australia (week 27)

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 on content on YouTube and Netflix, and climbing at the local gym whenever I can. I do the bare minimum of email and other admin required for my lab to not crash and burn while I am on holiday.

Winters in Australia are the worst though. Houses are poorly insulated here and I am frequently cold even with hoodies and warm clothing indoors. The same house can feel like it is freezing in one room and too hot in another, due to the tiny heater working its ass off.

I have recently gotten a Kobo device as a e-reader and am so pleased with it! Strongly recommend. It is a lot less intrusive than Kindle in terms of ads and the Kobo store has just as much coverage as Amazon. The user experience is also pretty good compared to the Kindle. I got the elipsa 2e which comes with a stylus for easy annotation and note taking as well. A feature that I like about the Kobo is that I can just plug it into my laptop and export and import PDFs, notes, ePUBs with no fuss--sometimes old-school plug-and-play is the way to go. Where possible I would like to stay away from big tech (Amazon, Apple, Google).

Well, not much of a blog post, but basically a life update to say that I am hibernating and reading and not looking forward to the new semester. Heaps good.

My current reading list:

• Fundamentals of Cognition: Textbook to prepare for teaching Cog Psych next semester :(
• In Xanadu: An early travel book by Dalrymple attempting to recreate Marco Polo's journey from Europe to China; good fun
• Tyranny of Metrics: A must-read for anyone wanting to understand why the modern world is so messed up; and why getting tenure today is more about the numbers and less the actual quality of one's work
• Getting Gamers: A book about the psychology of video games. Not that I am a gamer, but I am developing a thesis about how the gamification of modern climbing gyms is not necessarily good for skill and technical improvement and training.
• [not an ebook] The Climbing Bible: Technical, physical, and mental training for rock climbing