Patrick Lam

Thoughts and travels of Patrick Lam

October: Wellington only

For the first time since lockdown, we didn’t get out of town all month. On Friday I am going to Auckland and then the Bay of Islands for the week. It feels like I did a lot of work in October but I’m not quite sure what I have to show for it. Certainly a talk. Thought about ongoing projects and working towards a new project (or at least a funding opportunity). Did travel planning for Auckland.

September: Canterbury and Level 1

Spring in New Zealand Once again, spent two-thirds of this month in Wellington. The other 10 days were around Christchurch and Kaikoura. Currently no trips planned until November 27, although perhaps Auckland for not-Nationals judo tournament in early November. We are moving 700m down the street tomorrow though. The lease on our current place ended and so we looked around for alternatives (although a fun fact is that, like in Ontario, a fixed-term lease automatically becomes periodic upon completion in NZ and needs to be explicitly non-renewed 21 days before the end date).

August: Back from a trip and into Level 2

In Wellington. Previous trip: Stewart Island; returned to Wellington August 11 (a day before New Zealand went back up to level 2 and Auckland to level 3 following discovery of a new cluster). Next trip: Christchurch, September 11, originally for the South Islands judo championships, now cancelled (oops). Aside from that, it’s been a fairly quiet month. I hope to at least get all of the Heaphy trip posted and maybe some of the Rakiura trip before going to Christchurch in two weeks.

July, including a vacation

I’m between trips as I write this. Tomorrow morning we are flying to Invercargill at the end of the South Island and, if weather permits, continuing to Stewart Island/Rakiura. (I’ve learned, however, that we often need to be flexible with these plans, as weather can be from slightly to extremely unfavourable.) Two and a half weeks ago we came back from Christchurch and the West Coast. I noticed that I promised a writeup for Charleston last month.

Level 1 June

This month started in Charleston where I went climbing with Elliott. As I write this I’m going to the Heaphy Track tomorrow morning. We chose to delay for a day due to weather. The number of active cases in NZ is now 21 but that is a misleading number; all of these cases are in quarantine “at the border”, i.e. found in returning New Zealanders in managed self-isolation. The number of known active cases in the community is 0 which has been a stable number for a while.