Work-Patrick Lam

July: to the Realm

This month’s highlights: three trips, including one outside of New Zealand; ten new restaurants; normal non-teaching term month.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Monday, August 2, 2021

June: non-teaching term month 2

This month’s highlights: SCAM paper submission; less successful tournament result at the Waikato Bays Open (Rotorua); rainy weekend trip to Masterton and Pūkaha National Wildlife Centre; COVID scare in Wellington (got lucky)

Posted by Patrick Lam on Sunday, July 4, 2021

May: non-teaching term month 1

Incremental progress throughout May; as usual, non-teaching terms are much less of a grind.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Tuesday, June 1, 2021

April: end-of-term slog

April has overall been a real grind, with an attempted paper submission and now grading. We had one trip to Christchurch, where our planned objective got rained out, but we still did a bunch of elevation gain (though not much distance, which means steep ascents).

Posted by Patrick Lam on Monday, May 3, 2021

March: finishing the Tongariro Circuit, climbing trip to Pohara, and hiking Wanaka

Usually by this point we’d be getting close to the end of Winter term (was April 3 in Winter 2020), but we’ve stretched lectures out because of the pandemic (later start, additional scheduled pause, shorter exam period), so we still have 1.5 weeks of class left. I feel like the wheels are starting to fall off at this point, with all sorts of random life things happening to the students in my graduate course. Three trips: back from Tongariro; climbing at Pohara; and hiking around Wanaka.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Thursday, April 1, 2021

Book review: The Ethical Algorithm by Kearns and Roth

Again wandering through a Wellington City Library branch, this time I picked up The Ethical Algorithm by Michael Kearns and Aaron Roth, from January 2020. It was an easy read for someone with a PhD in Computer Science and a BSc in Math/CS, and I finished it in about two hours. I didn’t pick up that much that was new to me, but I follow developments in this domain as an interested but technically-educated reader.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Friday, March 19, 2021

February: mostly work, plus Tongariro Northern Circuit

Remote teaching has definitely been grinding along and keeping me busy this past month. The workload has been different for the fourth-year undergraduate course versus the graduate seminar. Aside from teaching and research, there was also returning from the Tuatapere Hump Ridge Track at the very start of the month, the Tongariro Northern Circuit at the end of the month, and the Jumbo Circuit in the middle. No new areas of NZ visited, but did re-visit old locations.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Thursday, March 4, 2021

2020 (not travel)

My non-travel retrospective for 2020: work, life goals, and hobbies.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Wednesday, February 10, 2021

January: Back to School, and Hump Ridge

Back to school! Classes started on January 11 and that’s been keeping me busy this month. More about that below.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Sunday, February 7, 2021

Book review: Overload by Kelly and Moen

I was wandering through a Wellington City Library branch and picked up Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do about It by Erin L. Kelly and Phyllis Moen, a book published March 2020. I don’t usually read management books but I am interested in how people work in 2021; work-life balance was cited in Minister Navdeep Bains’s recent resignation, for instance (of course it always is for politicians), and discussed in a Globe and Mail Opinion.

Posted by Patrick Lam on Thursday, January 14, 2021

Patrick Lam