The smart[er] post I promised last time

I think too much. Not necessary smart thoughts or anything, it's just that I really think too much. Every move that I do while I climb, every action that I take, I must think about it. Generally, this happens after I climb or I do something, at which time I think about how stupid I was.

Like when I saw a notebook with "Exercise your right to free speech" stamped on every page, I laughed. Why? Because it's ironic that in such a tight-lipped society like this one, the way to exercise your right to free speech is by writing things down on your personal notebook, which nobody will read (or hear) - is speech vocal or not, btw? Or is it a pun like really "exercise" as in practice? See, I think too much. Again, not necessary smart thoughts.

So, I finally realized that I think too much when I lead climb. And I think wrongly, which leads me (get it?!:) ) to not committing fully, or to giving up, or to finding excuses and so on. This and my previous observation about how some people are ego/comparison-driven climbers has been my food for thought these past days.

Did a bit of research (reading up a very nice book) and here (TADA!!) are some things that indeed, do distract me when I lead climb:

• negative inner dialogue - "shit, I'm too far from the next clip", "this crimp is shit", "mayday, mayday, mayday", "abort, abort, abort", "omg, this is hard", "shit, just get to where sandra fell then you are can fall too"[1], "shit [2], i can't do this move", "i am not flexible/dynamic", "i can't reach"


• reacting - this happens rarely and not while climbing, but in real life, when i am upset about some stuff and take it out on people (like my mom, for example), whom i know can take my behavior. [3]


• hoping and wishing - "i wish the hold was better, then I can hold it", "i hope i can finish this climb"

[1] - Comparison, you evil bitch! Although in this particular case, it is somewhat positive, because it helps me get past the already shitty holds that sandra, (bless her crimping power, woo hoo!!!) held, it is still, comparison, an evil bitch.
[2] - A lot of "shit" in this post, ain't it?
[3] - Just realized that "reacting" happened while mountaineering. When we were going down Matterhorn and I was frustrated that a) we didn't summit and b) it was taking horrendously long to come down and c) we had a very good chance of not living, I told our rookie "We're lucky if we make it out of here alive", a totally unnecessary remark which would have troubled the poor soul had he heard it.

Totally shacked

Climbed today from 09:30am (exactly) till 11:10 am (exactly). Did 20 minutes ARC around the gym with 20 minutes rest. Would not have been able to make it past the first set without the company of San, Dor, and Teck Chew. It's amazing how the presence and absence of people can influence a training session. Now I am totally sapped, my forearms and biceps (do they really exist?) are still quasi-pumped. It is definitely not the best time to start strengthening my Related Work section. My supervisor says it needs to be stronger. Titanium? How can i strengthen something when i'm so weak? [enter here 5 minutes of self pity].

Wanted to write something smarttt todae but i. just. can't.

Forgot to mention the elusive presence of Jiasheng who stopped by just to watch us bicker and bully Doris. And also to make me chase him barefoot, but the story about that particular revenge will be the subject of another post :)

Happie

BIRTHDAY!!!! To Marian!!! Woohoo!! happie 27th (a nice odd, cube number too!)!!!!

Ran about 20 clicks yesterday for Marian's birthday. It was a "ok" run. We got to see Orchard and North Bridge Road full (and I mean FULL) of hookers and drunk people [puking]. A different sight from your normal, septic Singapore. At Clark Quay we even saw a police team by the side of the road. They were watching the hookers on the other side, not doing anything. The hookers were watching them too. Hey, do you think we walked into a stare-down?! Would hate for that to happen!!


The best thing was watching the sunrise from the Merlion. Really really nice and peaceful. This was our last big run before the standard chartered marathon on the 7th of december. Would have wanted it to be longer, but we were tired and cranky, and hell, bored! so we put the run to sleep around harbour front. Had a drink and dried up, then took the bus home to a nice breakfast cooked by yours truly.

Later lunch and movie with our friends, hanging out and laughing. Talking with mom in the evening and frantically searching for our house key which we forever lost apparently.

Weekends, I like.

Ego

The Ego is a mental entity, a crude and ruthless ghost masquerading as our "self". It is a mental construct, produced by socialization, which rewards and punishes us with feelings of self-worth. The Ego lives by comparison. It identifies with events in our past and then compares our history to the histories of others. This comparison leaves us feeling better or worse than, but not equal to, others.

While I was in the woods ...

it seems like the whole world decided to post blog posts, emails, articles and stuffs.

Been stuck in the land of project submissions for the whole day yesterday. By the end of the day my brain was mush. By the end of the night's training, my body was mush as well. We did (in this order, designed to sap you of any energy you have left): pull-up contest (we didn't lose, yay!) to which i contributed with 20 pull-ups (2x10), some PT that I seem to be blocking out of my mind, and flash comp. It's been a long time since we really climbed and I had a lot of fun. The open men had to climb with us and they didn't seem to be having any fun (our routes were boring and easy, i guess), but too bad for them! IR really enjoyed herself. Afterwards crawled home and into bed.

SUNDAY!! We had the most amazing run ever! Ran for about an hour and 15 minutes on the Macritchie reservoir 12 km route. This means that we did trail running! It was such a pleasure to run in the cool jungle, with absolutely nobody on the trail, away from cars, exhaustion gas and traffic lights!

The jungle was so cool and free of people (not of animals, mind you) because we started our run around 7pm. Yup. It was pitch dark people, there be no lights in the jungle. But! I had my trusty Petzl headlamp (pictured). This gave us about 1 - 2 m visibility. At one point we were sprinting (running the polar zones training - this requires you to run at about 60% of your maximum heart rate for a while - 30 mins, at 70% for another while - 30 mins, then at 80%-90% for yet another while - 5 - 15 mins) uphill and/or downhill, jumping on/from protruding roots, rocks, stumbling into mud puddles. All while we could only see 1 m or so in front of us. So exciting!!! (just realized how much i enjoy getting dirty while running - gives me such a REAL feeling compared to running on singapore's clean streets)

We saw 2-3 birds with red eyes (because of our light, but still very freaky to see one flying towards you). One bat flew past us (too close for comfort). We scared the shit out of one toad who was taking a stroll on the human-free path. We confused a lot of moths with our light. It was fabulous.

News in the geek world

• Dumbo aka TickCross aka CrossTick learned about perfect numbers!! After she learns about Fermat's last theorem, maybe we can talk about the greatest number in history ... 42 ... And we could then figure out how my Nike+ sensor functions.


• Marian got his SSD hard drive today!! An early birthday and XMas present from all of us (this is the problem with geeks, you'd better not surprise them if instead you can share the burden of a expensive gadget)


• The deadline for the software engineering project I am supervising is tomorrow. My students are marveling me with their unfounded confidence in their programming skills. All would have been much easier if they had started coding early and would have asked me stuffs.


• Windows 3.x era is over. For most of us (not me, I had System 7.0. Snob!!) it was our first graphical/windows based operating system. One of the most stable Windows versions, too!

Scales

Just general thoughts. Will not start writing here about why I climb and so on (save you all the mushy stuff) but I seriously gotta get this off my chest before I explode. Ok.

A question that really ticks me off is something along the lines of "what was the hardest (in terms of grade) route that you did today?" I hate that question. Not "what was the nicest/funniest/challenging/great sequence route that you did today?". Not "what was the route that showed you where you need to improve?". But "what was the hardest". That and "I clinched x place". I do understand that for other people the only way in which they can improve is in a "friendly" (my ass!) competition with other climbers, but it just gets on my nerves sometimes.

Other than the scales of value imposed on us by society, the only scale(s) that I will live by in this life are those that I impose on myself. And the only person that I allow to raise the level of the scale is myself. You are not a better climber than X if you can climb 9a or 12a or V15 or what have you and X cannot. You are not a better climber than X if you spend a week learning the moves on one 8a and then drop like a fly at the first bolt on a 6c, while X has been climbing "with the girls". You are a better climber because last month you couldn't climb 12a because you just couldn't get your mind around dyno-ing from crimps to crimps and now you have improved and you can! The only one that "you" can compare yourself with is you. Period. You are a great climber if you know just how far to push yourself. If you know where your limit is such that you rest and relax even when others are still trying the route. You are a smart mountaineer for example if you know when to call it quits (but that is another lesson).

The scale is not 6c,7a, 7b, 7c etc because when you will not have time to train you will have a meltdown. The scale is easy, ok, still ok, hard, "omg this is not for me". It's "comfortable, challenging, uncomfortable, MENTAL, "I seriously need to improve"". Climbing mates are not A - "climbs 8a", B - "climbs 6c", C - "climbs better than me, still", D - "i don't take climbing advice from her cause she climbs only 6a", ... X - "one of this days I will climb better than him/her", Y - "I did this route and he couldn't". Climbing friends are (will spare the names so as not to get mushy) A - "will not take any bullshit from me so I have to try my best", B - "gives crazy routes", C - "gives routes with crammed moves that I can span, woo hoo", etc.

Humility.

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.