Pedraforca's hike with workmates!

Here are a few pics from the Pedraforca hike we did with some people from my lab, away from the current mess in Spain. Pedraforca is an iconic mountain the Pyrenees of Catalonia, even the most beautiful mountain in the world according to some Catalans! ;o) Somehow (?!), I forgot to take a picture of the general mountain, but you can find one here.

In any cases, this is a beautiful mountain, and we did a great and varied circuit... with some varied weather, including a tiny bit of hail! Many thanks to Xevi for the organization!!!

A proposal for a "boulette grading system"

As having a fair amount of experience and expertise on the subject, I have been advised a couple of time to create a grading system for "boulettes". I first should define what is a "boulette": a mistake that happens often to "boulets" (in the sense of scatter-brain people). It can be forgetting or loosing things of minor consequences, or more annoying things such as missing a flight. I would add it has to be laughable as well, but maybe that is only a personal interpretation. As such, it can encompass a large range of things, and a grading system should be a valuable one. Here is a first suggestion of scale: B-rating-cause/consequence. B is for Boulette, rating a number relative to the "quality" of the boulette, and cause/consequence is a letter indicating the natures of the cause and/or of the consequences:

i: for Inconvenience. That is when you forgot your work laptop at home, and have to bike 40 minutes to get it back.
m: for Money, i.e. when the boulette generates a loss of money. For example, when you buy new tickets because you missed your train.
o: when it deals with Others. These ones can reveal challenging to friendships!!!
l: for lost. This is often linked to Money and/or Inconvenience.
b: for broken. This is often linked Money and/or Inconvenience.
c: for Clumsiness. This can happen to everybody.

f: for Forgeting something you may need, such as a fixing kit for flat tyres.
r: for Repetition. This can add an extra grade to the global rating, please see the Annexe at the bottom of this post.

Many letters can be combined depending on the boulette. The global rating would look like this:

B0: No boulette. This is the grade when you were certain to forget something, but you didn't. In general, if you are a experienced boulet, you are quite proud of yourself when this happens.
B1: Minor boulettes, i.e. the ones you can solve easily by finding an alternative solution. For example, B1-if you forgot your spoon while camping in the mountain, and use a can top instead. These boulettes can even be seen as grateful, since they develop your ingenuity, or even your creativity. Boulettes can be good for you!
B2: These deals rarely with money or others, or for tiny things only. For example: B2-i could be when you forgot your mobile phone at work on Friday, and have to get it back in the evening because you need it for the weekend.
B3: Boulettes which can be slightly annoying. For example, B3-mi is for when you missed your train and have to buy new tickets at full price ("i" is because you will arrive delayed).
B4: Next level... Then it can be really annoying. They can deal with major Inconveniences, or a fair amount of Money, such as loosing your mobile phone with all numbers in it, B4-iml. Potential B5s can enter here, for example loosing your passport in the street of Otaki in New Zealand, but luckily brought back to the police by somebody a few days later.
B5: We enter now in the high level boulettes, and they are reserved to only a few persons who would still see the funny side of the boulette. Loosing your passport forbidding you to follow your girlfriend for holidays in Germany would enter that category at B5-ioml. (somebody should recognize himself there...). I know of one other good story of fishing-hook-deep-in-the-flesh-of-the-thumb which could have reached a solid grade B5, but maybe it was a too disagreeable experience to be enjoyable as a boulette?
B6: Here, we are the level of Boulet Bieth, Boulet-god for all of us. This can be achieved by himself only, and even only very rarely. The famous example is to quit his job&life in London in the aim of living with a girl who is living with her boyfriend, and hearing them making love all night long, through the walls... There, we have B6-im. Again, you have to take it well and laugh about it, otherwise it is a too disagreeable experience to be a boulette.

Considering the descroption of B6, I suggest the grading system should not be open-ended since anything worst would include really bad things I don't want to promote. B6 is very boarder-line already.


ANNEXE: about repetitive boulettes... Repetitive boulettes could get an extra mark if they are temporally not too spread out. The delay of prescription should be small for a B1, and very long (infinite?) for a B6... Maybe that would be the only way to reach a grade of B7? Repeating a grade B6 would be incredible, and would definitely add an extra dimension to a B6!

An happy Kangoo

What makes a Kangoo* a good life? Driving a lot of course and seeing friends are good starting points. The blue Kangoo had its share of good things on the way down to Barcelona, an excellent trip for him in any cases!

Furthermore, it has to be know that the Kangoo really enjoys the presence of kids, the latter giving it back to him as they (my niece and nephew for instance) really like to play in it!

* a French mini-van from Renault

Julien's circus

My first weekend was dedicated to settle down a bit (thanks to Frenchiiiiiie for the help to move my stuff from my car to the flat), and to attend Julien's circus school mid-term show! It was excellent and very fun to watch, I would really recommend it if that wasn't an unique show! Really impressive to see what people can do only after 6 months of (hard) training!

My new flat in Barcelona

Upon the requests of my mum, here are a couple of pics of my flat in Barcelona!

Matiu Island

Strangely, Wellington is the best place to see some native NZ wildlife: not far from the Kapiti Island reserve, the Mount Bruce park, and hosting the Karori reserved, and Matiu (or Somes) Island in it's harbor. The later has an interesting history as it was the quarantine island (for animals and humans) back in the days, and a defense spot during the second world war as bunkers were built, in case the enemy would attack Wellington...

Anyway, we visited first the island with Dion and Bastien. The day time was good to see a few skinks and some birds, but the ranger really recommended us to come back and camp overnight on the Island. Which we did a few weeks later with Aurelie and Nicolas.

The two later kayaked to the Island on Sunday afternoon, while I was supposed to take the ferry. Their kayak trip went well, taking the ferry revealed challenging for some reasons... (it a long story by itaself!) Anyway, I managed to reach the island eventually. Indeed, it is really good to spend the night on the Island: it's close to Wellington but far at the same time, the views on the city are excellent at sunset and sunrise. Even better, you can see tons of native animals such as the elusive geckos, some giant wetas (some really large insects), and the old Tuataras. These later are huge sort of lizards reminiscent from before the dinosaurs. They don't do much at all, and don't move most of the time, and need to eat a weta once a month to survive. This laziness imply that they can live old, well over a century... Should we tale some lessons of them???

Considering the way back to Wellington for me and Nicolas, we definitely won't live long: while Aurelie took the Ferry back to Wellington, we kayaked early morning back to Petone, facing a strong head-wind, with the associated surface current... We had to paddle really hard in a relatively rough harbor, and couldn't stop at all during the 3 kms journey... My (untrained) left shoulder got sore for one week because of that...

Anyway, Nicolas made it to work not so late, and we spend a relaxing day shopping in Wellington with Aurelie (she took the day off). Fun trip in any cases!!!

PS: Unfortunately, it was the wrong season for spotting the 280 blue penguins present on the Island. That would have been great, maybe I have to come back a third time!

Matiri loop

Dion managed to get a week of holidays for some tramping in the South Island, in the idea of visiting some remote huts on the westcoast. Bastien (a French dude doing an internship at IRL with Nicola) joined us. After meeting in St-Arnaud (where I ended my week of tramping in the Nelson Lakes), we decided to change a bit the plans, and go to the Matiri ranges in the Kahurangi National Park. It's not exactly on the westcoast, but it was fitting better with the weather forecast and our tight timing, I though. I needed to argue a bit with Dion since he really wanted to go to the westcoast, but managed it.

It was a really good trip in again a not so much traveled region, and a varied trip including:
- a nice lake with some good wildlife, and apparently some very rare native bats (which we didn't see)
- a steep climb to the 1000 Acres plateau
- some unusual landscapes on the plateau, which has a high biodiversity with 437 - different alpine plants... Didn't name the all of them...
- some wild tramping along a very though and long route, not traveled more than once a year. Thanks to the though kiwi lady (I forgot her name, shame on me) who gave us good info on the route, we might not have tried if not!
- a nice high Valley around the Huricane hut
- stuck one day in a hut cos the river was flooded, so was the track...
- some nice small huts
- and some Nachos at the end! Bastien discovered Nachos then, and got so found of them that he had 3 meals of them in 2 days, with an excellent fish&chips* (in Nelson) in between.

* it's Dion who insisted to get all this fat food... You know, those kiwis...