Ep 349: Sebastian Ham, Susan Cumming (December 29, 2011)

Rounds: Here.


Richard reveals that Sebastian does kung fu and tai chi, and asks what form of kung fu he practices.  Sebastian responds that it is a style called Hung Leng, developed by a British sifu; it's a traditional Chinese form of wushu that uses all the animal styles, a bit of tai chi and bagua and lots of others.

Challenging Sebastian is Susan Cumming, a scientist and education manager at the Monash Institute of Medical Research.  She looks after PhD students there -- currently 101 of them; Richard makes a 101 Dalmatians reference, and we find out that Susan likes bichon frises.  The students are mainly studying molecular biology, but there's also a lot of bioinformatics and some psychology.  Within the molecular biology area they range from cancer research to baby research, to reproduction and development, and to immunology.


Susan does well in the letters, outdoing Sebastian twice (once when he overreaches for a seven that it not listed in the Macquarie).  Unfortunately for her, Sebastian does well on the numbers today while Susan is unable to make much headway at all.  That's more than enough to give Sebastian the win, 49 to 32.

I had a good game today; I missed a seven (possibly extendable to an eight, but more on that in round four) that I've seen in the past, but aside from that did as well as I plausibly could.  Coupled with a fast conundrum solution, I have a comfortable victory myself and feel back in better territory.

As usual, details after the jump.