December 11, 2003
General
Comments Off on On The Move Again
I felt sorry for the travel agent girl. She had been out on the piss the previous night and was feeling a little delicate when in I walked asking about flights to Bangaore, again. 2 hours later we finally managed to come up with the right combination of flights and I think the farsical nature of the whole process had cured her hangover. I will soon be on the move again, heading over on 5th February to see my Wipro friends for 10 days. I’ve never been to India before, so very much looking forward to it, and taking my first stop over in Singapore as well. If it wasn’t immediately obvious, I love my job and my motivation and enthusiasm soars with these kinds of rewards.
With trips to Sydney, Adelaide, Bangalore and Auckland, it is going to be a busy start for the year and that doesn’t include a possible trip over to Malaysia. Rock on!
December 9, 2003
General
Comments Off on I Am Going Mental
I think I just had one of those days when I went completely mental and talked to myself a hell of a lot more than usual, which probably isn’t saying much. JDS seems to be rocking along these days, but I still get the willies wondering how the fuck we’re going to be able to handle all these huge deployments. I’m sure it will all come clear a few months down the line.
Just when I thought I was making good progress on the VPN thing, I seem to have run into issues with g_spawn_async_with_pipes and trying to read and write to the vpn client connetion commandline. The fun of developing against proprietary software.
Met up with an Israeli guy at the climbing wall last night. He climbs more or less the same grade as me, although not a self confessed boulderer. I’m getting tired of pushing myself on the overhangs, and look forward to seeing what problems he comes up with. Thinking about a trip up to Kaikoura this weekend. Unbelievable to think that I’ll be in Sydney the week after that for possibly the strangest Christmas so far.
December 8, 2003
General
Comments Off on This Is Why I Am Here
Wanaka has a slight Aspen feel to it – amazingly chilled out with stunning scenery all around you, without the superiority complex. Plain and simple, this place is just cool, and I felt bad leaving it at the end of the weekend. It’s about a 5 or 6 hour journey from Christchuch, sitting just north of Queenstown by about 100km. The weather was pretty ugly heading down with strong winds and driving rain trying its best to squander us, but stubborness gave way to incredible weather for the rest of the weekend, and a good share of climbing.
Having bought the Wanaka guidebook, we headed to the Roadside crag for some warm up routes – all bolt clipping on schist. I’ve never climbed on schist before, and it involves a large deal of thought, with a number of thin moves of small crimps and slopers. We started off working up from about 14 – Wanaka 14, there seems to be a large difference, and eventually worked out way up to 16, which felt about French 6a. Most of the routes were relatively short, requiring anything between 3 and 6 bolts, with the first bolt being quite high – there were some routes I wanted to try, but didn’t have the balls to start due to a pretty highball start. The following day, after a good night of Thai, beer and wine, we hit the Hospital Flat boulders. Lots and lots of potential problems, including an awesome arete/overhang traverse with heelhooking. Started my project to have a short bouldering/climbing film by the end of my year here. Will almost certainly have to take a lot more footage than I did last weekend.
So with some regret we left Wanaka vowing to ourselves that we’d all be back soon, and left the mountains behind to head towards the Canterbury plains again. It was a small taste of the adventures to come, with the constant fear in the back of our minds that there is so much to see, and so little time to see it.
Those are hardcore vibes.
December 2, 2003
General
Comments Off on Wanaka Weekend
We’re planning on heading down to Wanaka to climb on the rock there. Being in a new country, and free to see all these new places is really awesome, and it’s a good motivator to try and get a hard week’s work done before it. Haven’t been climbing enough outdoors though, and need to convince the others a little – while monkeying around in the indoor wall is good for building up strength, it’s no use if you don’t have balls.
I got so frustrated with work in general that I decided to ignore it. For the most part, it seems to be working, and I’m currently hacking away at a frontend to the Cisco VPN 5000 client. At least it will take my mind off things even if I don’t get the chance to finish it. It’ll also be a nice [if at times frustrating] opportunity of learning some of the newer GTK+ widgets.
