't look as BIG as the one I wanted. The lower edge has scissors marks, like those that remain when you can't cut a piece of paper straight and you keep trying to return to your imaginary straight line. I love it.

Restless

• should start writing up a conference paper but all I can think of is the upcoming trip to Vietnam (December) and then the trip to Krabi in May with Marian (and Vlad if he manages to come).



• should find music that goes with writing this particular paper, but am listening to Bob Marley and thinking about sunny climbs whether in Thailand or Romania.



• instant coffee only works as a dessert for me. I need a cup of strong coffee or tea to get my day started. Instant coffee only works in mountaineering trips.



• perhaps I'm just so tired after last night's training and this busy weekend. I can't need a holiday so soon. Must work hard to graduate and move to Europe. Then I can climb as much as I want and friends from Singapore can come and stay at my place for free! (I hope you read this, Edwin) I'll have a cat, a dog, a house of my (our) own that I can fill up with books and gear as I wish.



• when I graduated form high-school (after I got into uni) I left home for three months and went to live in the mountains in a tent. After I graduated uni I moved to Asia. These days I am daydreaming about what I will do when I (finally) finish school.



• got a brand new, empty passport and i'm dying to fill it up with stamps again.