... that time the Mountains kicked my arse...

Friday (6/24/16) -- H-1 (the day before)
5.00PM - Board Citilink flight BPN-CGK
6.30PM - Land at CGK
8.00PM - Arrived home, had dinner.
9.00PM - Kissed the baby, put stuff in backpack, went to bed
11.00PM - Regretting the ice coffee I had at lunch.  Read last week's Tempo again.

Starting point

Start of the hike

Saturday -- D-day
2AM - Finally got some shut eye
3.15AM - Alarm vibrate goes off.  Get up and shower.
4.00AM - Quick bite, off I go on the loaned Toyota Camry
4.15AM - Picked up friends at Ritz Carlton hotel, off to the freeway
7.00AM - Arrived at Gunung Salak - Gathered at the starting point.  Elevation 700m.  Started our hike up
8.00AM - Left behind, lost track of most poeple in our group
11.30AM - Completely out of breath, almost out of water.  Gave up at Checkpoint 3 - Elevation 1,700m (Peak would be at 2,800m).  Sat down for 15 minutes, decided that resting in the cold is a terrible idea.  Made my way back down
13.00PM - Out of water.  Tapped the mountain spring water pipes.
13.30PM - Got lost, couldn't find tracks.  Thought to myself, "OMG, am I gonna die here?", several times.
14.00PM - After backtracking, rendezvous with groupmate who had already reached the top and went back down
15.00PM - Reached starting point.
16.00PM - Collapsed at a local house.  Got some shut eye for about an hour while waiting for the rest of the crew.
18.00 sun finally sets. Two in our gang still haven't reached the starting point.  A sherpa is sent for rescue.
20.00PM - Left for home
23.00PM - Arrived at KFC - Bought a bucket (9 pieces) for 4 people + sides.

Around the point where I threw in the towel

All I could see is green

Sunday -- The aftermath
2.00AM - Arrived home. Collapsed. Didn't wake up until 11.30AM.

Lessons learned for future hikes (ha!):

• Bring tons of gear -- more than you think you need.
• Situational awareness is your best friend. 
• Bring lots of water, canteen 4 Liters minimum -- I sweat a ton, other people may not.  Regardless of your sweat, you lose water through your sweat glands.  Dehidration, exposure to the elements, are deadly.  Even mild cases of dehidration does wonders to your decision-making.  Find sources of water.  Mountain spring, streams, leaves, moist plants, anything will help you.  Diarrhea later is preferable to dehydration now
• Bring change of clothes - wet clothes will get you cold faster
• Don't veer off path
• Keep track using GPS -- use things like Google's My Tracks, Endomondo or something like that so you can track your way back
• Altimeter - something as rudimentary as a Casio G-Shock.  Again, situational awareness is key.  Having a sense of how far you are from the top, or from the bottom, allows your mind to re-adjust and ignore the voices that come along with dehydration. 
• Power bank (battery pack) -- obvious
• Food (something light): carbs, proteins, sugar. Sweets to get your sugar level back up.
• Rubber tubing or a small straw - to get water from streams or pipes.
• Get yourself into shape.

How to read Scholarly Journals efficiently

Pulitzer-quality, if there's such a thing in scholarly journals

If you're in academia, or in the middle of a postgraduate program, you are going to have to read and write a lot of research papers.
It's important to understand how these papers are structured.  They are not the same as the kind of essays we write in undergraduate classes.

In most cases, scholarly papers cover just a small portion of a larger question and shows supporting/disputing evidence on a limited set of hypotheses.  For instance, an astronomy paper may cover the big question: "What is the climate like at Jupiter's moon Ganymede?", and the paper seeks to show that the atmosphere consists of 3.7% Helium gas (Editor's note: I totally made this up), in addition to other gases that have previously been shown to exist.  The "meat" of the paper would show the spectrum analysis of photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope.  The paper would then end with what could be the implication of  finding He in Ganymede, conjecturing that the moon was made out of totally different materials from Jupiter itself.

My proposed strategy:

1. Start with the Abstract.  Read in entirety.
2. Read the opening section.
3. Read the closing section.  By then you will have an idea where the problem starts, and where does the research end.
4. For the middle section, start with all the charts and tables, see if any of these make sense to you in the scheme of the problem statement.
5. Take a step back and review. 

The above strategy should give you a sense of what the paper's actually trying to accomplish.  If it's interesting, go ahead and read the paper in its entirety.  Otherwise, move on.