When the going gets tough,

The tough get going.... What do you do one fine evening when you start to prepare your lunch for the next day and lo and behold! your gas tank suddenly fizzles to a stop?
.
.
.
.
Of cors! You remember you have an old camp stove somewhere in some closet! You ask marian to dig it up (delegation!) and then you proceed to cook in the middle of the living room.


And I know it looks like what it looks like, but it's just lentils, ok?

Motivation

Dear SoC,

Please give me a PhD, because I know how to make loose associations. Just today, I have established that Marian and Aurel Vlaicu and Traian Vuia (two romanian flying pioneers) have the same bald patch.

It follows that this particular bald style, i.e. high around the sides of the forehead, leaving a small bear's tail in between, is a shape prone to aerodynamics. Figure 1 shows Marian's bald patch (notice how hot his girlfriend is).

Figure 1. The Bald Patch of Marian

As we can see in Figure 2, Marian's bald patch is very similar with Aurel Vlaicu's bald patch.

Figure 2. The Bald Patch of Aurel Vlaicu

Figure 3 shows Traian Vuia's bald patch. The similarity here is not as obvious, specifically because Traian Vuia seems to be applying a comb-over technique.

Figure 3. The Bald Patch of Traian Vuia

As it can be seen, all men showcase the same type of bald patch. As a conclusion, I could only recommend that either Marian starts taking flying lessons, or that he starts taking physics and engineering lessons for his future career as an airplane designer.

Future work includes establishing the social impact of the bald patches of famous men. For example, as it can be seen in Figure 4, which represents a 50 Romanian Leu note, the bald patch of Aurel Vlaicu is heavily stylized and diminished. The reasons for this modification remain a research challenge.



Best regards,
Claudia

Humility

I have two photo cameras now. One that is my own baby, namely, Bobby, and another that I share with Marian, our baby, Maxi. With two cameras and amateurish knowledge about photography, composition, etc. My photos still lack something. Last night I found out what. They lack sincerity. And joy. I would say they lack reality, if it didn't sound so weird.

Above is a photo taken by a woman in a prison in Romania, part of a photographic experiment that went and gave six inmates six cameras and asked them to take photos. Actually, all the photos in this post are from the same experiment.


They used the same techniques I would have used, given that somebody would have told me to shoot that particular photo. Because otherwise I don't think that i would have. The photo equipment that i have is much more advanced than what they had, yet still ...

The authors and all the characters are inmates from that prison. The set is also the prison.


This is the link, forget about the text, just look at the pictures.

PS. The umbrella in the second picture cracked me up.

Best Sunday in a while

This Sunday I have decided not to go to work. I know, it's rare that i show such amazing procrastination but! i just needed a holiday. So Marian and a few others and I went cycling in Pulau Ubin.

We woke up to Marian finding out that the W90 is available in Singapore! So he left the house, rushing to buy it before we went to pulau ubin. It is here, we have it, it's our first electronic equipment bought together, our first baby so to speak. It's name is MAXI!


The pictures below (except the last one) are by Maxi.

It rained in pulau ubin on Sunday, so there was much skidding and a lot of mud! I enjoyed it thoroughly as any Pig should do. I have decided that, while I am a Dog by birth and nature, I am also a Pig because I LOVE getting dirty (and issues like clean shoes, socks etc do not faze me). So i am either a Swog or a Doig or a Piog, haven't decided yet.



We saw many people in pulau ubin that were either picking or selling durians. So at one point we decided to follow one guy that had stopped alongside the woods, to see where he was getting the durians. And so we did. He picked up a conversation with me, asked me where we were from, if we wanted durians etc. He ended up in offering us all the small durians he had picked so far! For free!! Turns out he's nepalese and he was very excited that his name (Raman) was very similar to our country's name (he said he didn't want his pic on a website, so i am not putting it up). We had a truly tasty durian feast by the side of the road.



This is how much i ate. Slurp!




We exchanged numbers and by the end of the day we met up again and he gave us 3 BIG durians that we had for dinner late on Sunday. Now, i promised I won't put a picture of the guy, but the thing is all the other pics in which i hold the durians have me looking either a) DEMENTED or b) full of pimples (both of them true). The pimples are a direct consequence of me being upset about that idiot's drunk driving. So I will forsake vanity and tell you to please don't drink and drive because you will give me pimples.

Adrenaline

This post is because tonight I watched a guy in our group get on his bike and drive home after drinking 1.5 l of beer AND I COULDN'T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT. oh sure, I screamed and i kicked and I yelled and I bickered about it for at least an hour, but, short of actually tackling the guy, there was nothing I could do. I felt so helpless I wanted to scream.

Of all the stupid ways to die i find drunk-driving on top of the fucking list. And now I'm on a fucking rampage, bitching about everything under the sun/moon. And I expect about ten new pimples on my face come the morrow ...

Marian says that this kind of behavior - the guy's - is because adrenaline is lacking in Singapore. For example, I - so Marian says - fight with him for
every little shit. Whereas the guy goes driving while slightly drunk. Compartively, life in Romania is so full of adrenaline that there's no need for self made doses.

And to this I say:

If the guy wants adrenaline, let him go take a dump on a fucking railway track while the train is coming, and not mess with other people's lives. Dumbfuck.

Realization

I just realized that

I am speeding up while running past bus stops because my secret fear is that otherwise I will get overtaken by people running after the bus.

And i just had to stop my run and come blog this. Ha hah, no really, it was raining too hard and because i had forgotten my ipod, i took up marian's phone. Fear that it will get wet and then end up like mine made me stop and turn around.

I love iPhones, they make such great excuses!

iPhone test

Just to please Marian, I am writing this although I am about to zzzzzzz .... Climbing was great tonite except for the topless, sweaty guy, yuck!!

Seriously, climb Asia should have this printed out: a) no climbing topless if you sweat like a pig b) no climbing topless unless you have a fucking eight pack.

NOBODY wants to see your sweaty rolls of fat, you fucking asshole!!

Hell [partially] froze over

For the past year and 8 months I have been using this as a mirror.




Yes, I was using a bus stop, A BUS STOP! as a mirror because we didn't have any mirror in our room. I was using Marian as a critic as well, but his answers were guided by self-preservation and as such could not be relied upon.

It all went downhill this saturday when I flipped because I had asked marian how I looked, he said, "You look amazing!" (see? biased!) and I reached the bus stop (about 200m away) and saw that the only amazing thing about how I looked was how amazingly delusional I was to think that those type of pants could actually make me look normal instead of the big fat whale that they made me look like.

And so something snapped in me and I told Marian that if he doesn't go and buy a mirror ASAP I WILL LEAVE HIM. And I started remembering all the times I had told him to please go buy me a mirror puhlease, pwetty puhlease, etc etc. And so he relented just to put an end to the reminiscence.

And now, lo and behold:

Oh noes~!

Look what landed on my desk!! (love the texture!)



It had zillions of layers of crust, that Marian hacked at with a small wee knife:


And this is what was beneath:


Sadly, the interior is as hard and as dry as the exterior. Totally not a good investment.

How's life?

I think I am submitting, i want to die my hair green, i lost muscle mass and put on fat, my mother is lonely, oh so lonely, my grandmother is getting older and older and i don't want her to ever die, cherries, bread, cheese, durians, i hope my old dog forgave me for leaving him because i sure as hell haven't forgiven myself, great teaching feedback, dirt under my fingernails, clutter, food, didn't shower after running and am now talking to you, i am going nepal, getting married, i should look for a job, who's gonna hire me, want to die my hair green, going nepal, driving, honeymoon climbing with friends, mo money mo problems, three pairs of the same favorite bra to make sure i never lose it again, stress, anger, fear, adrenaline, climbing is great but i suck at it, living with a chinese is bound to make me racist, you would know all this if you would have taken the time to ask before, what marathon to run this year, hell, pioneer is great but it is at the other end of the universe, but you didn't so fuck off ...

And this is why I pause before I say "FINE".

Sibiu

I am writing my head off, rushing to submit the shit asap, so I am basically out.of.words. But I can still post some pictures from the wonderful city of Sibiu, Romania. I had never been there before so I was quite amazed to see that there are still towns in Romania in which the old buildings have survived the communist onslaught. Just goes to show how little (if any) I know about my country.

Light:


View from the small tower:


Tower of the cathedral:


Main square:



Would love to live in the green house.


CIA


I did not do any photoshop to those clouds!


Storks on houses? => Transylvania!


Kitchy? Classy? Haven't decided yet.


Behind the polished main squares


At play


Watching the world




I like!

Dog faces

Leaving for Singapore very soon ... i find it harder every year to leave my mom alone. And this beautiful beautiful place, but as we say, ... too bad people live here. Anyways, while flying off, here's a couple of dog faces i shot during this trip.

This is Dark. He's a spoilt, little brat that misses his master dearly (not me).


This is Bush. I love him. He loves me. It's that simple. Would I have never thought I will ever get to say I love Bush, ha!




This is a mutt. He followed us to a summit and then we gave him some food. no questions asked, no strings attached. I wish I could take all of them home, but I can't so I just grind my teeth and bear it.






This is Bingo. My baby, my soul, my oldest love. Ha!

And because I like to keep you on your toes ...


Singapore, here I come!

Great to be home!

Sorry for the long silence, but I am thoroughly enjoying the last few days home. With all the floods, I can't say it has been a wonderful climbing experience (6 hours over 3 days of climbing), but I enjoyed:

1. The cherries! About 15 kg in 2 weeks!


2. Picking sour cherries from my grandmother's tree!


3. My old dog!




4. Buildings in various towns






5. Storks on light poles in various villages in Transylvania.



6. Cheese, eaten with tomatoes that DO NOT taste like plastic!


7. Spending time with marian and his and mine folks - over endless BBQs!



8. Watching brazil play with my mom (never knew she was a fan!)