Patrick Lam

Thoughts and travels of Patrick Lam

Pohatu Penguins at Akaroa, Mount Sunday, and Christchurch

Our South Island trip had three distinct components, so it makes sense to post about them separately. This is part 2. Part 1: Heaphy Track. Part 3: Arthur’s Pass and the TranzAlpine. Part 3b: BreakFree on Cashel. Full galleries at https://gallery.patricklam.ca/index.php?/category/1227. July 10: French-themed day in Canterbury More pictures from July 10 After a big day on July 9th, finishing the Heaphy Track and getting to the suburbs of Christchurch, we were scheduled to go see penguins in Akaroa with Pohatu Penguins.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Friday, July 24, 2020

BreakFree on Cashel (Christchurch): A Review

tl;dr Exceeded expectations. Great value-for-money. Related Work See also Yotel: A Review, a stay in AMS Schiphol Yotel back in 2016 after a conference. Staying near the bus stop For our night between getting off the TranzAlpine round trip and taking the 7am-bus-then-ferry back to Wellington, we wanted a place close to the bus stop. The BreakFree was as close as you could get (3 minute walk), and also cheap, at C$63 (NZ$70) for an “Inner Urban Double”.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Wednesday, July 15, 2020

Moderate multi-pitch in New Zealand, March 11, 2020

On our previous trip to the South Island we stayed around Wanaka cragging and hiking. Although the Darrens were still washed out during our visit, The Remarkables feature some multipitch climbing. In particular, our borrowed Queenstown guidebook listed a dozen climbs above Lake Alta (aka Dimrill Dale). We’d go to Lake Alta and then up to Double Cone and find a moderate climb. To Lake Alta Alpine starts are well advised but difficult, especially after riverboarding the previous day, having dinner in Queenstown with Waterloo students on exchange, and getting back to our Frankton airbnb at 9pm.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Tuesday, April 21, 2020

An Exciting Trip to Mount Taranaki, March 17-18, 2020

Almost as if anticipating a lockdown, we had planned back-to-back-to-back trips for the middle of March. We’d just barely gotten back from Queenstown on Thursday, March 12 (but that’s another story), and had scheduled 4 days to climb Mount Taranaki, which I’d seen from the plane on the way in to Wellington back on January 1, 3 months and so long ago. Events would catch up to us and prevent our subsequent trip to Melbourne.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Tuesday, April 14, 2020

Beyond Diet: on red pandas and doing better

This week I was busy writing code for a research project I’m working on here in New Zealand, so no travel pictures from me. Here is a red panda in the Wellington Zoo (photo credit: Marie-Pascale Desjardins, as well as for suggesting this tip). It turns out that red pandas and giant pandas are not related aside from both being cute animals. Giant pandas have a 99% bamboo diet, while red pandas are at 85% bamboo.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Saturday, March 7, 2020

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Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Waterloo; patrick.lam@uwaterloo.ca

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