Patrick Lam

Thoughts and travels of Patrick Lam

Queenstown, Makarora, Wanaka, and not Gillespie

The planned logistics for the Gillespie trip were simple: rent a car, stay at the Wonderland Lodge in Makarora the night before, take a jetboat across the river, walk, and take a jetboat back from Kerin Forks. The jetboat avoids the biggest river crossings. Ironically, the day before we were to go, we got a call saying that there wasn’t enough water to run the jetboat. That’s fine, it should be easy to cross the river in that case.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Friday, April 2, 2021

WLG-NSN

An excellent opportunity to add to the walked-to-airports list! I’d meant to walk to NSN last July, but we actually only flew into that airport after the Heaphy; our flight to the start of the track was replaced by a van ride. Here’s my chance!

Posted by Patrick Lam on Friday, March 12, 2021

2020 Retrospective part 1: travel

I was writing a 2020 retrospective but it was getting too long so I split it up. Here’s a retrospective on the travel that I’ve been privileged to be able to do. Other parts of the retrospective to come. I should say up front that I strongly dis-recommend travel anywhere there is a pandemic. The safest thing to do is to limit contact with other people. Travel is not that. Definitely don’t go to St.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Wednesday, January 6, 2021

New Zealand Restaurants

I consolidated the list of restaurants we liked in New Zealand from my monthly summaries so far. Considering how few days we spent in Christchurch there are a surprisingly large number of restaurants from there. In general we’ve been doing a lot of cooking at home. Wellington Upesh Kitchen: Our favourite Kelburn take-out place, Malaysian and South Indian Harbourside Market: Sunday market with food trucks Best Ugly Bagels: Montreal-style bagels

Posted by Patrick Lam on Saturday, October 3, 2020

Long-Delayed Trip Report: Queen's Birthday Weekend in Charleston

The plan, then, was to get in some climbing on granite in Charleston for the Queen’s Birthday long weekend. Side note: In Canada [except Quebec], Victoria Day is the Queen’s Birthday (unofficial start to summer), scheduled for the last Monday preceding May 25, while in NZ, it’s the first Monday in June. Close but not quite, and the weather is different. Kind of like many things in NZ. It’s a different country.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Thursday, September 10, 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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