Allergy free!

Turns out, I'm not allergic to absolutely anything! I can hug and kiss dogs and cats to my heart's content because they are not the cause of my allergy-like symptoms. Sigh. I'm jot allergic to chilli either (whew!): the doctor's office had to go out and buy chili to test me. I feel special!

OMG.

Probably the only New Years resolution that I will ever make and get to keep is getting back to posting on this blog. I have missed the act of writing so much these past six months but then again I've missed my words too. Language is starting to come back to me though so perhaps I can start writing again! Whee!

One picture Tuesday

Heh - my posting schedule is terrible. And by this I mean non-existent. I've just landed this awesome new role at my workplace - it is exciting but at the same time it is terrifying in that I gotta get my ass organized while at the same time deal with Denali (like this, deal with denali, so cool!) and how it's wrecked all our lives. Or maybe it didn't. Anyway.

So. Looking back when D and S visited me and Arapiles - again, note to self: we climbed in Araps AND DID NOT DIE. We took however a gazillion selfies, one more crazy than the other. Here are a few, but you can see most of them here.

One picture tuesday

You only realize just how completely spent  and soo close to burning out you where when you take a few days off completely off and realize that there IS life outside work and train.

We found this koala in the wild! It was munching like mad on its leaves and paid us no notice, even though we took about a hundred selfies and touched it many times. Nom.

One picture Tuesday

The best way to spend your Saturday.

One picture Tuesday

I'm blogging less because I'm training more and working the same. Sigh. Anyway, here's what I found while running in chambers gully last week (video to follow).

One picture Tuesday

We have a new kitten, and I suffered nearly fatal injuries to save it from the claws of the resident kitten.

Behold my injuries:

And behold the new object of my affection:

What do you do...

... when you find yourself at the end of the Earth without your wallet and your credit cards? And having to pay for lunch at a restaurant (cause that's how you determined that you don't have your wallet ...).
Oh. You also have an international flight in 3 hours.

What do you do!? YOU PANIC.

This may or may not (snort) have happened to me today. Lost my wallet, found out that I had lost it while.at.hard.rock.cafe.having.to.pay.for.lunch. Went back to the hotel, talked to everybody, no sight of the wallet.

Ran back to Hard Rock Cafe, called Marian in the middle of the night and had him dictate his credit card details to pay for lunch. By this time I was completely mortified, by the way*.

My main problem, other than the fact that I had no mooolah whatsoever,  was that I also had no way of getting to the airport, other than walking the many many miles that separate Atlanta from its airport.

Enter the petty cash form. Turns out, big hotels have a petty cash fund  (probably also called the stupid tourist fund) and in this case 36 dollars went to paying my sorry little ass' cab to the airport.

I love the Hyatt Regency Atlanta!! I got to the airport safely, checked in, passed TSA. On my way to the gate, while I was contemplating being truly and utterly broke and thus unable to eat any food (qantas food is terrible unfortunately), I glance to the floor and find 5 dollars. To add insult to injury, the hotel manager then calls (international call btw) to tell me that they had found my wallet. Zomg. Stupid AND lucky.

* but three days of everybody telling me congratulations on my best paper award had prepared me for this. RAWR!

The best way to talk about a thing is not to talk about it

... So again I'm not going to discuss the near miss that could have cost me my life while climbing.

But! I have just found the best word to describe me without coffee:
A zwodder.

Man I'm glad the week is over

It was probably one of the shittiest weeks in a while: travelled too much, and worked too much and struggled too much at work, and nearly killed myself on Thursday (for real death not the omg I nearly died kind... - more about this later).  

This morning I woke up to this photo:

San and Dodo are coming to Adelaide soon and this will be our trip banner. Guess who's who!!

One picture Tuesday

During my last year as a PhD student in Singapore and every time I visited since, San and I went to muji and sat down in this chair. For each of my visits to Singapore, we averaged about 3 muji visits. We sat in this chair many many many times!

The chair was and is expensive, despite its recent reduction in price. However, last year I won a teaching award, which came with some mooolah. I just spent this moolah on this chair (the single seater version): cut this one in half and ditch the cute Asians.

How will I transport it home? who knows? Who cares?! Chair delivered tomorrow!!

Mount Lofty - part 3

A story in pictures.

Do not judge please.

Number of kangaroos: 2

Number of foxes: 1

Time to summit: 1hr 20 mins

Weight: 15 kg

20

In hexadecimal, because life is awesome lidat.

The only benefit of growing old is that the number of awesome people you get to meet has the potential to increase. 

I got this card today!!

The Bear!

I just found myself a new best friend! Enter Bear, my grandmother's one year old romanian shepherd puppy. I say puppy, but he's like 35kg in weight, and when he stands with  his paws on my shoulder, his nose is higher than my head.

He's a lovely little one but he's untrained and my grandmother cannot really handle him. The fucker who brought him here can go and fuck himself. Ah well.

The problem with this breed is that they are very hard to train, especially at this age. It took me 2 hours to train him to sit and it's probably going to take three days to learn a stay. And of course, my grandmother will not practice this with him and aaargh. Ah well. Who can resist this smile?

 Here's us demonstrating sit. We are very very proud. Whereby "we" I mean "I" because he couldn't really be fussed as long as somebody plays with him.

He's really really curious and somewhat smart. Also, very stubborn. 

PS. San, Dodo, I have no wifi hence no whatsapp - this will change soon! Merry Christmas!

Rawr!!

On Tuesday I skipped half a day of work to go pick cherries. I wish I could say I'm sorry, but I'm not.

Behold my stash!

The cherry orchard also has morello cherries! ZOMG!! Soo cool!!

I wish I could say I had a bad time. And I did, once all the cherries were eaten. Sigh. 5kg is just not enough.

MaddAddam

I never do book reviews here because what the hell why would you.

But this book. This book had me crying, and I mean floods coming down from my eyes, on my face and all the way down my neck before I could stop the tears in any way. This happened in broad day light, on a plane (15 hours flight btw), in front of everybody. So much so that the person sitting next to me asked me what I was reading. I couldn't answer, of course, because I was still bawling. Poor guy was probably terrified thinking that he has to spend the next 13 hours so close to a lunatic.

In this book, my favorite swear word is a deity. Because, help us, Oh Fuck.

Overheard at the Lincoln Memorial

No statue in Washington, D.C. is allowed to be larger than the statue in the Capitol building, which is 19 ft. The Abraham Lincoln statue and all other statues around the area are 19ft. But if you're in Washington, D.C. and know the rules you can do anything. This statue is on a 16ft platform. The statue of dr Martin Luther king is 30 ft but that is not a statue, it is a sculpture because you can't see its feet.

Tabataaaaaaaaaaa!

On Monday I did the Tabata protocol for running. 4 minutes (8 sets) of 20 seconds SPRINT WITH ALL YOUR MIGHT followed by 10 seconds of death.  I was dead by set 2, but still kept at it.

On Tuesday, I could barely move. On Wednesday, I could move but could not run. It was more of a death shuffle, requiring me to lift my legs using a rotative hip movement. I think my hamstrings shrunk by 2cm ...

I went for a recovery run in Morialta, figuring that I could blame me overall pathetic performance on the uphill on the hamstring issue. It was a beautiful, sloooooow run, but good nevertheless as I met this little guy. And yes, he's a guy (very much so actually).

One picture Tuesday

My new advertisement for PhD students.

Kermit's first day out

I got THE ROPE!!! And it's name is Kermit (yet another piece of western heritage that I need to familiarize myself with). We took Kermit to Arapiles this weekend and had a blast!

Here's how Kermit looks on me - apologies for the terrible quality, it's Marian's fault!

Check out the figure 8 knot!

We tried Dribble, 11 (I think) and two (TWO Stars!) Now remember, in the Arapiles guidebook, the number of stars is equal to the number of OMFGs you will utter on every pitch while you contemplate eternity. This was not the case on Dribble however. We had a blast! 

It starts with a glassy slab (GLAASSY SLAAAB!) but otherwise it has a superb, 50m long pitch! More about this later. First, did I tell you about my new awesome rope? It's name is Kermit!

After the first pitch with the GLAASSY SLAAAB! the weather turned crazy on us and it started to threat like it might transform into a gale. Sort of. Because spring. Or Arapiles. Here's me contemplating the fact that I would have to downclimb the first pitch and the GLAAASY SLAAAB! 

Not a very happy camper. Also, in need of moisturizer.  But in a short span (actually immediately after taking this picture - I wanted it to be on my tombstone, with the caption: "Josh gave me his rack"), the weather cleared and we could do the rest of the route. 

The 50m pitch was this beautiful delicious crack that ate up all my gear and then some. At the end of it you end up on this ginormous ledge where two little gifts from the Bolt Fairies await:

It makes sense because after placing 50m worth of gear, you end up pretty naked! 

I'd never thought I'd ever end up saying this, but here's me matching my rope.

I think Kermit is going to make a lot of friends because of its color. Mr Snake seemed a bit confused.