School

Well my first semester of school is finally coming to a close.  Being back in school has been a pretty big shock to my system.  During the first couple of weeks of school, I was so confused.  It’s hard to go from 3 years of pure freedom to 8:30-5:30 almost everyday.  All that being said, my exams are about to start.  I’ve finished all my assignments for all the courses and my first exam is tomorrow morning in Business Communication.  After that, I’ll have the whole weekend to study for the other 4.  Monday is debatably my hardest day for exams, I start with a Programming Exam on Java at 10:30.  At 3:30 I’ll start my Math exam.  The good thing is that at least I have 3 hours in between the two exams so I can do some last hour studying.  Tuesday is my exam in Web Programming; I’ll have questions on XML, HTML, JavaScript and PHP.  I’m pretty comfortable with the first 3 and PHP is my definite weekend in the 4.  I’ll finish up my exam week with an exam Thursday on Business.

After that, I get a 3 week break!

Climbing

I also have a competition this weekend at Cliffhanger.  It’s called November sessions but this year it happens to fall in December so they renamed it December sessions.  For the past 2 years, I’ve set for this competition.  Since it happened to fall on exam weekend, I decided I didn’t have enough time to make the trek out to Coquitlam for 2 days.  On the other hand, I get to compete at the event.  It’ll probably be top 6 problems basic scramble format.  Although my mind should and will be on exams, I’m sure I can take the 4 hour break for a competition.

Seattle Bouldering Challenge was this past weekend.  I drove down with my dad Saturday morning to Seattle.  My mom had gone down on Friday to do some shopping and we picked her up from downtown along with Elise Sethna and her mom as well.  By 10:30, we had arrived at the competition and waited around for the rules meeting.  At 11, the comp started and I went about my usual routine.  SBC is a scramble competition format and they take your top 5 boulders.  I usually warm up a bit, then test the waters and try a few hard ones.  I kind of hurt my arm a week and a half ago from overtraining.  I was afraid of my arm hurting at the competition so I wanted to get qualifiers down as fast as I could.  About halfway through, I was getting nervous because I had fallen on quite a few boulders that I thought I should’ve done.  One of them was a really dumb mistake; I missed a hold on one of the problems and tried to dyno around the lip…  With about an hour left in the competition, Jamie Chong and I were looking at the two hardest problems.  They were both about 15-20 moves long and pretty overhanging.  I tried one of them and got slayed on the second move.  After a quick rest, I tried the other hard one and ended up flashing it.  Because it was worth the most points of all the qualifying boulders, I knew I had secured a spot in finals, so I stopped.

Haircut?

After the dust settled from the qualifying round, Johnny Goicoechea was leading in first place.  He had also done the hardest problem as well as one of the sloper problems that I couldn’t do.  Finals started at 6 and I had a little trick up my sleeve.  For the past 8 months, I haven’t cut my hair.  I always cut my hair right before I go to Europe which was back in April.  I figured because it was getting cold here in Vancouver, I would just leave my hair long and stay warm.  Finally, my hair got so annoying being in my eyes all the time, I decided to cut it.  I also wanted to do something ridiculous for SBC finals because I know it would get me psyched.  Because I wasn’t feeling 100% with my shoulders, I knew if I looked ridiculous, I would try all that much harder.  During the layover before finals, I had my mom cut my hair in a park.  The catch was that I cut my hair into a raging Mullet.  I thought it’d be funny and I think it was well received.  I competed in finals with the mullet and had nothing but complements on my new style.

Finals

I ended up climbing super well on all the finals problems except for one, the first one.  When I left isolation, I was told that all the men would be on Lime Green taped problems and all the women’s would be in Bright Pink taped problems.  I got out to my first finals boulder and it was pretty long.  Because I was really psyched to climb, after a short preview, I jumped on.  Halfway through the boulder, I looked up and saw a huge lime green hold.  Because I knew I was on a Lime Green boulder, I naturally grabbed it.  Right after I grabbed it, I heard a gasp from my mom who was watching from the side.  She said “Sean…” and I looked over, kind of surprised that she was trying to talk to me in the middle of a comp.  I looked back up towards the problem and immediately knew what I had done wrong.  Because my mind was so tuned into the colour “Lime Green”, I hadn’t noticed that the hold that I was on was boxed in Pink tape and just happened to be exactly the same colour as the route I was supposed to be on.  I jumped down and felt pretty dumb.  I think that’s the first time I’ve ever gone off route in a competition.  I take competitions pretty seriously, and this was very uncommon for me.  After a quick rest, I jumped on the problem and fired it second go.

The rest of the boulders in finals were super good.  I was lucky in the fact that boulder 3 and boulder 4 were very hard.  I knew that if the boulders were too easy, the 100 point bonus for flashing that I lost on the first boulder would come back to bite me.  Because I knew I was behind, I think I tried even harder.  The third boulder suited me well.  I had some jumping, some campusing, heel hooks and a final throw to the top rail.  Because I was the first person to top the boulder, the crowd erupted as I stuck the final jug.  I realized after that if I’d had fallen on the last move, I would’ve gone for a pretty big fall down into the crowd…

First and second place came down to the 4^th problem.  Johnny beat me in qualifiers so in a count back, he’d beat me.  Because I flashed the 3^rd problem and Johnny had flashed the first, we were almost tied going into the last problem.  I knew that if Johnny stuck the move that I had fallen on, he’d win.  His first try was probably his best try and he was way closer to sticking the move than I was.  Because the problems were so long, by the time he got to the crux move, he said he was too pumped.  After a very entertaining finals, I managed to pull out another win, Johnny was second and Brian Boyko took third spot.

I created a twitter account a few weeks ago, and I’ve decided to share it with the world. I’ll be trying to update it as much as possible. This is kind of an experiment for me. I know I’m online so often at school, I’m sure I can take a minute to update my twitter.

You can go to my twitter page by clicking HERE or you can follow the link on the sidebar at the right.

This past week in Vancouver had some of the most epic weather of the year. Last Wednesday, it rained for almost the whole day. I guess rain isn’t that uncommon in Vancouver. Come to think of it, it didn’t just rain; it was hailing for a few hours and actually sticking to the ground. After the hail was done, it rained some more and made it look as though it had been snowing… Thursday and Friday was absolutely amazing weather, sunny, no rain, almost like it was summer again. I can’t wait for it to actually start snowing so I can try to cram skiing and snowboarding into my already hectic schedule.

At the beginning of the year, I found out that I could buy a season’s pass for Whistler/Blackcomb for only 400$. I seriously debated it and ended up not getting one. I’m pretty happy I made that decision. If I had a Whistler pass, I’d feel obliged to use it and because I do 3 hours of homework a night, it would be pretty hard to get up there as much as I’d want to.

3rd note is SBC is this weekend!! I’m so excited; I haven’t done a bouldering competition since the Tout-A-Blocs back in France in late July. I also haven’t been training too much bouldering so it’ll pretty interesting. When I got home from Europe, I wanted to stay in route form so I could do Dreamcatcher. Once I sent that, I started bouldering but last Tuesday I ended up hurting my arm. I think I just trained too hard on Tuesday because I tried climbing on Wednesday and it hurt soooo much after only an hour of climbing. I iced it, did some abs, and went home. I tried to climb again on Thursday and got about an hour and a half before it started hurting again. I rested for another two days and went climbing last night for a couple of hours without it hurting at all. As for SBC, it’s probably my favourite competition of the fall. The atmosphere is great and they always set 100+ new problems.

After SBC, I’ll have another two weeks of school, then finals, then Christmas Vacation!! It seems as though this semester went by pretty fast and at the same time, I can’t believe how much new material I’ve learned. I’ve learned how to program in Java, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and I’m just starting to learn PHP. Sometimes, when a new language gets introduced I get lost, but because I ask a ton of questions to my teachers and friends, usually I catch on quickly a bit later. As much as I like learning at school, I can’t wait for the Christmas holidays to start. I also know I start holidays almost a week before most other schools. My last exam will be on Dec 11th!

BCIT

I know it’s been a long time since I’ve posted anything on my site; the reason I’ve been off the grid is mostly because I started school at the beginning of September at BCIT (British Columbia Institute of Technology). I’m currently in the CST (Computer Systems Technology) program at BCIT. This program takes 2 years to complete and at the end of it, I get a diploma. Once I have a diploma, there are a few options that I could pursue. I could stay at BCIT for another 2 years and complete a degree or I could transfer to a University and finish my degree there. Yet another thing I could do is start working with my degree. After a few years or working, if I wanted to upgrade my skills, I could go back to school or if I felt like I was doing well, I could stay working. My main goal is to find a flexible job that allows me to continue climbing at the level that I’m at.

Right now, I’ve been training about 3 days a week. I do about 3 hours of homework each day and on the weekends a bit more. BCIT is the most intense program I’ve been in. In high school, I didn’t do homework and I still got a high B average. The analogy that they keep repeating here is “It’s like trying to drink through a fire hose”. In most Universities, the maximum credits you can take per semester are around 15, I’m taking 28. I’m taking 8 courses but 2 of them are a lot easier than the other 6 because it’s only an hour a week. The other 6 courses are 2 hours of lecture and 2 hours of lab per week. Each week, there’s a scheduled lab in which you have to complete the lab work. On top of that, there are roughly 4 assignments that each take about 2 weeks to do. For each lecture week, I have to read about a chapter in each course. In total, I read 4 chapters a week, then try to do the labs, work on my assignments and try to climb.

That whole last paragraph was probably just a big brain dump but that’s what it feels like. I’m constantly doing work and I’ve almost completely stopped gaming. Last week, I had my midterms and I think they went pretty well. The highlight of midterms was getting 100% in Math!!

An upcoming even is the Seattle Bouldering Challenge which is on the November 21st. I can’t wait, it’s the best competition of Fall and it’s a great way to stay motivated.