Day 8: Cooper Island to White Bay, Peter Island

We woke up early in the morning and motor'd to Dead Chest before Arturo reminded me (kindly) that the Rhone was off Salt Island, not Dead Chest. This doubling back cost us an extra 20 minutes, but we were once again the first boat on the mooring balls, though another boat arrived and we moved our mooring after a snorkel check so as to have a shorter swim.

The 2 dives on the Rhone (with a surface interval during which I took Bowen snorkeling with warnings from Mark and Arturo not to do duck dives and free dives) were astonishingly good, with a giant reef shark that visited us on both dives, and plenty of wildlife to see, including a turtle!

After the dives, we ate lunch and then proceeded to motor to White Bay on Peter Island to see if it was worth an overnight. The chart briefing on Conch told us that it was a quiet place to spend the night, but the beach was marked as "off limits" because of the Peter Island resort. The wind was too light to sail, so we headed there purely on motor. Along the way, we looked for Carrot Shoal's dive balls in case there was diving, but it was very clear that those dive balls, like those at Lee Bay, had been swept away by the hurricanes and had not been replaced.

Indeed, the bay itself had buoys marking off the swimming area, but the next bay over which was still quite close, Welch Bay, was open. So we dropped anchor there in 15' of water, and then dove the anchor. Arturo said that the anchor wasn't quite dug in, so I dove the anchor, but by the time I'd got there the anchor had dug in. With a catamaran, 50' of chain was more than enough, as the weight of the chain kept the chain nearly horizontal at the shackle, which would end to keep the boat dug in. I was willing to add more chain, but on the catamaran it was a hassle: you'd have to raise the anchor, get the bridle off, let out more chain, and then put on the bridle. We'd already had several issues with the bridle, so we opted not to dick with it.

The snorkeling turned out to be quite good, given the small size of the reefs. Xiaoqin went out to the point and found a shark. We chilled for a bit and at 5:00pm, I got out the paddleboard and paddled to the beach with Xiaoqin, where after a couple of employees left, we got the beach all to ourselves. Along the way, we saw goats which we had heard from the beach!

The beach was superlative, with super  soft sand. It was quite clear that there used to be 4 gazebos on shore, but all but one had been destroyed by the hurricanes, and it was quite feasible that that one standing one had been restored prior to our arrival, along with the cordoning off of White Bay, which peeved me.

We took a few final sunset pictures and went back to the boat during the civil twilight.

That night, after dinner, the bay lit up with occasional flashes of bio-luminescence. Since we were the only boat in the Bay, there was no light pollution and no humming of generators to destroy the mood.  The star gazing was superlative, especially after we turned off all the lights in the boat except the floor lights, and I was astonished to find that after 8:30am with the pending moonrise, the light pollution from the moon was enough to destroy our stargazing.

This is the classic signature experience you can only have in the BVIs, where you can easily charter a sailboat and be the only boat in a Bay with everything to yourself. Those who travel to the area by cruise ship or on land resorts will never have this experience, and while I felt sorry for them, I was also happy that not too many people have discovered this lifestyle, as the last thing I wanted was for more neighbors in our little slice of heaven.

Day 7: Anegada to Cooper Island

We had a leisurely morning. Our goal was to make Cooper Island before the dive shop closed, so we could refill our tanks for the wreck of the Rhone. Interestingly enough, the wind had changed so we ended up sailing back towards Marina Cay into another headwind.

The passage was a lot calmer, and we took the time to stop in Cam Bay for a quick snorkel. This was a difficult anchorage to figure out,  but fortunately no one was there. After snorkeling, we discovered that we were meant to anchor behind the reef, and had in fact anchor'd in such a way as to block the entrance to the harbor! We quickly left the place and refilled our water at Marina Cay.

Departing Marina Cay, the wind was such that there was no point sailing: we'd be faster directly motoring to Cooper Island, and so we did, arriving at 2:00pm, plenty of time to refill the tanks. I got out the paddleboard and with Xiaoqin sitting on the fins, paddled out to cistern point and snorkeled there. Arturo and Mark joined us with the dinghy, doubtless thinking to provide us with backup, but we didn't need it, and paddleboarded back!

Paddleboarding was fun enough that others got into the act and tried it, and everyone could get onto the board, stand up, and paddle at least a few strokes within their first try, marking paddleboarding as an "easy" sport. I loved how easy it was to get it on and off the Catamaran, even single-handed, though having a helper made it super easy.  I do not think I will do another sail charter in the BVIs without also renting a paddleboard. Mark was surprised at how much I liked it: "You're usually more picky than I am," he remarked.

Sunset was gorgeous as usual, and we backed up all the photos from all the cameras onto Mark's Pixelbook that evening.

Day 6: Marina Cay to Anegada

We did the math the night before to compute the bearing to Anegada. It looked like coming out of Scrub island was a better point of sail despite a bit longer motoring, so at the crack of dawn we got up, moved the boat, and then setup the sail. The transit was a little rocky, but not bad. It was very strange to see the trees of Anegada pop up into view as we headed towards it.

We arrived at 10:00am, plenty of time to find a mooring ball (there were plenty), order the lobster dinner at the Anegada Reef Hotel, eat lunch, and then head onto land, bringing all our snorkel gear with us.

First stop, was to see the flamingos:

Then, we headed over to Loblolly beach, where the taxi driver told us he'd be there to pick us up at 5:00pm before the mosquitoes got really bad! This place was amazing, the complete opposite of Hawaii. We got the entire beach to ourselves for a 15 minute walk. It was uncrowded and beautiful.

The kids went for ice cream and lollipops, and we didn't deny them, after which Arturo, Mark and I went for a snorkel, which was also pretty amazing. We saw manta ray, jelly fish (which we were careful to avoid), and a huge ball of sardines that were being herded by a giant barracuda.

After we had dried off, we each had drinks at the bar, including the kids. And then we started getting a preview of what the night would bring, which was the mosquitoes/midges: too small to see yet irritating and would leave a rash on Xiaoqin's arms.

We went back to the boat to prepare for dinner, but just before dinner time, the bilge alarm went off and wouldn't shut up! We checked all the bilges and called Conch's technical support, but when it wasn't resolved by dinner time I sent Arturo with the family to shore for the lobster dinner and stayed on the boat while being on the phone with Conch. After passing through to 2nd level technical support, the conclusion was to just cut the wire to the speaker. We tried several places but eventually gave up on the speaker and just cut the wire from the starboard bilge float alarm. That done, Arturo picked me up just in time to help eat the lobster, which Bowen didn't like as much as he thought he liked.

It was Lobster Festival Night, which meant that the hotel had loud music playing the whole time. We made up our minds to now avoid any event with the word "festival" in it.

Day 5: Marina Cay

 Arturo had great memories of the Maze, a dive site in Lee Bay, and I remembered there was a mooring ball there, but when we got there there was no mooring ball! We ended up anchoring amongst the boats that had overnight there, and Arturo and Mark got into their snorkel gear to swim to the start while I got out the paddle board for more practice.

The night before at Marina Cay, I'd gotten out the paddleboard only to have to get rescued by the dinghy because the wind was blowing harder than I could paddle! This time in the morning in a quiet Bay, I discovered that in ideal conditions, the paddleboard was much faster than swimming or snorkeling, even with fins, and could take Bowen around the Bay before Arturo and Mark had finish exploring. This inspired Arturo and Xiaoqin to try it out as well.

By the time we'd done all that, the other boats had left the Bay, and I got in a bit of snorkeling with Xiaoqin before we left for Trellis Bay to reprovision for the Anegada trip.

Trellis Bay was one place where the devastation of the hurricanes that hit the BVI was still visible. All around the shore, we could see boats that had been pushed aground and destroyed but have not been recovered or salvaged yet. Upon visiting the Trellis Bay market in the dinghy, we discovered that not only was the market well equipped, it was also a short walk to the entrance to the airport!

We headed back to Marina Cay, taking a nice mooring ball right behind the reef, and then proceeded to head over to snorkel Marina Cay with Xiaoqin and Bowen, with Arturo and Mark diving. When the snorkeling was done, I shuttled Xiaoqin and Bowen back to the dinghy, loaded the empty scuba tanks onto it, and delivered a camera to Arturo!

All that effort was in vain, however, as when we got to scrub island resort the dive master there informed us that their compressor had just broken! We didn't need dive tanks in Anegada, so it wasn't a big deal. We shopped at the expensive gourmet market, and then headed back to the boat for thanksgiving dinner.

Bowen had asked for a turkey, but of course we hadn't provisioned any! Mark thought up to make a salad out of various vegetables to make a turkey, so that became our turkey dinner! We went to bed early, knowing that the next morning was the famed Anegada passage, which none of us had ever done.

Day 4: Prickly Pear Island to Marina Cay

In the morning, we discussed what to do. One of the reasons we were in Gorda sound was the potential to do the hike to the top of Virgin Gorda, which we did in 2014. There was no reliable information to weather the lookout tower at the top of the trail had survived the hurricanes, so the only way was to visit Leverick Bay and find out. We saw boats leaving Leverick Bay, so there was a high chance that a mooring ball was available.

We had no sooner tied up and sent Arturo and Mark on shore to find a taxi than when an on-call dinghy from Conch charters showed up to fix our water pump! We were nonplussed by this, since while we did have a water pump problem, none of us had called Conch about it! We suspected that some other boat had called them, but were nevertheless happy that they showed up, replacing the water pump.

Arturo and Mark told us that the taxi driver was found but said the lookout tower was gone, so there was no point doing the hike. They came back, hoisted the dinghy, and since we were in Leverick Bay, filled up with water and did some additional provisioning before leaving the sound.

It was a downwind sail to Marina Cay, so we had a nice easy sail, and arrived in Marina Cay ready to do lunch and some diving.

We started by delivering the family to Marina Cay, and then went on to do Diamond Reef, which had come highly recommended by the dive refill place Arturo and Mark had visited the day before. I was very impressed by the site, though not by the amount of traffic traveling through the channel.

At dinner, we discussed whether to head to Anegada. A look at the forecast said that the best days for doing so was on Friday and Saturday, so we had an extra day. I didn't want to return to Gorda sound, as there was not much to do there, while nearby there was Lee Bay, Trellis Bay, and Diamond Reef to explore. So the decision was made to spend another night at Marina Cay.

Day 3: Cooper Island to Prickly Pear Island

The day started with a 40 minute drive to the Baths. We had gotten up just about 20 minutes later than usual, and thus were not the first on the mooring balls. In fact, Arturo spotted a luxury cruise ship, one small enough to fit into the harbor just north of the baths and with a really long anchor, which was undoubtedly sending tourists our way.

Last year, Boen had cried all the way from the dinghy to the shore and then refused to let go of mommy once ashore. What a difference 18 months makes. This year, we towed him ashore with his snorkel vest on him, and while he cried a bit, once ashore, as long as I was carrying him on my shoulders he actually did OK. The hike was more challenging as a result, but we could do everything. We saw a girl from the Disney Princess cruise cry for what his dad said was 2 straight hours, and compared to that Boen was doing quite good.

On the other side, the kids played while Arturo and I, having decided that the place was way too crowded to attempt the hike back, decided to just snorkel back to the dinghy to fetch it, this being faster and also granted us the opportunity to snorkel.

Once back on the Omega, we decided to eat lunch, and then drove just a nautical mile north to the dive buoys marking the Aquarium. Arturo had great impressions of this, having much better memory for dives than I did, so I went along. It was a good dive, with lots of fish, and even a lobster!

Spanish Town had a dive tank fill, but I remembered that the harbor was a major pain to get in and out off, and there were no mooring balls inside the harbor, so I requested that Arturo and Mark make the run in the dinghy, since the harbor entrance was plainly visible! They did so without trouble, and then we headed north towards Lee Bay to see if it would make a good anchorage for the night.

We got there to find that the place already had 3 boats. "Marina Cay or Leverick Bay?" "Let's try Leverick Bay." What I hadn't anticipated was that with the destruction of Saba Rock and the Bitter End Yacht Club, Leverick Bay had become the most popular place in Gorda Sound! We arrived at 5:00pm only to discover that every mooring ball was taken and every anchorage was also taken. I thought about trying to squeeze in and decided that it was this sort of decision that would lead to a sleepless night for all involved, so we went across the sound to Prickly Pear Island where there were 3  boats already anchor'd but ample anchoring room for us.

We dropped anchor in about 20 feet of water and I asked for about 80 feet of chain, but Arturo must have been off because we ended up using all the chain, which was 200'. We raised enough chain to get about 100', but then some confident guy came in and anchored in front of us. Well, we were there first so any problems would have been his fault, but after Arturo dived the anchor I checked his position and the anchor was well behind the new Catamaran. The anchor was well dug in and so we could have a reasonable dinner and sleep well for the night.

Day 2: Privateer Bay, Norman Island to Cooper Island

We woke up bright and early as usual, and moved the Omega 15 minutes to be the first boat on the Indians. Arturo did a snorkel check, and after much debate we decided that the water was too choppy to bother with a dive, since much of what we wanted to see could easily be seen while snorkeling. One of Mark's goals for this trip was to dive the Rhone again, but I hadn't dived since the last time I was in the BVIs, so Arturo wanted a checkout dive for me. "We can always dive at Cistern point in Cooper Island. There's also a dive refill there."

We thought also of diving Pelican Island, but by the time we left the Indians the mooring balls there were full and it wasn't worth the wait, so we raised sails and headed up the Sir Francis Drake channel towards Cooper Island. The sail was rather rough, however, so after a couple of tacks we lowered the sales and turned on the engine to grab a mooring ball on Cooper Island, which was strangely full of empty mooring balls for this time of day. What I would realize later was that with the Wily T's move to Peter Island, Peter Island would become a much more happening place, drawing traffic from Cooper Island.

We got into our dive gear and went to cistern point for a dive after delivering the rest of the family to the beach resort on Cooper Island. Mark was very good at spotting critters hiding in crevices, while I unfortunately drowned my waterproof lights bought 7 years ago for this trip! Fortunately for me, my 18 months away from diving hadn't hurt me at all. I was entirely comfortable in the water, and it was as though

When we were done with the the dives it was too late to get the tanks filled (the shop had closed at 4:00pm and she had a backlog to fill, so even if we'd arrived in time she might have turned us away anyway). I got out the paddleboard and practiced with it. I'd watched a Youtube video ahead of time, which must have helped because I didn't even fall into the water once. Earlier, while setting up for the dive, I'd seen a couple of men paddleboard out to cistern point with snorkel gear and then snorkeled there, which struck me as studly as cycling to the start of a hike to do a hike. I didn't think I'd be skilled enough to attempt that!

Once again, we had a beautiful sunset. The seas were still churning, so we decided that it would be prudent to move to protected waters, which meant that diving the Rhone was out of the question. The Baths, however, were protected from the East, and there was diving nearby, and a visit to Marina Cay or Gorda Sound as feasible from there.

Day 1: Road Town, Tortola to Privateer Bay, Norman Island

Our paddleboard had gotten delivered the night before, and Mark's flight was thankfully only delayed an hour, so we could get the ship's briefing and get the scuba gear delivered and installed before doing one final provisioning run. Mark showed up from the airport just as we'd come back to the boat and then we were off!

In past years, I'd moor'd at Kelly Cove and then dinghy'd over to the caves for the snorkeling. But from last year, I remembered that there were a fair number of mooring balls at Privateer Bay, which was right next to the caves, so we made for it and arrived at 3:00pm or so to find a couple of mooring balls left. We picked one up and proceeded to get into the water.

The caves on Norman island are a snorkeler's delight. You can snorkel along the reefs and watch the wildlife, or dive into the caves, take off your fins, take a break on land, and then go back to swimming. We did all that, and also discovered a bunch of cuttlefish that we would also find again later, in large groups.

By the time we'd finished exploring and returned to the boat the sun had gone down, so we enjoyed the sunset and the barbeque dinner. At this point, we knew what would happen the next day, which was a visit to the Indians and then Cooper Island to refill the tanks!

Prologue

American Airlines was a nightmare. First of all, they'd called several times prior to the trip to change our flight. We had gone from flying into EIS to flying into STT, and then from flying into SJC to flying into SFO. Given that the travel plans were made as much as 6 months ago, we had no choice but to accept those changes and then complain loudly to customer service, which resulted in them giving us a measly 5000 additional frequent flyer miles! Then when we finally showed up on the airline, the promised "first class" lie-down seats didn't fold flat. (I was skeptical of the airline promise in the first place, but I looked on seatguru and at that time it seemed to indicate that I was wrong)

But our nightmare was nothing compared to what Mark Brody went through. His flight was so late that he missed his connection in San Juan and was forced to overnight in a hotel there. Arturo had suggested that he fly to STT but the morning flight and wrangling with airlines made it so that Mark was too tired to try.

We arrived safely and on time in St Thomas, and picked up the baggage with relative speed, but got to the ferry only to discover that the 3:30pm ferry had sold out! Fortunately, there was another ferry at 4:00pm (and the last ferry was at 4:30pm) so we were good.

On the ferry, we sat on the top deck to get maximum sun so we could get over the jet-lag. Arturo had arrived on time with no problems, but he'd been depending on having Mark to help him provision, and with our ferry schedule and the need to go through immigration at the ferry terminal, there was no way we would make it to the Omega before 6:00pm.

Indeed, by the time we made it to the boat (there were very few boats on the Conch slip) and moved in, we were famished and walked down to the Indian restaurant for dinner, leaving poor Arturo to provision by himself and pay the taxi driver extra to get stuff down to the boat. When we were all united, we discussed various plans to leave the dock without Mark if he became delayed again, but came to no definitive conclusion.

We were all pretty tired and so turned in early.

2019 Book Reviews

2019 Books of the Year have been picked!

Non-fiction

• 21 Lessons for the 21st Century
• How to Become a Straight-A Student
• So Good They Can't Ignore You
• Complications
• Math with Bad Drawings
• Army of One
• Endure
• Why We Sleep
• Astounding
• The Perfectionists
• The Plant Paradox
• Marvel: The Untold Story
• Pacific
• The Spy and the Traitor
• Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS
• Sex At Dawn
• Masters of Doom
• Human Errors
• The Longevity Diet
• The New Childhood
• Voice Lessons for Parents
• Don't Panic
• The Breakthrough
• Good to Go
• The Highly Sensitive Child
• When - Scientific Secrets of Perfect Timing
• Grunt
• Utopia for Realists
• The Orchid and the Dandelion
• Stuff Matters
• The Weather Detective
• Six Easy Pieces
• Gulp
• Liquid Rules
• Spark
• Stiff
• A Man for All Markets
• Salt - A World History
• The Hidden Life of Trees
• Tesla
• An Elegant Defense
• The Salt Path
• The Weather Machine
• Prognosis
• Dopesick
• Racing and Training With a Power Meter
• Kochland
• Astrophysics for Young People in a Hurry
• The Intelligence Trap
• How-To
• Rough Stuff Fellowship Archive
• Means of Ascent
• The Years that Matter Most
• Ultra Learning
• Something Deeply Hidden
• The Language Instinct
• Range
• Bonk
• Lost in Math
• That Wild Country
• World Class
• American Shaolin

Fiction

• The Girl Who Drank The Moon
• The Year's Best Science Fiction and Fantasy (Vol 12)
• A Wizard of Earthsea
• The Very Best of the Best - 35 years of Science Fiction
• The Collapsing Empire
• The Consuming Fire
• One Word Kill
• Titan
• Wizard
• Demon
• Exhalation
• Instructions
• The Sympathizer
• Nine Fox Gambit
• Raven Strategem
• Revenant Gun
• Permafrost
• Shadow Captain
• Replay

Comics

• Miracleman
• Batman: White Knight
• Batman: Haunted Knight
• The Witcher Omnibus
• Marvels 1602
• The Magicians: Alice's Story
• Marvels: Remastered Edition
• Superman: Earth One
• A Wrinkle in Time

Audio Books

• The Learning Brain
• Biology: The Science of Life
• Classics of English Literature
• Redefining Reality
• Alone on the Wall
• The Art of Conflict Management
• The Story of Human Language
• Verbal Judo
• Your Best Brain
• The Sociopath Next Door
• The Path to Power
• The Etymoticon
• Without Saying a Word
• Master of the Senate

Index Page: BVI 2018

From November 16th to November 27th, Arturo Crespo, Mark Brody, and my family did a sailing cruise in the British Virgin Islands. This marked my 5th trip to the Virgin Islands and Bowen's 3rd (lest I forget, however, this was also Bowen's 5th sailing cruise!). This is the index page for the day by day trip report and other expository information.

This was our first trip since the Hurricanes in 2017, which changed the British Virgin Islands in ways we expected and didn't expect. First of all, the one of the mooring balls we used to use for diving were swept away and have not yet been replaced. This wasn't expected, since I expected things underwater to not get changed that much. Then there were the indirect effects. For instance, the Wily T in the Bight sank and was replaced by a newly built one, but then the owner of Norman Island forced the Wily T to move to Peter Island's great harbor. That meant that the Bight is now a relatively quiet place, while Great Harbor is now a go-to destination for the party crowd. But it also meant that Cooper Island was less crowded, as the Great Harbor on Peter Island now draws some of the crowd that used to visit Cooper. Finally, in Gorda Sound, Leverick Bay has gone from the quietest harbor to the busiest --- the other harbors are still under reconstruction. There are still a lot of boats sailing the waters, but many of the smaller charter companies have yet to recover their enter stock of sailing and motor vessels so now is the time to visit if you want quieter harbors.

White Bay, Peter Island, BVI

• Explicit Photo Album Link

Day by Day Trip Report

• Prologue
• Nov 18th: Road Town, Tortola, to Privateer Bay, Norman Island
• Nov 19th: Privateer Bay, Norman Island to Cooper Island
• Nov 20th: Cooper Island to Prickly Pear Island
• Nov 21st: Prickly Pear Island to Marina Cay
• Nov 22nd: Marina Cay
• Nov 23rd: Marina Cay to Anegada
• Nov 24th: Anegada to Cooper Island
• Nov 25th: Cooper Isalnd to White Bay, Peter Island
• Nov 26th: White Bay, Peter Island to Great Harbor, Peter Island
• Nov 27th: Great Habor, Peter Island to Road Town, Tortola

Review: So Good They Can't Ignore You

So Good They Can't Ignore You is Cal Newport's counterpart to John T Reed's Succeeding. The difference is that Cal Newport's an academic, so he'll take his arguments to extremes that most normal people won't. This is both a good thing and a bad thing. It's a good thing, because you can see how he takes his arguments to the logical conclusion. It's a bad thing, because that approach lets him ignore practical realities that aren't necessarily congruent with his worldview. As such, I think John T Reed's book is much better, but that doesn't mean that Newport's book isn't worth reading.

There's one core thesis to Newport's book, which is that passion is a worthless idea. He points out that even "passion" touters like Steve Jobs did not have a career path with a clearly defined goal at the outset. Most success stories revolve around opportunistic approaches, where skill/talent meets opportunity. As such, Newport's advise will sound a lot like your grandparent's approach to love in an arranged marriage: there's no such thing as an ideal career or person, you should just learn to love what you're stuck doing.

Obviously, high caliber people (i.e., people who can be bothered to read a book such as this one) will have lots of choices as to what skills and careers to pursue. Newport declares that the best approach is to have career capital. In other words, be so good at something valuable that you can have your pick of projects in the related area. Again, this is kind of an odd duck. For instance, Scott Adams' advice, which I think is quite appropos for most people, is to have a combination of skills that make you unique, rather than being the best in the world at any one thing. (Newport himself is such an example: an academic who can write is far more valuable than most other academics, excepting the ones who are at the top in their field)

He then blathers on about mission and a marketing approach to constructing your ideal career and lifestyle. This is by far the weakest part of the book, since it's quite clear that Newport himself doesn't have a good understanding of marketing and mission either. His habit of summarizing each chapter at the end just looks like padding because his chapters are so short!

Ultimately, I like the book's major thesis, but I disagree that Newport's approach is clearly the correct one. For instance, there's a huge factor involved in personality and fit to your job and career. John T Reed points out that it's much easier to adjust the environment to fit your personality, rather than trying to change your personality to fit your environment. That's much better advice than Newport's. Similarly, in a world of increasingly short attention spans, in many cases all it takes to make it into the top 10% is to be willing (and able) to read a book and execute. Now, being in the top 10% is great. But being in the top 10% of basket ball players won't get you anywhere, while being in the top 10% of computer programmers will get you a good job that pays very well! So it's important to understand that when building "career capital", but Newport doesn't acknowledge or seem to understand that.

I started this review wanting to recommend that you read Newport's book. But by the middle of writing this review and reflecting on the book I've realized that the academic approach to career advice that Professor Newport espouses is as unrealistic as the "passion hypothesis" approach he inveighs against. There are much better career guides out there. Go read those instead.

Review: Outdoor Research Helium Rain Pants

I'm a sucker for deals. I thought I was happy with my Columbia Titanium Rain pants, but Massdrop had a good deal on the Outdoor Research Helium Pants, and in a moment of weakness, I bought it. It didn't rain in California for a while, but when it finally did recently, I dug it out and put it on.

Wow, these are nice pants. The material is thin but waterproof, and the medium fits me perfectly. These are much lighter than the Columbia I previously used. No water gets through the pants no matter how much I rode in the rain, and I never got hot. They are much thinner than the Columbia version, and lighter as well. Now I'll have to sell off my Columbia pants because these are so much better than I wouldn't go back to the Columbia again.

Recommended.

Review: The Learning Brain

The Learning Brain is  The Great Courses series on how your brain learns material. By coincidence, I audited this course while also reading How to Become a Straight-A student, so the two complemented each other, with this course providing the theoretical background, while Newport's book provided a practical approach.

The theoretical approach has much to recommend it. For instance, rereading a textbook is known to be useless (Newport also appears to know this, but never explains why in his book). It turns out that it's far easier to recognize material you've read than to retrieve it. In order to pass exams or truly internalize the material, you need to master retrieving it, so the best approach is to test yourself. Similarly, highlighting material is inferior to explaining the material in your own words, which in turn is inferior to mastering the material to the point where you can teach others.

Polk goes beyond what Newport does by providing further details: here's how much spacing in between study sessions you'll need to maximize effectiveness. Even better, here's how you learn implicit skills (such as playing tennis, golf or the piano) so you can maximize performance. It turns out that randomizing your skills gives you worse performance at the time of practice but will improve performance in the long run. This is counter to most practice: for instance, many tennis players will go to the court and practice forehands, then backends, then serves. Professor Polk's approach would have you randomize which one to do. (I've found this to be true in swimming pools: most people would practice one stroke for 15 minutes, then another, then another --- I myself tend to interleave my strokes for precisely the reason Polk provides)

There's great stuff about the neurobiology behind all this learning, and in addition, there's also a section on aging and how to prevent it from affecting your brain, but of course you know the answer to that: a healthy diet, plenty of exercise, and good sleep.

What I haven't seen elsewhere in this course is a study on human motivation. There's a ton of studies showing how the US falls far behind many other developed countries (and also many developing countries) despite having some of the highest per-capita spending on schools and students. It turns out that the reason is student motivation. Unlike many other countries, the USA had the highest number of students who agreed that "doing well in school is not important to succeeding in life", as well as many who worried that doing too well in school would stigmatize them socially! (Obviously, the sample for these studies drew from far more school districts than those you find in Silicon Valley) The material covers both intrinsic and extrinsic motivation, with results you might have read about or heard about from elsewhere.

Needless to say, this is a great course (pun intended) and well worth your time. Recommended!

Review: How to Become a Straight-A Student

Despite not liking his previous book, I checked out How to Become a Straight-A Student. Obviously, it's too late for me to become a Straight-A student (not that my GPA ever limited my life choices, for which I'm going to consider myself lucky), but maybe as my kids grow up I can find easy short cuts that will enable my children to skip a lot of blind alleys.

Prof. Newport claims that he wrote this book based on interviewing lots of other college students who were similar to him. In other words, he was one of those folks who could manage a social life while still having good grades. (Pengtoh, for instance, was famous for playing pool the night before exams, and got me to join him a few times) The techniques he stumbled upon turn out to have good basis in academic literature, but he doesn't seem aware of that.

The most important takeaway from this book is that one should be organized. Basically, pulling an all-nighter studying before a test or exam  isn't going to improve your grades, and the sleep deprivation might actually hurt you. So the goal of all his advice comes down to breaking down assignments and exams at least a couple of weeks ahead of time and then splitting up the studying into manageable chunks so you don't get overwhelmed.

This is, of course, an excellently organized approach. Pengtoh, for instance, gave me great advice once by telling me to do the assignment for CS162 (Berkeley's Operating Systems class) the night it was handed out. In those days, project assignments were performed on a time-shared VAX-11, and students being the procrastinators that they were, if you waited till the last minute everyone would logon and try to use the machine at the same time which would make it excruciatingly slow. So I would get my stuff done and then be working on other stuff when the machine became excruciatingly slow and my fellow classmates complained that the assignment was too difficult!

So if you grew up in Singapore or other similarly scholastically challenging places, you'll find all this advice stuff you already knew. For instance, the test taking techniques are something that every Singaporean is exposed to since the PSLE: do all the easy questions first, then the harder questions that you know how to do, and save all the "I'm not sure I can do this" questions at the end if you have the time budget for this. I have no idea how any American getting into an academically challenging institution wouldn't know how to do this, except that Steve Hsu points out that as much as 33% of Harvard's incoming classes are legacy admits and athletes.

The advice in the book that's of great use to most students from Asia is the stuff pertaining to writing a research paper. (By this, Newport means research papers in the non-technical courses --- history, etc)  This is organized into research, bouncing ideas off the professor, more research, organization, outlining, writing and revision. Newport provides a detailed timeline for how to do this, including when you should hit the professor during office hours, and how to make use of the library for research. I somehow escaped having to do this during my time at Cal, so it was all new to me.

The advice on how to truly master and learn the material is great. Basically, skip re-reading the textbook (research shows that re-reading and highlighting is a waste of your time), and build your study materials out of "Question/Evidence/Conclusion" tuples. When you organize the material like this, make sure you can answer every question without referring to your notes. If you can't, go over the questions that you couldn't, and repeat until you can. This is academically proven to be effective (though Newport doesn't seem to know that --- he doesn't provide a clear directive on how to schedule your study periods for maximum retention, for instance). For technical courses, he provides a different approach, which is problem-set based. Again, that's sound, but of course, if you grew up in a scholastically challenging academic environment (i..e, anywhere in East Asia), you already knew this.

In any case, this book is well worth your time reading if you're a middle school or high school student who would like to make better use of your time. The information provided is such that parents should read this and pass it on to their kids at the appropriate time. Recommended.

Review: 21 Lessons for the 21st Century

21 Lessons for the 21st Century is Yuval Noah Harari's book about the future of human civilization. It's not actually got 21 lessons that are explicitly laid out or organized in any form whatsoever, and as a historian, Harrai's approach is to speculate about the future mostly by example from the past.

For instance, the problem of Fake News is discussed, but Harari poits out that the biggest "Fake News" of all are the various mythological religions and founding myths! OK, sure, we've managed to get a huge number of humans hooked on traditional witch-doctor-style indoctrinated belief systems, but there's no discussion about how despite humanity breaking free through enlightenment found itself tangled up in Fake News other than that wealthy people and big data analysis and machine learning somehow have learned to hack human psychology and created a mass of people who can no longer distinguish between reality and what Fox News is telling them. Harrari carefully ignores the fact that Fox started way before the prevalence of Big Data.

Harrari points out that in the future we might just trust Google/Algorithms/Big Data Cloud with our personal lives that we would just hand them our lives and ask them what we should do. This seems unlikely given that statistics are just that: you would still have to figure out which statistics apply to you. Harrari might simply have swallowed all the hype about machine intelligence hook/line and sinker without stopping to investigate deeply what this means. For instance, even if your doctor could be replaced by a Big Data algorithm, it's very likely that you would still need human contact for optimal care, and that cannot be done just by robots.

The net net is that the book discusses a ton of big problems facing humanity (massive loss of jobs, huge inequality, and of course the upcoming climate crisis), but doesn't actually provide any "lessons" or even a reasonable call to action. These are interesting problems to think about, but I think I'd prefer an analysis by someone who actually understands the technical problems, as opposed to a historian.

2018 Books of the Year

This year, I read 53 books worth reviewing, audited 8 audio books, and read 12 graphic novels. That's well over a book a week, though some of that is mitigated by books I read to Bowen.

My comic book of the year was Runaways. The first arc was great, and while the rest of the series diminished the work established there, it was a great story and a lot of fun.

My favorite audio book this year was Law School for Everyone.  You would think that it's such a dry topic, but the lecture series was put together very well, and if you yourself are not a lawyer, chances are some day you'll need to hire one, and this would give you a great foundation. If that's not for you, I also recommend How Music Works, which was so good that I was inspired to watch a David Byrne concert.

My favorite novel this year was Crazy Rich Asians. The novel's much better than the movie, so if you liked the movie even a little, you're going to love the book. It's a quirky, entertaining book that's worth your time and uniquely Singaporean. If that's not to your fancy, I think Children of Time or The Hobbit would be your next best bet. (And seriously, if you haven't read "The Hobbit", you should!) Finally, parents could do much much worse than to read Harriet the Invincible to their kids. Triple that recommendation if they have daughters.

This year's non-fiction finds were particularly awesome. I thoroughly enjoyed Educated, The Great Influenza, Leonardo Da Vinci, Misbehaving, If Stones Could Speak, Never Split the Difference, and No Apparent Distress. Each one of these would make great reads, and I had a hard time coming to a "best book" pick. I very much waver between Leonardo Da Vinci and Misbehaving, but if you had to twist my arm I would say that Richard Thaler's book is just a little bit more relevant to today's world. Educated is also very much worth reading but would require a strong stomach. And obviously, if you have a child (or maybe even if you don't), If Stones Could Speak is awesome and short.

It's been a great year for books, so I hope these recommendations don't come too late for your holiday purchases!'