Looking Through the Window at History

Radcliffe Camera at Dusk

Turning Around Before Dark in Joshua Tree

If you want to vote for my portfolio, you can check it out here! (Also, be sure to check out Jessica’s portfolio as well). It was really fun to pick a few photos I thought had a chance, and it inspires me to keep snapping pictures. It was also interesting to sink for a moment back into the stories these photos captured, and I hope they can transport you somewhere else for a brief second.

Germany 3-2009 England 3-2009

I also had the opportunity to travel with my girlfriend Jessica on the weekends, as she was spending a few months in northern Germany working this summer. We spent a weekend in her town, Celle, then joined my sister and good friends Trent and Natalie in Munich, then finally had a wonderful time visiting Barcelona.

Obviously there would be numerous things to write about, from stories to observations of interesting cultural differences to reflections I had during the last weeks, but alas! There is no time. So instead, I’ll just post links to the photo albums I’ve added to my Flickr account. Enjoy!

Germany Photo Set

Barcelona Photo Set

My car

When I decided to go to Africa for 6 months (and do who knows what after that), it became increasingly clear that keeping my car was not going to be easy. Insurance payments and finding a place to store it just weren’t options. And so, somewhat grudgingly, I began the process of trying to sell it about a month ago. At that time it was a very practical and financial decision, and I didn’t think much of it. Now I’m sitting here with the fattest wad of cash I’ve ever seen, no car, and surprisingly strong emotions.

I feel, for whatever reason, as if I’ve lost a friend or a long-loved pet. It can’t be the wheels themselves–if anything, having a car has been somewhat of a burden with gas prices being so high, having to worry about maintenance, etc… For the most part, I didn’t need a car in Palo Alto, and I certainly don’t need one to get around here in San Francisco. So why do I miss my beautiful white Civic?

I think a lot of things are wrapped up in it. It was the first car I ever bought, during my junior year at Stanford. I can remember being with my parents at the car lot, learning the tricks of the car buying trade, knowing what I wanted but knowing I couldn’t afford it, and finally finding a good (if expensive) match in my little Civic. That was a somewhat momentous process in and of itself, and the car loan was the first monthly payment I ever had! Definitely “coming of age”.

But fundamentally, it has to be the memories. Memories of adventure, companionship, solitude, of joyful or tearful singing in the only place I could go where I didn’t have to worry about anyone hearing. Memories of driving a girl to dinner (and trying to be all cool because I was driving stick), or memories of the drive up the 280 to San Francisco, hitting the steering wheel and crying in frustration because I’d fouled up yet another romantic opportunity. Memories of driving cross-country with David and camping in a deserted Joshua Tree, or tackling the winding 140 before dawn with Dan dozing, on our way to a climb in Tuolumne.

For me, the car was never something I got into to take me to work–never anything I dreaded. Sure, I used it for grocery shopping and day-to-day errands, but the vast majority of the 40,000 miles I put on it were road trip miles, adventure miles, real life miles. So tonight, as I watched the new owner drive away, it felt somehow wrong, as if he had stolen many of my favorite moments from the past four and a half years. I wanted to run after and say, “No! I take it back!” I think we both got a fair deal out of the transaction, but something inside says that I sold the car (“her”, if you want to anthropomorphize) far too cheaply.

Well, at the end of the day, she’s just a chunk of metal and gears, however pretty she was. And I’m not meant to care that much about a chunk of metal and gears. The memories will have to find another repository, and I’m sure they’ll last much longer than the car, however the new owner treats it! For now, I need the money to pursue the path that I’ve chosen. I could spiritualize the moment more than is necessary, and claim that it was for the kingdom of God (and who knows, maybe it is), but that’s not the point. Whatever the case, I just sold my most financially valuable possession. Not quite “everything”, but it’s a start.

So, in honor of the car’s exit from my life story, I thought I’d post a few (chronologically ordered) pictures to commemorate the role it played in a lot of really important moments for me. Of course, it’s not an exhaustive album, but it will have to do.

Goodbye, Little Car!

The car’s first trip to Tahoe, in 2003 (and my snowboard’s first ride!)

Dav and I in Bishop, CA after a day of climbing on our 2004 cross-country trip to Orlando

Crossing into Florida on the same trip, during the longest continuous drive of my life (24 hours of just me driving, with stops only for gas)

Putting the spoiler on the car with my Dad (it was a birthday gift!)

Driving back across the country with Erin in 2005 after I left my home to live in the community in Palo Alto. This is Kansas.

A few hours of snow accumulation on the car during a trip to Bear Valley with Kyle and Dan (because of snow and avalanches, we had 2 hours of boarding and close to 13 of driving)

Stopped on the 395 (my favorite road) with Dan, on the way to climb Mt Whitney in 2006

Me, tonight, a few hours before the car was driven away for good!

Simply click on the photo below to see the whole photo set at Flickr:

Just click on the picture to access the photo set.

Backpacking in the Sierras

In each case, simply click on the picture to access the photo set!

On tour with the New Frontiers (Dec 26 - Jan 12)

Schloss Mittersill, Austria (Jan 16 - Mar 4)

Oxford, UK (Mar 4 - Mar 8)

Tumaini Children’s Center, Nyeri, Kenya (Mar 8 - May 1)

At any rate, it is good to be home. One of the tasks my mother has set me for my time here is to go through all my old boxes of saved school projects, mementos, love letters, etc., and to vaguely scrapbook them. (For me, “scrapbooking” involves putting things into a binder).

A few days ago I went through the oldest of these boxes, from first through eighth grade. I was surprised by what a profoundly emotional time it was. Things I thought I’d forgotten forever came back clearly, and I was able to re-enter my mind as a small child. Though of course many things have changed since then (and many childish innocences lost), a definite core of personality has stayed surprisingly constant, from hobbies to dreams to fantasies to writing style. I had a fantastic time reading through the first stories I wrote in second and third grade, and many of them were hilariously non-sensical in a way that only children’s stories are.

In fact, I hope to start a series on this blog where I put up some of these old masterpieces for the comedic enjoyment of the general public. For starters, here is what was probably my first acrostic poem (from the beginning of 2nd grade); guess which movie I was obsessed with at the time:

Munches fast
Our lives saved by him
Never afraid
Goes very fast
Our best fighting machine
One good friend
So good at fighting
Even good for a pet
Jonathan Lipps

Anyway, I discovered that in elementary school basically all that was on my mind was space, dinosaurs, mongooses, fighter jets, and ancient egyptian mummies. Why did things have to get more complicated?

Nostalgia is certainly a theme of the trip so far. In trying to avoid computers, not being able to do much physical exercise either (I’m definitely falling apart), and moreover not having friends to hang out with, my options have been to read or watch TV. I can only read so much academic history, and TV makes me feel dirty, so I have resorted to an old childhood standby: origami! All the way through high school this was a big hobby of mine, but it has fallen by the wayside. With the rediscovery of my paper and books, and with nothing else to do, I’ve been keeping myself occupied folding paper. The best project so far has been a castle, a modular model which required 42 squares of paper folded into various structures and joined without glue or tape. Here’s some glamor shots:

And if are really bored you can watch this YouTube video which is a walk-around of the model:

In addition, I’ve dusted off the old trumpet and started practicing again, in anticipation of I know not what; perhaps it is primarily to again recapitulate my childhood experiences! At any rate, brass instruments require a long period of readjustment as many small facial muscles need to be retrained. Right now I’m no better than I was in 8th grade and can only play for a third of the time. Perhaps I will improve reasonably over the course of the holiday, and, who knows, put trumpet on our next CD! (We hope to record a Christmas album this week–stay tuned for that).

Certainly, I don’t know what the result of all this historical exploration of my past will be. It certainly feels indulgent and unproductive, and sometimes it is painful to remind myself that I am actually connected to a past self that maybe or caused painful things. Still, it is amazing to see certain threads running all through my life, both good and bad. The most brilliant of these is of course the glory and purpose of God, and the grace that I have been given since a small child, which far outweighs all the pain I have experienced or the evil things I have done. And I suppose it is always valuable to realize such a thread exists, for it certainly gives hope of its continued centralizing power in my life!

Another brief highlight of the trip so far has been getting reacquainted with the small family of sandhill cranes that make their home in our neighborhood (2 parents and an adolescent). These elegant (though not keenly intelligent) birds are not afraid of humans yet, and we have thankfully given them no reason to be, so they often wander over when we are outside and hang around in or near our driveway. I find them very beautiful, and it is fun to be near wild creatures that are not afraid of or dangerous to humans:

Well, notwithstanding my desires to continue blogging, day in and day out, about any number of topics, I must force myself to leave off. In fact, I’m going to try and ignore computers and the internet for as long as I can! I know I won’t last long. But if I am not, for instance, responding to your e-mails, please understand that this is the reason. Cheers!

If you want to skip right to the pictures, click here

I just returned from Geneva, Switzerland–a trip I decided to take a mere 3 weeks ago. Every year, my parents have a business trip in late September to some international location (for legal reasons, these meetings have to take place outside the US). Since I graduated high school in 2000 and chose to attend Stanford (a quarter school), I’ve had the good fortune to not be in class during these trips, and thus was able to tag along with my folks. We’ve been to some great places–London (twice), Dublin, Lisbon, and Barcelona (after I graduated). I didn’t go on the 2005 trip, but since my work schedule permitted this year, I was able to go to Geneva. (For a few older blogs of such trips, see here for Lisbon 2002 and here for Barcelona 2004).

These trips are always fun, not least because I’ve gotten to know many of the other attendees, all great people. At times there have even been sons or daughters there like myself, and so there are often young people to hang out with, in addition to spending great time with my parents. My friend Laura was there, of this January’s Bahamas trip fame.

The group dinners are generally quite nice, and so it’s also fun to bring “dress-up” clothes to wear consistently. (I wore my suit this week for the first time since last December, I think). This trip was particularly special for me, however, because it happened that my 24th birthday was during the trip, and I had a wonderful time celebrating it with my parents and some friends, both at a spectacular dinner and later at our pub of choice, over fine cuban cigars and cognac. I certainly couldn’t ask for a better birthday experience, though I did miss my friends from home. As an extra special gift, my parents also let me use some of their airline upgrade coupons, so we all traveled to and from Geneva in business / first class. What luxury!

I spent most of my time in Geneva sleeping, hanging out in our great hotel (the Hotel d’Angleterre), working out or using the sauna, catching up on my reading, or wandering around taking pictures and buying sandwiches using poor French. One tourist highlight was definitely the Patek Philippe museum, which had on exhibit some of the oldest and most complicated watches in the world. The sheer amount of time, love, and skill put into these objects by their craftsmen was literally awing. One complicated mechanical watch we saw had over 1800 unique parts, individually designed and produced and assembled. This watch, like some others in the exhibit, kept track of the time, of course, but also such measurements as the day, the week, the month, the year, the lunar phases, sidereal time, the location of certain stars in the sky, etc… (taking into account leap years, etc..–it’s guaranteed to be accurate for something like 500 years if kept wound).

Life in Geneva appears to be very expensive, and the same was true of souvenirs. Accordingly, the only things I brought back were two beer glasses (one a .5L stein (Cardinal), and the other a Belgian snifter (Leffe)), both procured by my dad, free for the asking from bars. Incidentally, the beer of the trip was hands-down the Belgian Leffe (the blonde variety). It had a light color, a creamy texture, and a strong, sweet taste. It was not overpowering, though, and had a very strong spruce hops aroma which kept the whole thing dynamic and interesting. It probably now ranks in my top 5 beer list.

Well, check out the pictures, and let me know what you think!

Working on an improv synth solo for So Talk About It at 3am

I have a strong desire to share all our new songs with everyone here, but a few things remain to be worked out. First, I don’t have an “official” CD–David does, and he’s in Africa for a month. Second, I’m not naive enough to think that the mix I have will be final. We usually go through rounds of tweaking, and, while things sound excellent, there’re always one or two minor changes to make. Third, the album has no title. Fourth, the album has no artwork. I’d like all of these things to be present before I unveil everything officially. So just hold tight for now! I’ll probably break down and put one or two up here anyway, since the only reason I feel secure is that I am validated by my peers.

Speaking of being validated by my peers, let’s go on a tangent: those of you who are e4 weblog owners or frequenters might have noticed that I have added trackback capability to the e4 weblogs. Trackbacks are a cool example of the way the web is supposed to work–now, when you write entries, e4 will check out any links you make, and attempt to send a trackback ping to that site. If the site is trackback-enabled, it’ll accept the ping, and people who visit it will see that your entry references the page! Likewise all the weblogs here are now trackback-enabled, so anyone can send pings from Movable Type, WordPress, or wherever. Let’s just hope for no horrible spam!

(For you e4 bloggers, you can play with the trackback preferences at your weblog config page)

Well, I am now officially back in California for a while, so hopefully I’ll have time to write some more reflective posts soon. Ciao!

Columns from the temple of Olympus Zeus

The view from the hot tub (…of another hotel)

• A monthly subscription is expensive.
• The game is designed in such a way that, after an initial phase, the entertainment it provides is exponentially related to the amount of time you put into it.
• In order to get the maximum value out of the game, in terms of both money and entertainment, one is forced to play a lot.
• Playing massively-multiplayer games a lot can be intrinsically unhealthy if in a person’s lifestyle it precludes other more important activites. It is also potentially addictive, and can be unhealthy in that way as well.

Now, I haven’t been playing in an unhealthy way–in fact, I haven’t been playing at all. My decision to quit is more a financial one, and also as a result of the dilemma above, which shows that to get the desired amount of entertainment, one must choose effectively to be unhealthy in some way.

That being said, my visits to Azeroth (the fantasy world in Warcraft) were indeed fun and provided many hours of enjoyment, particularly when I was able to play alongside my brother and sister. Such cooperative play was made all the more meaningful in virtue of the fact that I live across the country from them and had no real other way to hang out. I will retain many fond memories of our quests, guild drama, and laughing at the plethora of idiots that occupy any online community (but particularly gaming communities). So here’s to Telarian, Telariz, and Tsarmina!

Telarian and Telariz surveying the snow plains below Ironforge

This year, T-Bone accompanied me to Cocoa, where we were greeted by an absolutely amazing sunrise, replete with a flock of gulls that would zoom and flutter about, putting on an amazing show:

But then, a few minutes later, we saw this:

Look at the middle-left of the image: that’s right! A shark was cruising through the water, not 30 feet off the beach (notice the pigeon for scale). Actually, there were two sharks, though I only got a shot of one. The fins were only above water as the waves would break over them, so it was hard to get a good view. Was this shark a sign of some kind? Was God warning us about something?

Later on, not realizing that if two sharks were a sign of anything, they would surely import “DON’T GO IN THE WATER!”, T-Bone and I took a swim in the ocean. What could be more relishing than being able to go in the water on January 2nd? It was a bit cold, but quite bearable and refreshing. And, as we have now proven, shark infested. Unless, of course, one of you is a marine biologist and believes the picture is actually of a dolphin.

Apart from being pretty sick the first couple days, it was great to be with family, to be relaxing and eating well, and to be tramping about the windswept hills in 0-degree (celsius) weather.

It reminded me how much I love the UK, and being overseas in general. That, plus the generously long (and cocktail-filled) plane flights, made for some good observations and reflections about things I saw or realized last week. I’m hoping to write a few entries on those topics soon. Until then, here are some pictures, so you can at least see what things looked like in general over there.

Pictures from the trip at my .Mac picture site

(Picture taken from our backyard, looking towards Lake Hart–one of the few Orlando water bodies that’s actually somewhat a lake and not a retention pond)

More Photos