Jan 03
Uncategorized goals, personal Comments Off
It’s that time of year for New Year’s resolutions so I thought I’d share mine with the world. I didn’t have any resolutions last year and it bothered me – while I got a lot done last year, there wasn’t the same satisfaction that comes from achieving your goals (if I ever have a therapist, I suspect we’ll be discussing this one day). Here are this year’s resolutions, grouped around a couple of themes:
Jan 02
Travel australia, Hiking Comments Off
When I told my friend Dave that we were going to spend a few days in the Blue Mountains, his immediate reaction was “You’ve got to hike the National Pass – it’s one of the five best day hike’s I’ve done in my life.” Dave is probably the most outdoorsy person I know, so this was akin to Tiger Woods recommending a gold course – you’ve just got to do it.
The National Pass is one three interesting hikes you can do from the town of Wentworth Falls. The first is called Darwin’s Walk and you literally trace the route Charles Darwin took when he walked to the actual falls.
It’s one of the most peaceful walks I’ve done. We ambled through a slight valley, following a stream. There were ferns lurking below tea leaf trees and then up the slopes grew bushes, pines and eucalyptus. It was layers of green upon green:
Eventually we came to a hollow where an ancient river had carved out an overhang where a ‘hanging swamp’ now grows:
Along the way we saw different types of parrots and marveled at the lack of sound. When we were there, we saw almost no one and it was completely serene.
We retraced our steps and continued past where we started to find the “Weeping Rock” – a prelude to falls. Unlike the real falls, we could stand on top of the rock and comfortably look straight down:
From Weeping Rock, we descended a few meters and crossed the top of Wentworth Falls. This bears a bit of description, as we actually started at the top of trail and hiking down. This was because the Blue Mountains aren’t actually mountains, rather they’re an escarpment. All the towns (like Katoomba, where we stayed) are on the top of the escarpment and you actually climb down the rock face; a few hundred million years ago it was a coral reef.
When we crossed Wentworth Falls we walked up to Rocket Point, which required walking through a rock arch. It was the first place where we could get a sense of the size of the falls. The scale is massive: the falls drop 100m, form a pool, and then drop 100m further into the forest below. The scale is made more impressive as Rocket Point juts out over the falls, leaving us with a vertigo-inducing view of the trees directly below.
The picture below is a little tricky to understand. Standing on Rocket Point you can look down to the ledge below Wentworth Falls (right) and then simultaneously see the forest a further 100m below that (left). The shadow gives you a sense of how high the falls are – each of those tree canopies is probably 10m wide:
At this point we started to get confused. According to our map (“One Day Bushwalks in the Blue Mountains” – $3 at the Paddy Pallin’s in Katoomba; well worth the price), the National Pass was supposed to start there, but we were literally on the edge of a cliff. As we looked across the gorge we could see a trail hugging the opposing cliff face, but how to get there? And then it dawned on us – the National Pass literally consists of a set of stairs that take you halfway down a cliff and then clings to the side of that cliff until it spits you out at Empress Falls.
The hike down the stairs is mind blowing. At times, we were ducking under sandstone ledges with only a guard rail protecting us from a multi-hundred foot plunge:
I peeked over the ledge, and was confused as I felt like I was in a 14th century painting where the perspective is all wrong. I could see the trail to my left, but then there it was also directly below me – and further below that. Here’s a photo of what this looks like, taken from the other side of the gorge:
When we got down to the level of the traverse we could look up and gaze at the falls. Since it’s the dry season right now, there was not much water and the wind was whipping the droplets of water coming over the falls; at times it flowed upwards:
As we followed the traverse we had the perverse sensation that comes from having a 100m cliff both above and below us simultaneously. It’s unlike most hikes I’ve done. Normally you hike somewhere and gaze upon something stunning; on the National Pass you have the sense that you are actually part of something stunning.
The walk continued and shortly came to Den Fenella. This is a point in the trail where it makes a slow curve. We stopped and looked up and our entire field of view was dominated by a sheer cliff. It felt like we were standing at the focal point of a vertical sandstone amphitheatre.
Continuing on we were treated to more splendors. Occasionally a red-breasted parrot or a flock of cockatoos came flying across the valley. At times we bumbled along underneath rocky outcroppings. And all the time we just had to look left to see the forest canopy below us, staring back at us from the exact opposite perspective we’re used to:
The National Pass ends at the Valley of the Waters and that’s where we decided to hike to Vera Falls. This is officially off the beaten track – there’s even a sign that says that the trail is not maintained and not for the faint of heart (Wendy always loves a challenge).
The track down to the falls was noteworthy in that at times we came upon thickets of giant tree ferns. One group we saw had trunks that were up to 30ft tall and easily the biggest ferns I’d ever seen. At other times we had to push aside vines hanging down from the trees they were slowly strangling.
Towards the end of the trek, the trail became downright miserable. Forks appeared in the road and we had to guess which way to go (hint: listen for the falls). A certain section had eroded to be about a foot wide – and conveniently this was at the point where there was a 100ft cliff (and it goes without saying there were not guard rails there).
However, it was all worth it, for when we got to the falls, we had a spectacle that few will ever get to experience. We stood on a rocky promontory on a waterfall surrounded by forest with nobody else and no guard rails. We stared out at the surrounding forest and cliff; looking down we could see a pool of water forming over a hundred feet below. In the distance were two cliff faces, preceded by cascades of jungle that seemed to blend together into one layer. The only sound was the water smoothly and coldly flowing over the edge of the falls. It was a surreal experience.
As we climbed out of the Valley of the Waters we entered a temperate rainforest and passed by multiple sets of waterfalls (Sylvia & Empress Falls). There were ferns everywhere and everything was coated in a fine mist. The more adventurous abseil down the falls in wetsuits and then hike out:
At the top it was a short walk back to the car via the Overcliff/Undercliff paths. Both afforded us the chance to see the valley below in its entirety and appreciate the scope of what we had just hiked:
So was it one of the five best day hikes I’ve ever done? Absolutely – it would be criminal for you to go to Sydney and not try it.
If you do, here’s a copy of the map so you can get a sense of what it’s going to be like (but buy your own copy: this little picture is not enough to get you through the hike):
Dec 28
Random, Travel architecture, australia Comments Off
Sydney has its own style – of architecture that is. This post is going to be about architecture-I’ll save a bitchy Mr. Blackwell-style rant on some of the bad fashion I’ve seen here for later.
It’s not just monuments like the Harbour Bridge and the Opera House, rather there are a few neighbourhoods with a distinct local style. Both Glebe and Paddington consists of houses that look like Victorian London was transported to the tropics. The houses come in two types: two story row houses with iron work…
…and cute little cottages, some of which look like gingerbread houses:
Most of the buildings were built in the 1880’s and they give the neighbourhoods great character (and now sell for millions…). Here are a couple of examples of the detail in that ironwork:
Dec 26
Random fate, INSEAD, writing View Comments
A few years ago I was lucky enough to go to school at INSEAD. It’s a university that can claim to be truly global: our class of four hundred represented more than 60 nations, the campus was spread across two continents (Fontainebleau, France and Singapore) and I was able to use the alumni network to get a summer job in San Francisco. I’ve never met more people from more backgrounds, ethnicities and heritages in my life – and probably won’t unless I go work at the U.N.
It’s fascinating to meet such a diverse array of people, as it truly gives you new perspectives on the world. However, there’s a slightly darker side to it as well. Many of the people I met don’t truly feel like they have a home anywhere and instead have joined some global nomadic tribe (someone tried to brand the tribe Globopolitans – fortunately it hasn’t stuck). I must confess that I feel an honourary member: I am Canadian, but I also have British citizenship and live and work in New York City (I’m only an honourary member as the full-fledged members are Pakistanis who live in Sao Paolo, etc.).
I’ve wrestled with how to capture the sentiment of members of this tribe, but lacked the words to articulate it. Fortunately, I just finished reading Granta’s 100th issue (I’m a year behind) and Salman Rushdie has nicely summed it up in his short piece Heraclitus:
It’s an age of migrant writers, voluntary migrants and involuntary exiles and refugees. For such writers instability is a given, instability of abode, of the future, of the family, of the self. For such writers the lack of an automatic subject is a given, too. Some, like the longtime Somali exile Nuruddin Farah, carry Somalia within them just as Joyce carried Dublin within him, and never turn to other places or other themes. Others, like the diaspora Indian writer Bharati Mukherjee, redefine themselves according to their changed circumstance, thinking and writing, in her case, as an American. Others, like myself, fall somewhere in between, sometimes looking east, sometimes west, but always with a sense of the provisionality of all truths, the mutability of character, the uncertainty of all times and places, no matter how settled things may seem.
Dec 26
Travel australia, flowers Comments Off
One of the things that has surprised me about Australia is how colourful it is (the land, not the people – I expected that). In particular, the flowers are incredible. I have yet to see a Golden Wattle (national flower) or a Waratah (New South Wales’ state flower), but I’ve definitely seen a lot of Hibiscus. Here’s a sampling of the colours so far:
Update Wendy and I spent today going through the Botanical Gardens and Paddington, so here are a few more photos:
Dec 26
Random, Travel architecture, australia Comments Off
Wendy and I are currently in Australia visiting her parents who live on Sydney’s Manly beach. The easiest way to get to Manly from downtown is via the ferry – which happens to give you a phenomenal view of the Sydney Opera House. Sadly, just after we got here we learned that John Utzon, the architect behind the building, had passed away at 90. The obituary in the Economist eloquently captured the beauty of his masterpiece:
What he wanted for Sydney was the effect he had noticed when tacking round the promontory at Elsinore, of the castle’s piled-up turrets against the piled-up clouds and his own billowing white sails; the liberation he had felt on the great platforms of the Mayan temples in Mexico, of being lifted above the dark jungle into another world of light; the height and presence of Gothic cathedrals, whose ogival shape was to show in the cross-sections of the Sydney roof-shells; and the curved, three-dimensional rib-work of boat-building, as he had watched his own father doing it at Aalborg. The load-bearing beams of the Opera House shells he called spidsgattere, in homage to the sharp-sterned boats his father made.
Here are some photos I snapped from the ferry; I leave it up to you to decide whether his building achieved his dream:
Dec 26
Random, Travel australia, Sailing Comments Off
Today we hiked up to the Sydney’s North Head to catch the start of the 2008 Bluewater Classic – the annual Sydney to Hobart race. It’s quite an experience to watch; over 500,000 people line the harbour to watch the start. Here’s a shot of the starting line:
Sydney’s harbour is such that the boats need to pass through a narrow channel between two cliffs. We sat on the North Head (along with a few thousand other people) and watched the boats come through. As they come through, there are helicopters flying over the boats and pursuit boats following alongside. Here are some shots of the favourites: Wild Oats and Skandia.
As I write this, Skandia has taken the lead over Wild Oats, despite Wild Oats being the first out of the harbour. We’ll see if Wild Oats can come back to claim her fourth consecutive victory and whether either will beat the current record of about 42 hours.
Dec 20
I’m writing this from a plane that is somewhere between a place called Apia and Port Moseby. Wendy and I are on our at to Sydney, but I am starting to feel like we have been travelling forever and are in a version of purgatory that has been outsourced to Qantas (I can verify Dante’s statement that one can never be truly comfortable in a chair in purgatory).
The reason I’m feeling this isn’t due to the length of the journey (we’re 8 hours into the 13 hour flight that follows the 6 hour flight to LAX), rather, it’s the dark.
I left work in NYC at 3 on December 19th in a snow storm. The storm made it get darker even earlier on one of the year’s shortest days. Since then, we have been flying West, so the duration of our flight is offset by our ‘gain’ in time change. The net result is that we have been in the dark for almost a day – three hours to get to the airport in the storm, a two hour delay, a six hour flight to LA followed by a two hour stopover and now eight hours across the Pacific.
I literally have no idea what time it is. My phone mocks me as it insists that it is 1:04pm, but I think that it changed time zones in LA -and darkness at 1pm means that it’s either wrong or the Jehovah’s Witnesses were right and the Rapture is upon us. I am beginning to understand how people in solitary confinement could go mad.
Fortunately I have an inflight map that is showing us inching towards Australia so I know that the sun shall rise again.
Dec 14
NYC Comments Off
This weekend has unfortunately been a work weekend. The upside is that since I was in the office and there was nobody there, I could stand on the couch and take a photo of the skyline at sunset from our North-facing windows. Here it is:
Dec 12
NYC, Technology Design, interaction design Comments Off
On Wednesday night I attended a meeting by the IxDA’s New York chapter talking about the current state of interaction design. It was an enlightening conversation. If you know nothing about the topic, here’s a laundry list of things they talked about:
A small bonus: the session was held at Bloomberg’s amazing headquarters. I snapped this photo before a security guard ran me down and told me “no more photos”.
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