I R Elephant

But still, IR can hook.

Proof IR can hook

-- bouldering competition. 3rd place, but only because others used me as their beta bitch. Ah well, life is cruel :)

Swear jar.

I was going to swear less at work and keep this endearing [snort] side of my personality for this blog and my personal life. Bad news at work on Tuesday left me saying this:

Fuck you, cancer. Fuck you.

One picture Tuesday

Australia is beautiful. And, obviously, having not seen much of it, I can't really complain. Just that it does not seem to be my kind of beautiful, but then again I have definitely not seen enough of it to say. Hm. Dilemma.

Whereas New Zealand ... Sigh..

Would love to live in the middle of this pasture

Double sigh for this one:

How to spend your Sunday at work

... ideally, mostly working, but also, daydreaming about dogs. Dogs of the future that is, because right now the only dog in our household is this:

1. Both Marian and I want a Beagle.

2. I also want a dachshund, mostly because, well, Dachshund! How can one resist these beady eyes?

3. But what I really like and I feel most comfortable with are big dogs. And when I say big dogs, I mean really big dogs.
Like this:

Or this:

However, neither breeds are available for sale in Australia, so I have settled on this: The Pyrenean Shepherd Dog:

Goggies of the future, I salute you!

Six Foot Track Marathon 2013 race report

I'll say this up front such that whoever is reading this will know who they're actually dealing with: I did not train for six foot track. I qualified for it with a 4:00 hr ROAD marathon and did a lot of short runs on steep to very steep trails, mainly because I've lost my running partner but also because I suck at maths and I'm just lazy I guess to train by myself*.

I went into this with lots of negative thoughts and anguish, doubting myself every step of the looong way in. I went so far as to register for a half marathon to ensure I get over the depression caused by me not finishing 6 ft.... I was so convinced I would not finish! San brought me back to my old self on the day before the race when she said "this is not like you', and I guess at that time everything shifted into race mode and I was positive again.

PRE-RACE

I flew into sydney on Friday morning and took the train to katoomba. On the plane I read Dave M.'s "9 out of 10 climbers make the same mistake", which gave me with sweaty palms for the whole trip.


Arrived at katoomba and the Carrington hotel just as the organizers were getting stuff ready. Helped one of them carry things from the race car... Could not help but notice how very few females were there. And also, just how fit the men were,WTF?!! (And surprisingly, the very fit men had very unfit wives!! But I digress..) The organizer was saying that the river was at its third deepest depth since the race started... Sigh. Butt fatt makes you float I guess...

Registered, got my bib, and decided to buy a white cap (probably the best decision ever!) and then went to check in at the flying fox.

Talked a bit to the owner, expressed my fears for like the zillionth time, and went to carb up!!

I carbed up with a bucket of soup, some garlic bread, and a salmon bagel, and read my book for two hours or so. Browsed some shops and went back to the hotel.

Prepared the stuff for the next day and went to bed.

RACE DAY

Woke up at 5:20 and started to get dressed. Put body glide on every spot on my body that could get chafed. Decided NOT to wear my lucky underwear but wore the race top and shorts. Opted for a knee guard an the ankle guard on my right foot. With this armor on, I moved on to the food: eight energy gels, six snakes, six ginger sugar cubes. First, I tried to put them all in my sports bra. This did not work very well because it turns out they weigh quite a lot and I am not use to that kind of weight around that particular area, ahem - balance is important in races like this!! Second, I tried to use the race belt that Dood gave me for Xmas, but I was afraid I would loose the snakes and the ginger - THAT COULD JUST NOT DO! In the end, I ran with my hydration pack: it fit my cap as well and just felt safer.

Started the two km walk to the start line, but luckily I got picked up by a runner that was taking a cab: it was damn cccccold!!

TEH PLAN

Because there always is one, I had come up with a plan: 2 hours to the river (15km), 2 hours up to The Pluviometer (11km), 2 hours to the finish (19 km). But of course, what I was really hoping for was: 1:40 to the river, 2 hours to Pluviometer, 1:40 to the finish (my PB for a half marathon is 1:45, so I was not entirely delusional... HA! )

THE RACE

1. START TO COX RIVER
It was a slow trod down Nellie's Glenn - I was stuck behind somebody that was super super slow: I didn't mind that but nevertheless I was very keen to overtake her, which I did after we came down from  the Glenn. I overtook her and started running "the flat bits", all 8 km of them. A good thing I had not taken my phone with me, because I would have stopped so many times to take photos: the scenery was BEAUTIFUL!!! Absolutely beautiful! You could see the blue mountains cliffs in the backend, green slopes and all... There were horsies and cowsies and even kangaroos! Absolutely beautiful! This is where my stupid grin started and it did not get off my face until the finish. I was not running fast, which  explains why the slow lady that was in front of me caught up with me again before the river, at the top of a hill. Again, beautiful scenery, blue sky, green fields.

 And the sweeper! Now, the sweeper is a 7:00  runner that ensures that the 7-hour cut-off is met. If the sweeper catches up with you, you're fucked. And so we caught up with the sweeper for the previous wave, and the lady had caught up with me. Fair enough, this was a sign: I decided to stick with her for as long as I could: this was her third time! It took me 1:45 to get to the river, and the water was not deep, only up to my chest.

Stupid grin status: On!

2. COX RIVER TO PLUVIOMETER
The race profile shows a steep steep hill up to a saddle, followed by a downhill for about 3 km, followed by another 3-4 km uphill. 11 km back to roughly the same altitude where we had started from, 15 km before. How hard could it be?

Well.. The first four km were the steepest running track I had ever seen in my whole life. I do not know how people actually run up them, but I had no problems in power-walking them. Power walking pace: between 12-13 minutes/km. Some people were actually trying to run this, but, they quickly gave up: fifth wave for the win, this means that you are not very fast to start with. And so we power-walked. This is where the cap saved me: the bare, steep steep red hills attracted deadly heat.

After four kilometres or so of PAIN, we reached mini-mini saddle - downhill heaven for about three km after it. Now, of course the plan said NOT to sprint this part, but of course I could not listen to the plan and so I sprinted, or what counted for a sprint in that race: 5:40 min/km or so.

And then we reached the steep part again. The last four km were the steepest running track I had ever seen in my whole life. As opposed to the steepest running track I had seen 3 km before, this was motherfucking steep. Steep like 4 km of Chambers Gully motherfuckers put together for four kilometres of PAIN. I was in constant pain: calf pain, neck pain, shoulder pain, and, most importantly, quads pain. Pace: 15-16 min/km.

A guy overtook me at some point (power-walking, mind you): this was his 12th Six Foot Track Marathon, including the illegal ran he had done last year, when Six Foot was cancelled (5:45 btw, without any support). He commented on my armour, and after I explained, we had a bit of a chat for 15 min or so. Before he left me behind, he predicted that i would finish in 6:30! And then he left! Damn his black tights and green six foot 2012 t-shirt!

Time to the top of Pluviometer: 2:15. In total: 4hrs or so.

Stupid grin status: On!

Tired: YES!

3. PLUVIOMETER TO DEVIATION ROAD (8km or so)
There were many swear words going through my mind while on this part. It felt mostly like running on another planet. It was dry, red, and barren sometimes. There were three notable hills that I remember, but I am not sure as i was too busy listening to my quads going: NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! or alternatively FUCK THIS SHIT!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAARGH!!

I wanted to run the hills but my quads didn't, so I power-walked them. Spotted an echidna and stopped for two or three minutes to just look at it.

Stupid grin status: On!

Tired: No!

Dead: YES!

4. DEVIATION ROAD TO FINISH

This part was through beautiful green forest. It was awesome!! There was a motherfucker in the middle, the steepest one so far (but very short): 17 min/km on this one. Got overtaken by two ladies in tutus. Stopped at one of the fire trucks to talk to one of the fireys. My quads wanted to leave on the scree slope (jesus christ, a steep scree slope just before the finish!)  but by virtue of ligaments and other magik dust they still stuck on.

Sprinted to the finish.


Stupid grin status: On!

Tired: No!

Dead: YES!

*also, you can't train for power (for climbing) and for endurance at the same time. Just sayin'. D., feel free to roll your eyes now.

Such a purrfect day

1. My running partner came back from the states and brought me these!!!! I had one three and they were awesome!!

2. A former student came into my office and gave me these (no I cannot be bribed with food)! Habaneros for the win!!!

3. A colleague stood me up for lunch. This left me supremely tired and hungry, so this had to be remedied.  Veggie tacos from a food truck parked outside the university!!

4. Sat on a bench, ate the above, glanced and the below view, and read Joel on Software. Life is good.

One picture Tuesday

I did not take the phone with me to six foot (good thing, otherwise I would not have finished in under 7), so here's a photo from katoomba:

6:36

Finished Six Foot track marathon in six hours and thirty six minutes. What I do not know, is how the hell can marathon runners in Singapore stay on their feet for that long. Anyway, not the longest six hour and a half of my life, but still. Was grinning like an idiot. Will not be able to look an energy gel in the eye for a while. Walking like a crab. Will write race report once photos are out. The river was not too high, only up to my chest. Cold is cccccold!

Realization. Part 245.

I'm bad at math. Well, not quite. But yes. I'm bad at math.  Or maybe I'm not as good as I want myself to be.

Six foot track marathon has a 7 hour cut-off time. I did this calculation while I was running up Blackhill, so probably  my brain was not getting enough oxygen.

Right. So, a 7 hour cut-off time for 45 km means

7 x 60 / 45 = 6 min/km

So then this was stuck in my head: I have to achieve 6 min/km or less for every one of the 45 km in the uphill/downhill rollercoaster that is Six foot in order to finish under the cut-off time.

And I bashed myself and I threw myself at those hills in order to achieve something even remotely close to 6 min/km. Needless to say, this did not get me very far distancewise, because if you really try to run Blackhill in under 6 minutes/km you stand a very good chance to kill yourself. And I was depressed and didn't talk much about it and basically prayed that the whole thing might get cancelled. It won't by the way. It's ONZ!

My last run on Monday was Chambers Gully, and as I was heading up the premotherfucker slope and was redo-ing all this complex math in my head ...

WAITAMINUTE!!

and pulled out the iPhone.

7 x 60 = 420 min

420 min/45 km = 9 minutes 20 seconds/km

Aha! As such, I will go in this race without having crossed 24 km in the last 3 months, but with very good uphill training and good recovery times. Also, a severely bad ankle, but more about this some other time. Fingers crossed.

I just hope I don't get injured, or worse, get pulled off the track because I don't have a chance in hell to finish it.  My BIB number is an even number :(

One picture Tuesday

There is only one duck of this kind around the Torrens linear park and we call it "Special Duck". Special Duck is a ladies man and this is one of the few occasions where he was on shore without his ladies, and as such I could get a good picture of him:

Bouldering in plastic fantastic

I hate climbing gyms. I love the outdoors.  I moved to an outdoors-y place. I climb a lot in climbing gyms. Logico, si?

I have truly become the weekend warrior and the weekday working queen, but in the past few months I have struggled to find the motivation to pull on plastic. Plastic is just what the name says. Plastic. Artificial. Sometimes colorful. The routes are set most of the time by tall motherfuckers who do not think about other people. There are little extra handholds on which one could set one's problems and thus one cannot get very excited about projects. Not training on plastic makes one unfit for the outdoors. It does not help that there are only two small gyms in Adelaide, and both suffer from the same problems. And the bickering goes on and on.

So I try. I have at least two friends with which I set up climbing appointments that I almost never miss.

I try to get my money's worth every time: I must climb enough routes/problems that the price drops under $1 per route/problem. Sometimes, this works well: there is enough combination of psyche and route/problem difficulty that one gets very excited and forgets about leaving, eating, sleeping, nom nom-ing. Sometimes, it doesn't.

I started to watch climbing porn - I never used to before. I still have my sanity though, and put Chris Sharma on silent whenever he tries to talk the meaning of life to me.

It never occurred to me to quit though. So yeah. Don't hang up your shooz my friend, there are ways.

Later edit: perhaps dangerous and obviously increasing of the waist line, but food bribing might work: like in: finish one route, eat one delicious snack. Hm ...

Suck it up, buttercup!

I thought that 2012 was the year where I hit my rock bottom sportswise but it seems I have set a lower one this year. I have just given the CoolRunning forum about the weather in the Blue Mountains what seems to be the 30th refresh*. This whole whining and winging and complaining may be just a defence mechanism (after all, it did get cancelled last year and that did depress me) or a way of getting out of something that I didn't train for, but after all I will get to experience the Blue Mountains and get to run in some cool weather for a change.

As such, I've decided to suck it up and just run it for as long as I can, and then, if I can't, just come back home and pretend I saved somebody's life and thus did not finish in time. Or something. Off any carbs starting with tomorrow until Wednesday, and then mid-day wednesday the carbs are on again! Whee!


* I do not use any readers to inform me when new things are put up on blogs/forums etc. All my reads are manual if and when I do remember to read blogs (which is very often, sadly: I refresh dodo's and other people's blog once a day), I am very disappointed when there are no updates (Ionuca, I'm looking at you!)

Xia Yu

I've been hoping. Hoping and hoping and hoping that it will rain so much next week that Six Foot Track Marathon will get canceled. Canceled such that I don't have to run, but not canceled for the rest of the nutters out there that really want to run this. And, more importantly, that have actually trained for this. Cause I know I haven't! Well, at least not like I wanted to.

Canceled such that I can dash for the grampians and enjoy the long weekend.

Canceled such that I can actually give my lectures rather than have somebody replace me.

Canceled such that I don't fail miserably on it and get depressed all over again. To be honest, I'm kind of sick of (my) failures.

And then a sadistic, masochistic part of me wants it not to get canceled. Probably for the same reasons that I joined in the first place. Bah.

Running in Blackhill

(instead of one picture tuesday)

A student of mine ran in Blackhill a couple of weeks ago. He described the run as challenging, steep, with very high ledges and gigantic boulders. Of course, as with 6 Foot Track, I immediately jumped to the challenge, without, mind you, knowing what I got myself into. On a side note, I have just read the description of 6 Foot Track Marathon. Like just. After two  years or so since I registered for it. After I read it, I curled up in a corner and cried. I may be batshit crazy, but I had just realized that I am stoopid.

Coming back to Blackhill. My first attempt to run it had me run from home to Blackhill, run there for a bit and then get Marian to pick me up. That didn't succeed very well: after 20 or so km and within 2 km of reaching Blackhill, I called Marian because I was so bored with the concrete. Run failed.

The second time around was much better. Drove to Blackhill, jumped out of the car and proceeded to run up a trail to the summit. The run was steep and narrow but nothing as I was expecting. Sure, some of the ledges were pretty high for me, but then again that is not very hard to achieve. And sure, I did stop sometimes, but that was mostly because I'm old. And fatt. But nothing spectacular, with the exception of the beautiful sunset and the view across the city.

I got to the top of it very puzzled. "Wuss!" I decided about the previous runner. "If he thought that that was difficult, let him come to Chambers Gully! Pfft!" I followed a track towards descending the hill. And then I got to the real running track. Jesus christ!!! There were boulders at least my size, ledges that seem to reach my armpit (again, not very difficult), and my descent run was reduced to a crawl. WHAT THE FUCK is this?! I pondered while trying to get my ass of the hill as quick as possible. Because you see, a trait of being stoopid is that one admires the sunset, takes plenty of pictures etc., and then realizes ten minutes later that one is in the middle of the woods, without any soul around, in the middle of the night, but without a headlamp. Life is good.

A tourist still

On Thursday I was supposed to go to meet a fellow teacher I do outreach with. We were supposed to meet at the University of Adelaide Wetlands. Now if you tell any of my colleagues this, they will straightaway say take fullarton then take a right on Cross road.

I did so, but I also asked google, who decided that going straight on fullarton road was the way to go. So i took google's advice and got to the Adelaide agricultural high school. I asked at the reception about the meeting and was quickly ushered after some people on a tour of the high school, and its lending library. Turns out the lending library was a menagerie with all sorts of little animals and associated activity sheets. Did you know that those black lizards that look like tree stumps (aka the shinglebacks) mate for life? Also, their tail resembled their head and they use this sneakily to fool prey by walking backwards to it: prey will then run behind the lizard, i.e., to its head, and presto, death!

The meeting went on for half an hour or so, during which time I petted around three types of lizards, one frog, one snake, and one possum. It was only when we got to the possum that I texted my teacher and asked him where the fuck was he*, and found out I was in the totally wrong place. Stood up suddenly and left. Very rude of me. Got to the meeting with only a few cheese bits left. Sigh.


*not my exact words

One picture Tuesday

My nuts are here!!!

I was going to post a long post about running in Blackhilll but will leave that for tomorrow. My nuts are here! Unfortunately, the shop that sold these nuts did not sell any buckets of stainless steel balls. Will have to keep looking.

A series of unfortunate events

1. Come to work, buy and drink one coffee (regular latte, extra shot)
2. Colleague comes to work and we go to the tea room for ... coffee.
3. Find out that somebody had put vanilla cinnamon coffee beans in the grinder. We find this out while drinking our lattes.
4. Clean grinder (by this time it is 7:45 am)
5. Have an espresso much much later, at around 9:30 am. A proper one, no cinnamon, no fucking vanilla.
6. Win a bet with PhD student, earn a latte. With an extra shot. (Not sure if I actually drank this one)
7. Sit through a 2 hour meeting. By now it is 11:45am.
8. Lunch will be soon, at 12!
9. Person comes in my office just before lunch, asking stoopid question, demanding stoopid things from me.
10. Off with his head!!
11. Go to lunch.
12. Feel guilty for number 10, and therefore,
13. Come back to work, buy and drink one coffee.

One picture Tuesday

I have two of these in my fridge. May add them to my omelete tomorrow morning. And I might just miss work because of that, but at least I will have fun!!

As per wikipedia:

"The Ghost Pepper (Bhut Jolokia)^[1][2] is a chili pepper previously recognized by Guinness World Records as the hottest pepper in the world. The pepper is also known as Bhut Jolokia, ghost pepper, ghost chile pepper, red naga chilli, andghost chile.^[3][4][5]

The Bhut Jolokia is an interspecific hybrid cultivated in the Indian states of Nagaland and Assam and parts of neighbouring Bangladesh.^[6][7] It grows in the Indian states of Assam, Nagaland and Manipur. It can also be found in rural Sri Lanka where it is known as Nai Mirris (cobra chili). There was initially some confusion and disagreement about whether the Bhut was a Capsicum frutescens^[8] or a Capsicum chinense pepper, but DNA tests showed it to be an interspecies hybrid, mostly C. chinense with some C. frutescens genes.^[9]

In 2007, Guinness World Records certified that the Ghost Pepper (Bhut Jolokia) was the world's hottest chili pepper, 400 times hotter than Tabasco sauce; however, in 2011 it has since been superseded by the Trinidad Moruga Scorpion.^[10] In March 5, 2012, some ghost peppers tested hotter than the scorpion pepper varieties. Now the ghost pepper and scorpion pepper are tied for the world's hottest pepper."

The Trinidad Moruga Scorpion sounds most interesting as well!!

Trad leading 101. Part 1.

Last weekend was the weekend that will probably change my life forever. It started with Josh and Nat deciding to go on a one-year (more or less!) bouldering trip covering the whole wide universe. And yes, before you ask, I am terribly envious and yes I wish I would do that (soon though!). And yes, I am sad to see them go, but also extremely happy, as Josh decided to lend me his rack*! Woo hoo!

Excitement aside, last weekend we went to Morialta for my first ever trad lead. I do not count the other trad lead in New Zealand as my first, because then I had Lydia Bradey watch over me like a hawk. This one was the first lead ever in which the chances of me hitting the hard hard ground should I fall on my lead were probably very close to 50%, sadly. And yes, I aim to bring that to as low as possible in the future. 

I only lead routes in the 11s which are way way below what I (think) I can normally lead. This is me before my first route.

The first thing one notices while trad leading is that one needs to wear very comfortable shoes. Either that, or one needs to get very quick and very precise at placing gear, lest one's eyes start to pop out because one's shoes are too tight. So yes, wear comfortable climbing shoes. 

It took me about an hour to do the first 11, which is not very high as you can see. I struggled and I fumbled with the gear,  I re-placed wires because they came out while I was trying to clip them. Other wires came out while I was clipping some 5 meters above. The important thing here is that I did not die*, but it was not because my gear placements superiorly solid.

Wires got stuck in the cracks and I had a very hard time to get them out, as I didn't have a nut tool (I do now!!!)

Another thing one notices is just how heavy this whole rack thingy is.  That is what I had on my right hip, and I had an equally bulgy one on my left hip.

 Lastly, I found this cam to be the most useful, and as such bought it for my birthday:

It is all a mental game I guess, what with keeping your calm and trying to shut out the voice inside you that does not stop saying "ImgonnadieImgonnadieImgonnadie!!!" while at the same time trying to figure out which protection goes where. I am getting very very excited about this and can't wait to go out again (next week!) Woo hoo!

*Hopefully, my tombstone won't read "Josh gave me his rack" :)

30 Fucking 1. Enuf said.

Went trad leading over the weekend - more about that in a later post. Not bad for an old geezer.

Am in Sydney now, for some quality time all by myself, including grant writing, paper writing, and the occasional and much too sparse (sorry!) blog post. I worked my ass off (unfortunately, only figuratively) last year - this year it's going to be all about having crazy fun, sans (too much) work. I hope! 

One picture Tuesday

Running the Coogee bay to Bondi beach route this morning. Life is good!

One picture Tuesday

This was my speed while running the other day in NUS. It took me a number of attempts to get this, as it turns out it's quite difficult to run and take photos at the same time. Also, if I happened to slow down below 12km/h, so as to allow me to take a photo, the sensor would not register me. So there you go interwebs, something you didn't know about speed sensors.

Realization. Part 244

Assuming I live till I'm 80, and considering that I'm still technically 30 (for a few weeks at least), and assuming that I will read on average, one book a week, then we have:

50*52 = 2600

Which means that I have life in me only to read 2600 books. Or 2548 if I go ahead and admit that

I'm 31 already.

This makes for a very small amount of books considering how many good books are out there that I have yet to read, and just how many books I would want to re-read.

One picture Tuesday

On Saturday, the bird and I set out to run 11k around Macritchie Reservoir Park. Why only 11k you ask? Well, we actually set out to run 21k, but then ... It rained a bit on Saturday. Which is to say that the forecast was "thunderstorm" and that it rained heavily. So heavy so as to run through knee-deep puddles. And to get puffy exfoliating palms after 5km. And to be able to wring out about 1l of water out of my dry fit clothes. 

I had absolutely no remorse about stopping after 11km! We retreated to the shelter of a nearby cafe to warm up and I had two teh tariks and one laksa. Good times.

Bouldering at Granite Island

I've spent a while mulling over this in order to decide whether I hated climbing at Granite Island, Victor Harbour. And I finally decided that I actually really liked it. Despite the rough granite with many many crystal pebbles in it. And despite the fact that most of the times, your spotter is considering wearing a helmet because of all the pebbles that you are sending down while climbing. And the fact that sometimes you might step on something and then fly off the route because your foothold just broke. Or, as in D.'s case, come down off the route really quickly because the super solid undercling you were holding as your start just came off. Nevertheless, one thing that is most cool is that the problems are not very high, and that the landings are pretty clean! More info including topos and route descriptions can be found here.

The problems are interesting and tend to be in the slab, mental kind of area - my favorite! NOTT! In terms of difficulty, the ones we tried ranged between V0 and V2, with a lot of mental stealth with respect to footholds and handholds coming off.

Here's me on something called Plumber's Crack (I wonder why!)

This is one of my favorite problems so far. Trust Issues, V2, Umbrella boulder. Start on some footsies under the crack. The name says it all: delicate footers over a bulging slab to a slopey finish. Clean landing either on D or on Stalin and some spiky bushes to finish it off.

 Psyched and scared to death at the same time.

Lolcat Dreamz

Last night I dreamt that a box full of kittens had made its way to my house. From this box, I could only pick a certain number of kittens to save - I'm not sure about the number because it increased in every iteration of the dream - and the rest would go to an unnamed place boo hoo

I had trouble picking out the kittens because they were all so different! I picked a Russian blue that was BRIGHT BLUE!! in my dream because he slept on his back. I picked a black kitten with white spots (I had problems with that one because there were many black and white kittens running around so I had to remember which one!) I picked a very skinny very tall grey kitten and a fat, older tabby.

After picking the above, the other kittens disappeared to lalaland, at which point i got distressed and the dream started all over again.

Eventually I rescued enough of the kittens and got to actually play with them. At that point Suzie somewhat appeared in the picture. I remember that the newly saved kittehs were a bit reluctant to play with me, and that I kept telling myself "suzie is the most loving of all", and "suzie is the softest of all".

I then woke to find Suzie sleeping on my face. Purr.

One picture Tuesday

Judge me not by my books, but by the super cool way in which they are arranged. On the right of the bookcase I will stash the books I have read -> note that this is almost* true for the background column, and not the foreground, which should be only for mountaineering books (how did the rest get in there?!) The nearly collapsing column of books on the right are books I have yet to read. These will be transferred to the column on the right once I read them. I have yet to decide the fate of those books from the left column that decide to collapse. So far, that column has managed to stay like that despite numerous feline interventions :)

*Hell will probably freeze over when I will actually read the Wheel of Time. I think that (and Sasha right on top of it) are the only books that are Marian's. Also, the Maigret Omnibus (the yellow book) has one emergency un-read Maigret mystery in it. 

I've been having issues ...

... with my kindle. You see, at some point last year I went to New Zealand and encountered many many days of superiorly shitty weather. At some point during the trip, I also acquired, among many other things, a library of about 1000 ebooks, which I then immediately put on my Kindle Keyboard. To be fair, I would probably not read most of the books as they tend to be in the "love-vampire-books?-well,-here's-a-thousand-of-them" variety.

And then the battery on my Kindle started to act up. I would charge it and then it would discharge to 75% within hours and then to 50% within a day, and to about 10% within two days, even if I did not read anything at all. Not connecting it with the addition of books, I first thought that there was a problem with the firmware. And when it wasn't that, I thought that the time had come for a new kindle. What better time than the beginning of February (HINT HINT HINT) for such a thing to happen? Endless conversations with San about which Kindle model is better, and after finally deciding on one ...

... I googled the issue. That is when I realized that maybe Amazon hired some of our students  to write software for the Kindle.  Here's what the interwebs had to say:

Also, keep in mind than from time to time, the framework likes to mess around with the index files, even if nothing's changed in the content, and the more books you have, the more CPU it'll eat. (That's kinda true as a whole too, since it'll churn a bit on the index file every time it wakes up from sleep, too).

I went all crazy with this new piece of information and removed all but two books (Perdido Street Station and Mountaineering, the Freedom of the hills, if you must). No change in battery charge in the past two days. All iz well!!

One picture Tuesday

Every new adventure starts with a new stationery item! I have gotten soooo fatt and sooo weak over the holidays that I've started a new training program woo hoo! I wrote it down in this little notebook and then forgot it at work before going for training.. Sigh..

Mammal adventures

Today we went to climb at Granite Island, in Victor Harbour. Again. I had Marian take plenty of pictures of us climbing in order to do a super duper post about it. I was going to post about this today, but then something else happened:

Today I saw my first ever dolphin! True, I had seen some at the zoo in Singapore, but never ever one up close (#define close 500m) and personal!

Do stupid things sensibly

Somebody's stupid actions while running (that is, full speed running in 36 degrees, immediately after dinner and without proper hydration) nearly had me pick up the phone and rebuke said person for totally fucking shit up.

But then I remembered that I too, have done some stupid things in my (running) life, some of them detailed here on this blog. A few gems such as:

• getting totally pissed on New Year's Eve and THEN going climbing on New Year's Day 
• spraining my ankle and then running a marathon on it
• running barefoot in the middle of the day in Singapore
• running a marathon just before a big expedition, resulting in a minor stress fracture that could have threatened the climb
• totally ignoring the running plan, and running much faster than planned (ran 5min 15sec/km, sometimes even 4min 15sec/km instead of 5min 30sec/km), thinking that "It's supposed to hurt like hell" and "I can push through it" and "Pain is weakness leaving the body"

will probably never get repeated, mostly because I have fewer ankle ligaments, I'm not in Singapore anymore, my feet are now used to long distances, and now I know how the "all wheels are coming off RIGHT NOW" pain feels like.

I cannot help but notice that most of these actions are running related - fair enough, if one does stupid things while climbing one tends not to be alive for very long. I wish I could say that I did these stupid things when I thought I was invincible and will live forever, but I can't, because most of the time I still feel like that, and some of these things are pretty recent. I know that I would not have done the second and the third one had somebody told me about WHAT THE FUCK MIGHT HAPPEN. And I've learned from my mistakes as well: for example, now I do not run with a cold unless I really have to (?!) because it really makes one feel woozy, hazy and close to fainting, which apparently are things that are not good for training wheeeeee!

So, summing things up, I guess I'm probably not the best person to preach anything, really. There's this brilliant romanian saying "Do what the priest says, not what the priest does". Damn!

Meet Dude

Went bouldering at Granite island with D. today. Sent some nice little problems and made a new friend. Uncharacteristically, it took me a while to name him, but finally decided on Dude. It's not the best or the funniest of names but then again, who gives a fuck anyway?

Note to self: next time, do not rely on yourself to put sunscreen on your back. Get somebody else to do it, or else you'll burn!

Quiet celebrations

Seven years ago on this day I quit smoking. This is perhaps the only new year's resolution that I've actually managed to keep. This is a big thing (to me) especially since the depths of my previous addictions can be easily judged by my current ones (and my old age has definitely made me mellow addiction-wise). I celebrated by reading two-three books, taking ample naps, and watching two Poirot episodes. Life, c'est jolie, n'est pas?