SeaEss

It is a bit weird to title this blog post "Hamish", but hopefully it'll all make sense when you get to the end. So, I am injured. I've stayed injury-free for a couple of years, but climbing is risky and so it is difficult to guarantee no injuries even if you take all possible precautions. It was an unexpected fall from the top hole at Lighthouse due to a hand slip on a JUG. It was slippery and I had run out of chalk right at the top after matching. Landed very awkwardly on my butt, with a lot ...

2024 marks my 10th year anniversary of climbing, having started climbing in Dec 2014 back in Kansas. It is an activity that have given me a lot of satisfaction thru the years and I always feel so lucky to have discovered it during my lifetime. Admittedly the past couple of years definitely felt like I have massively plateaued in my climbing. Although I have climbed consistently for 10 years, many are easily overtaking my grade with much fewer years under their belt. But I really can't expect to...

A list of resolutions and goals to work towards in the new year. Climbing Climb a V7/7a+ on the Moonboard. (Any version, any problem) Complete the lowest graded benchmarks on the Moonboard. (Most likely candidate: 2019 V3/6a+) These are actually lifetime goals. Career Submit materials for promotion and tenure. Publish at least 2 first author/corresponding author papers. Health Drink less, less than 10 standard drinks a week. Start swimming regularly again, at least once a week. Reduc...

On to part 3 of 2024 Reflections. Notice that there is no part 2. This is because that is where I rant about the state of modern university education, which contains controversial opinions that could get me into trouble since my identity is not a secret. Hence that post is posted elsewhere and in private. Finding meaning in a complex world It is probably not a mid-life crisis, but I am going through a phase where I am questioning: What is the point of life? I don't think it is a crisis becaus...

Man, what a rough year. I knew it was going to be wild during the second half of 2024, with the double-loading teaching with a brand new course and 4 conferences (3 international and 1 local) and too many climbing competitions. But I didn't expect it to take such a huge toll on me. In particular my motivation to keep going in an academic career has taken a huge dip. Not great timing given that I am supposed to go up for promotion and tenure next year! What is the point of academic research? ...

At the beginning of 2024 I made a resolution to spend more time training on the Moonboard. Why? The first obvious reason is that with z-vertigo now having a 2019 set I have a mb really close to home! The second is that I really wanted to have some kind of objective, legitimate way of measuring improvements in my climbing. I'll expand on this point in this blog post. For the past few years now I have been getting pretty serious about getting better at climbing. So I do all the usual things th...

This will seem like a list of bragging rights (and yeah, it is), but I really wanted to keep a permanent record to remind myself that I am sometimes pretty awesome when I need the reminder :) I also wanted to remember the competitions that I took part in and track performance across them. In the near future, I am going to have a lot more fierce competition in the senior categories (as the young ones grow up!) and might be asked to enter in the Open Category at some comps. But I am looking forw...

A week to go before coming back to Singapore. We visit my in-laws in Australia every 5-6 months (June/July and December) each year. Because I am not quite set up at my in-laws' house, I am usually not the most efficient "work-wise" while I am there. It is a somewhat indirect way to force me to stop doing academic work things and take a mental break of some sorts. Usually my time in Australia is spent sleeping (I am usually sleep deprived when the semester is in session), reading, catching up o...

Today's post is about what I find to be one of the most interesting aspects of climbing! It is the interaction between analytic knowledge and bottom up intuition. It is quite an abstract concept and so I will try to explain this via a concrete example. The problem I am a frequent climber at Fit Bloc, a climbing gym in Singapore. My goal for the past year or so has been to send all the problems up to 5 bars in any set. It is a bit hard to say what the bars map onto in terms of V grades, but I ...

RM's "Right Place, Wrong Person" released a few days ago and I have been looping it non-stop for several hours now. It is such a gorgeous album! Really funky but with deep layers of instrumentation. Groovy and jazzy and cheeky, too. I love how raw and alternative and experimental it is. I think this will be one of those albums that I will keep coming back to over the course of my life. I have been not totally motivated about life recently, so this album has come at the right time. A much need...

The climbing interview continues in today's post. Interview (Part 2) Who are your climbing idols? Ah, I have too many... It depends on what I am trying to channel at the moment. The Scandinavian climbing YouTubers Magnus Midtbo and Emil Abrahamsson + Wide Boyz (Tom Randall & Pete Whittaker) - for when I need to unleash beast mode and use all my power and try-hard. I admire the raw power of Magnus and Emil, and the psychological toughness of trad climbers, especially offwidth specialist...

A two week hiatus because of grading... So much for trying to write a blog post each week! Now that I have a bit more time after the semester I might try to catch up. Today's topic will be about the other thing that I spend a lot of time doing and thinking about which is climbing. I'll introduce myself as a climber, interview-style. Interview (Part 1) How long have you been climbing? In December of 2024 I would have been climbing for exactly 10 years. I guess that might make me sort of an ...

It is pretty easy to figure out who I am and which university I work for, and so here is the mandatory disclaimer about how "the opinions expressed in this blog reflect my own experience and thoughts and not that of my employer". Here goes. In 2019 I struck the academic lottery - which is to land a tenure-track position in a university. Many PhDs have this as a dream job and I know how very lucky I am that I get to live this dream, even though there are tons of other academics who are way more...

The mandatory hello world post! So, I am not sure what this blog is going to be about, but I wanted to try and get back into blogging because I have Thoughts and would like to share them in some form. I spend a lot of my time thinking about two things: Academia and Climbing. I play the ukulele and bass ukulele, and I love learning about R and all the awesome things you can do with it. I am a word nerd, but my research interests stop as soon as words get combined into bigger things like sente...