Die Wanderschaft in Worte spitzen

Reading and writing

2008-10-26T22:19:00.002-06:00

You can tell I am not a natural writer; as I grow more comfortable with my surroundings, the drive to write seems to quickly disappear amid the other events an pressures of life. In fact, this installment is brought to you courtesy of a disruption of my routine: a trip back to southern california to visit friends and my former life. It is wonderful to have so many friends here as it means I have no need to worry about a place to stay or a ride, but it is also a challenge since my friends are much more spread out now. It requires a small feat of organizing to get from place to place to see everyone; but I think I've got the outlines of a plan that will optimally allocate my short visit.

At the moment I am back on HMC awaiting a ride to Pasadena. This evening I got a chance to see Prof King and hear about the often exciting, often frustrating progress of bringing the wireless power monitors we worked on to acceptance. While the technology is fascinating and robust, it is challenging to come up with the business plan to motivate their widespread adoption.

In other news, I just finished another thought-provoking book entitled "God and Gold". The book attempts to describe and understand the history of British and American power/empire in the last few hundred years and its impact on the world. Specifically the author explores how the British rose to power, what made them and later the americans so successful, the way other culture have reacted to "Anglo-American" power, and what the impacts that power has had on the world as a whole. Needless to say this is no small leaflet. It should also be clear that this sort of book could have a wide variety of messages for it's reader depending on the perspective of the author, but I for one was quite impressed with the way Walter Russell Mead approached the subject. He gives an engaging history of Britain's unique position at the dawn of the capitalist era, both geographically, politically and socially. The Book shows the reader how the forces of Tradition, Religion and Reason held each other in check to help the British adapt quickly to the immense changes brought on by the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism to develop a "maritime system" that established their economic and military power around the globe. As heirs of this culture, This story is one that every American should study closely. While Mead is clearly giving us his perspective of the Anglo-American story and its impacts on our world, his discussion is soaked in the insights of generations of our cultures greatest thinkers and in my opinion reflects an impressive balance of progressive and conservative thinking. I would love to describe more thoroughly the details of his analysis and his discussion of the impact of our power and its outlook going forward, but I cannot condense 400+ pages to a blog entry, so you will have to read it and interact with his conclusions yourself. One thing I found personally interesting was his call to evangelicals in America to study the history of our people to absorb the lessons of the history of our influence on the world; in light of the rest of the book I found this call personally compelling and an avenue for enriching evangelical Christianity and it's impact on the world at large.

Anyway, I guess this blog is turning into a bit of a book review column, but I don't suppose that's such a bad thing. So long as I have supply of good book to read I will have something to write about. And you'll know I'm still living and breathing and pondering.

A few items that caught my fancy

2008-09-28T23:36:00.003-06:00

There's not been too much of personal interest this week, but I thought I'd comment on a few interesting things I read recently.

First, I got a email pointing out that Harvey Mudd got a D+ on the college sustainability report card. That by itself is not particularly surprising, though a bit disappointing after the hard work I and some of the other students were putting in to improve our campus. The fact of the matter is that HMC has a long way to go towards its goals of improving the college's sustainability.

But I was actually a little incensed when I saw that Pomona got a B. Having been at the claremont colleges and connected with the student organizations working on campus sustainability for the past few years, the practical difference between these two colleges is not big enough in my mind to merit such a disparity in their 'grade'.

To give an example: for administration, Pomona is credited for a $15K fund established by the school's president for sustainability, but HMC has a recently established endowed environmental studies chair with a similar sized yearly grant not to mention several of President Klawe's vision initiative grants going toward campus "greening" efforts. Another example: Pomona earns a significant edge over HMC primarily for bike and mass transit programs for students, but given that virtually all of the students on the claremont colleges live on campus, student driving is fairly insignificant at both colleges. Pomona does have a better faculty and staff program, but is it really the difference between a D and a B?

This illustrates the thing that most worries me about the current state of Sustainability efforts. Too much weight is being given to interesting programs and your ability to promote them to those watching, too little to looking at what specific environmental overhead we require and what changes the programs actually effect. Don't get me wrong, awareness is an important first step to change and this sustainability report card is at least trying to help evaluate where we stand, but it seems we, humankind, anyone who cares that about how we treat the planet, have a long way to go on even measuring sustainability before we can make truly credible claims to have achieved it.

Now on a completely unrelated note, I ran across an interesting article arguing that renting was more financially prudent than owning your house. I'd never heard this argument before and I launched an investigation to validate his claims. I came upon this page which includes a pretty detailed spreadsheet for making a comparison. I took some of the other things I read to play around with it for a while and added my notes to the top. my version is published here.

I think I owe you a book review

2008-09-14T22:39:00.002-06:00

Funny how it takes me a week after finishing a book to get down to writing about it. I hope the extra time to weigh my thoughts outweighs the things I've already forgotten.

A few posts ago I mentioned I'd started Jeffrey Sachs' book: Common Wealth. The book caught my eye for its subtitle, "Economics for a crowded planet" since I've long thought we need a new economics to fix the instabilities that drive the economy to relentless growth or inevitable collapse. Unfortunately, the book failed to deliver on this point; Sachs did not present radical new economic concepts and a bold new theoretical plan to implement that would fix the system. Despite that, I still found the book worthwhile, offering a coherent look at the problems and possibilities presented by our current global reality.

In contrast to my expectations, Sachs is very practical in his approach. He addresses three issues of a global scale: global climate destabilization, the population explosion, and the vast gap between rich and poor (and the resultant unrest); carefully making the case that each of these will be defining challenges of the next 40 years. He further demonstrates through example that these problems are not going to be addressed by countries and companies acting individually; they are tragedies of the commons on a global scale which need global cooperation to address. Fortunately, Sachs asserts, we have numerous examples already of how these problems can be addressed on a smaller scale, just waiting for an infusion of (primarily monetary) support. In fact, at the dawn of this century, the UN adopted the Millennium Development Goals(MDGs) which outline a set of goals against these problems achievable by 2015. Sachs argues that we could stabilize world population, control climate destabilization, and eliminate global poverty by 2050 for the cost of a couple percentage points of the GNP of the wealthy countries. Unfortunately, progress towards the MDGs has been slowed by countries going their own ways or rejecting the value of these goals entirely. (The US being a particularly poor example.)

If you have studied any of these topics in detail within the last ten years, you'll likely not find anything new in this book on that topic; personally, reading the section on environmental destabilization, I was a little bored because it was largely a repetition of the conclusions I have gotten rather familiar with over the last few years study. However, I imagine few of us have that level of insight into all of these issues - though I think maybe we should.

I particularly gleaned a lot from the section addressing the population explosion. The case for stabilizing or at least significantly slowing our growth is something I was already convinced of. (If you're nor I suggest watching the video I posted about two posts ago.) However, I hadn't connected the dots to realize that the (tested and validated) means to achieve this goal are reducing disease, women's education, and reproductive education. Reducing disease and reproductive education lower the death rate, reducing the motivation for large families, women's education boosts the effect by allowing women to enter into the economy and also hold a larger influence in the home. I used think "family planning" efforts were just vehicles for promoting abortion, but I think that view was at least partially misinformed. Now that I understand a bit more of the goals that prompted this effort (ie. reducing poverty, resource conservation), I have much more respect for the role they play. (To be clear, I still think we should view abortion as the extinguishing of a human life, unacceptable except in the most dire circumstances.)

Anyway, I've probably rambled long enough. I'd recommend the book to anyone with an interest in learning more about global policy and the issues we face as a people in the coming years. It's not revolutionary, just a realistic description of our world and the challenges(opportunities) we face.

Death and Taxes

2008-09-01T00:13:00.000-06:00

DM mentioned a good article in the Times on Obama's economic perspective, which seems to be under intermittent password protection. For those that can't get in, or who want more details, here's an analysis from the Tax Policy Institute: http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/publications/url.cfm?ID=411750 . Rather dense, but gives a nice summary of the plans as outlined by both campaigns so far.

Crunchy food for thought: growth and overpopulation

2008-08-24T20:11:00.004-06:00

I recently watched this video (despite the sensationalist title, the lecturer gives a very clearheaded presentation that is worth watching even if the idea he's presenting is familiar. As a bonus for family back in CO, he's a prof emeritus at CU so there are some interesting local examples from Bolder and the front range.) and have started reading Common Wealth by Jeffrey Sachs. These have provided some interesting morsels for though lately that I thought I'd share.

Both of these sources discuss the challenges associated with continued population growth; actually they make a nice complement since the video primarily just presents the underlying problem while Sachs' book is trying to suggest what we can do about it. The concern about overpopulation and resource depletion is becoming more and more mainstream of late, especially with the latest rise in commodities prices, but the discussion of exponential growth in the video seems to point very directly to one conclusion: we've got to stop growing.

This seemingly inescapable fate presents real problems for our current economic models; our economy has to keep growing each year just to remain stable. To keep a free flow of trade, we require a certain amount of liquidity in the market; eg. manufacturers who buy raw materials on credit and cover the expenses as they sell the product, or a family buy a home with a mortgage because the upfront cost is so steep. But there is a cost associated with liquidity: lenders requite a certain amount of interest in addition to the principle as an incentive for them to make the loan; now it's no problem to cover the interest on a reasonable loan if you are confident that you will be able to make that money grow, but reducing growth and eventually halting throws a wrench in the equation. Suddenly, it becomes harder to make a profit to cover your loan, and every dollar you get, you're taking out of the pockets of competitor. Soon either you or them are forced into default, and higher default rates means higher loan rates to cover risk, which only makes the problem worse, this is the road to depression.

So far, we've satisfied the economy's need for growth by putting in more resources: more people, more oil, more energy. But as the lecturer makes clear, at some point, there will not by any more resources on this planet to add. The only new source will be sunlight, which we only get a constant amount of each year. So we have a few options:

First, we could try expanding our search for new resources out into space. This is an option the video overlooks, (Well, he addresses the idea of discovering n more units of a resource, but space is still effectively an infinite resource, at least until we begin feeling like we've overpopulated the universe.) if we can just keep developing new resources as fast as our consumption grows we'll be fine, right? Well, maybe, but that is a pretty tenuous plan to be depending on when the consequence of failure are likely famine war and environmental destruction on an epic scale. Especially when you consider the massive hurdles we still have to overcome before we can see much meaningful resource harvesting even somewhere as close as the moon.

Ok, but maybe we can just divert all our growth activities to more sustainable growth, channel our R&D into solar, wind, energy efficiency and education to provide channels to keep all that money flowing as the rivers of oil dry up, land becomes scarce and all our labor is occupied. This seems like a necessity, at least in the short term, as a way to keep ourselves a float. In principle we could maintain this indefinitely, growing our economy exponentially with a fixed resources, by using the input we receive from the sun each year to create things which allow us to multiply the effectiveness of that input, effectively converting a linear resource into exponential production. (Obviously, very quickly most of this growth would be have to intellectual, not material, since we cannot make machines that produce more energy than we put into them.) This seems to be the approach advocated by most folks sounding the alarm bells about overpopulation and resource depletion. And it does have some very attractive results, if our population becomes more or less constant, growth funnels directly into increasing standard of living. But there are challenges to this as well: A higher standard of living implies longer lifespan, which means even stricter population controls. And what happens after a few doubling periods when almost all of our energies go into non-material growth? We may approach the realm of sci-fi where people become absorbed into a virtual reality neglecting the physical entirely. I question whether that is something we really want.

The challenges of growth, particularly of growth enforced by mere economic practicality, leads me to the conclusion that it is worth spending effort seeking a new economic structure that does not force us to keep running or be crushed when the ponderous weight of all we have created on credit comes tumbling down. Actually it became apparent to me long before I began exploring realities of overpopulation that our current economic gearing is inherently unstable and that a new system of trade needs to be found. The value of such a system would be removing the inherent instability that makes our economies swing from boom to bust, but I have so far come up empty handed in my search for a better economic model. It's actually this search drew me to pick up Sachs' book which is subtitled: "Economics for a crowded planet". (So far though it just sounds like he's proposing the the concepts from the previous paragraph, but I'm only getting started so we'll see if he goes deeper with it.) Now I'm not suggesting that humanity as a whole should stop growing - to explore, create and grow it fundamentally a part of what it means to be human - but it only seems prudent that we find a way to remove the brick that's been placed on the economic accelerator to give ourselves the freedom to modulate our growth.

These are just some of my thoughts which have been bouncing around from what I've been reading that I wanted to put into words; I'd certainly love to hear some other ideas and opinions in the comments. Ultimatly, I imagine we'll need to employ a combination of new economic models, resource discovery and investment in renewable economic growth to navigate the challenges that lie ahead. I personally think this is *the* political issue of our time, one we will become more and more aware of as our natural resources grow more and more precious. I would strongly urge anyone reading to join me in diving deeper into this issue and (since any solutions will demand strong political action) particularly challenging political candidates this fall to propose constructive plans for dealing with global overpopulation and resource depletion.

Long (at least for me) bike ride

2008-08-09T18:58:00.002-06:00

Took a long trip down to Santa Clara today. I was actually going to try to join a biking group, but I got lost and failed to make the meeting point. I also learned first hand what makes our cities not the most bike friendly places in the world: I was casually biking along a suburban street with a nice bike lane, but in a mere 3 blocks (and no clear markings), I found myself on a freeway! It was a pretty adrenaline filled 1/4 mile to get to the exit!

My route (more or less)

Photographic evidence

2008-08-02T16:49:00.004-06:00

So I told you all a while back about some of the striking similarities between Palo Alto and Claremont. (see: http://rivuletdeslunari.blogspot.com/2008/06/pomona-is-stanford-of-south.html) Now I have finally compiled some photographic evidence!

We'll start in the village, I mean University Ave:

And the surrounding housing:

University Avenue is a great place to shop and get lunch (if you don't mind paying $10+ for lunch) it is semi-urban upper-class shops arranged in a sort of old-fashioned town center style. The nearby streets feature lots of unique houses from the town's wealthy history, all relatively small, but worth a fortune. And of course the thing that really sells it to me is the sidewalk style; add 10-20 degrees Fahrenheit and you'd never know the difference. Well there are a few hints:

Palo Alto is a bit denser (possibly due to the fact that it's on a narrow peninsula!) so there are a handful of taller offices and apartments. There are also several signs of the startups that call this place home. Facebook has several offices downtown because they're really too big to fit in Palo Alto anymore. Rumor has it that they are going to move out of downtown and into an office park somewhere around the end of the year.

Leaving downtown P.A., lets venture into the similarities between Pomona and Stanford:

A fancy gated entrance makes your school so much more respectable. And since we live on the west coast not the east, we can reserve vast swaths of land for a natural arbor.

No prestigious university should be without a majestic tower:

Here's Pomona's:

As you can see, Stanford has many massive stone buildings an lawns. A la Pomona:

Both campuses are beautiful, interesting places; gives some insight into why you might want to spend all those years of hard work in school and in post doctoral work to get a professorship. Here's a few other interesting photos from Stanford:

Microsoft has made some sizable donations here:

The first one is hard to read it says "Paul Allen Center for Integrated Systems". When Josiah saw this his response was, "Well, I was thinking of Stanford for grad school in computer science, but I don't know if I could handle going to classes in the William H. Gates CS building."

HP has also contributed (sorry about the second one I must have been in a hurry!):

Folks from the 5C's will probably recognize this style from some of the art buildings on campus:

And this style makes an appearance both places as well:

One last connection is our local supermarket "The Willows Market":

It's a lot like Wolf's; a small independent market, great high quality Boar's Head meats and cheeses in the deli.

Anyway, there you have it; decide for yourselves.

Some Pictures (finally)

2008-07-27T20:09:00.003-06:00

I got a new bike today! This is my graduation gift from everyone who gave me $$ as a graduation gift:

My first ride will be to the store to pick up some stationary to write long overdue thank you notes!

I also took some pictures of the apartment so those of you who are curious can take a look:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mjeffryes/NewApartment
It's rather messy as we're still figuring out where everything goes. Fortunately, we don't have too much stuff so it's still easy to find things, but I would really like to bring some order to the chaos. (These pictures and more would have already been up here except for various fiascoes such as leaving my camera in the San Jose Airport on my flight home for the 4th and then subsequently deleting all my pictures once I recovered the camera.(I was fortunate that it was turned into the SJC lost and found who were more than happy to mail it back to me.)

Now that I have a bike, you will hopefully see many more pictures up here as it will be a bit easier for me to get around (Stanford takes half a day to wander around!)

Wow, there is really too much that has happened in the last month to do a complete recap. Adventures from the last month include but are not limited too: 3 different visits from friends to see our new place (yay!), flying home for the 4th and to Hanford, CA for a friend's wedding (also yay!) and a 3am night trying to get everything put together for work (not so yay). The result has been a pretty full, interesting and fun month, but also means that moving in has been a very slow process. This blog entry is courtesy of a nice boring weekend at home providing a much needed chance to catch my breath, run some errands and squeeze in some pleasure reading.

Move in day!

2008-06-29T12:53:00.002-06:00

Hmmm....well, I'm not posting quite as regularly as I had planned. You'll just have to trust me that I've been keeping busy doing worthwhile things.

One of those worthwhile things is finding a new apartment! My friend Josiah and I are renting a place in Menlo Park which is only about a 25min walk for work for me and a 20min drive for him. Since were withing walking distance to work for me that also means we're in walking distance of downtown Palo Alto, which has many nice shops and restaurants and (of special interest to Josiah) movie theaters. We can also walk about the same distance the other way to downtown Menlo Park which has more good stuff. Our neighborhood is very pleasant with a park and library also just a short walk away.

Anyway, we're moving in today and I'm quite excited! Maybe the shorter commute means I will post here more often.

Pomona is the Stanford of the South

2008-06-22T14:24:00.005-06:00

I wish I had my camera unpacked.

One of the first things I noticed about Palo Alto, is that it is strangely familiar, right down to the 2 rows of square concrete tiles for sidewalks. It was sometime in my first week that I first looked around me and realized that if you had knocked me out while I was in Claremont, and dropped me off to wake somewhere a block or two off university ave, I would wake up thinking I was downtown in the village.

The whole town has the exact same feel (though Palo Alto is a but busier and a bit cooler): nice tree-lined streets with small houses from the earlier part of the century now worth millions, trendy and expensive shops line the walkable, but still car centric downtown area.

And I wasn't kidding about what I said about Pomona and Stanford. Both have their arboretum with native trees, their towering buildings and their expansive sports fields. They aren't afraid to emphasize the old-world palace of learning feel either with stone columns marking the main vehicle entrance to campus like a gate and the wide lawns in front of great cathedrals of buildings.

Someone remind me in a few weeks when I get my camera unpacked and I will demonstrate the parallels with photographic evidence.

My plans for this blog going forward.

2008-05-26T09:32:00.002-06:00

Greetings!

I am returning to this blog after a long hiatus, because I hope it can be a productive outlet, and now that I've graduated, I might actually have some time to maintain it.

I have a few purposes for this blog: First, to keep my writing skills from completely atrophying now that I don't have professors forcing me to write. Second, for the refinement of my thinking that comes when I try to express my thoughts for others. Finally, as a way of sharing some of the more interesting things I'm doing with my friends and family (and anyone else who's interested).

To that end, I'm going to start posting here once every 1-2 weeks, that's a pace that I'm pretty confident I can maintain, and if I get excited and have more ideas to write about, maybe I'll post more often. For those who care about the more mundane details, (or just have more stalkerish tendancies) I'll also post that sort of thing on Twitter. (http://twitter.com/mjeffryes - You'll have to sign up to see my posts.) If I can figure it out, it'll also indicate when I've put a new post up here.

So that's the plan for now, expect something more interesting next week once I've started work

I'm home

2007-08-29T17:11:00.000-06:00

Well, I made it back. It's been a rather excellent summer with lots of new experiences and new places and new fun. However, now that it's over, this blog will likely have to end too. I'm afraid I just won't have the time and energy to post with any sort of regularity during the school year. So this is goodbye for now; hope you've enjoyed reading these posts, I'd still be happy to tell you more about what I did and saw and learned while I was there if you ask me. I'll leave you with the essay I wrote for the DAAD (They asked us to write about our experiences in Germany which they may use for further promoting the program.):

DAAD Essay

I would like to begin by expressing my gratitude to the DAAD RISE program team and to my advisor, Matthias Kropff for providing me this opportunity to experience a taste of Germany, especially German science and engineering. This past summer has been one of the most enjoyable and educational of my college career. The RISE program was the perfect match for my situation. While I really wanted to study abroad, the density of my schools curriculum makes it very challenging to take a semester off for such a program. RISE provided a way for me to get the experience of living and working at a German university, while staying on pace at my home university. While I am sure that there are many other opportunities available for students wishing to research in Germany, the RISE program provides a critical service by helping students to find these opportunities and providing the funding to make it affordable on a student's budget. Of course the success of the program depends significantly on the role of the German PhD students who handle much of the details like arranging housing and transportation. I am very grateful to Matthias for the time and planning that he put in to ensure that I would have a smooth transition.

My experience in Germany taught me significantly about the German culture and academic environment, as well as in my field of study. I appreciated the timeliness and efficiency of the German trains as well as the high quality of the food and I enjoyed the challenge learning the language. It was insightful to hear form my flatmates, co-workers and acquaintances their perspectives on German and world politics, to be introduced to new economic theories and new foods. I enjoyed getting to know my local baker in my morning visit for a "kutcher(brotchen) und k√§se(brotchen)" and I appreciated the ease with which one could travel by bike and on foot throughout the city and in the surrounding area. Overall, I grew to feel rather at home in Darmstadt, and found myself giving a friend who visited the same tour my advisor had given me when I had arrived.

In the office, I was grateful for the readiness with which my co-workers accepted me and was very impressed with their work ethic. I particularly appreciated the opportunity to gain a greater understanding of the active areas of research in my field by editing the English in papers my coworkers were preparing for publication. Matthias gave me a great deal of freedom in directing my research and I was challenged to define the direction and significance of my work. I had expected that I would be mostly just completing tasks for my advisor, but Matthias gave me the opportunity (and challenge) of plotting the course of the research under his guidance from concept to experiment to paper. I gained a much deeper understanding of the day-to-day mechanics of research.

I also gained insight and grew in areas I hadn't anticipated. Living and traveling in Germany gave me new perspectives on my life and culture in the US and stretched me as I interacted with many new people in new places and new ways. While I learned much about Germany this summer I may have learned an equal amount about the my own culture by stepping out of it a little (though really, we have much in common) to see what I'd always just taken for granted. From the little differences, like drinking water with or without carbonation, to the bigger ones like the planning of cities, I now know another way to live. I have a greater understanding how the individual behaviors people have come together to form the different cultures and societies in Germany and the US.

I was also grew personally as I learned to get by (and thrive) in a place that was unfamiliar. As a typically quiet person, I had to practice meeting new people. While the obstacles, such as my poor German, made it challenging, I was encouraged by the friendliness of the people I met. In fact, being a foreigner gave me an extra bit of freedom not to worry about making mistakes, thus I found I had the confidence to step in to uncertain situations without worrying about the outcome. I also got a chance to connect with many other non-Germans who I likely would not have interacted with in the US, simply through the bond of our mutual unfamiliarity with the world around us.

And of course, on top of all the things I learned, I simply had fun. Germany is a beautiful country with such a diverse history. I enjoyed experiencing the architecture and museums in the big cities, as well as exploring the countryside within biking distance of my flat. I had enjoyable work, interesting and diverse company, and freedom to explore. While I don't know my plans following my undergraduate education for sure, I hope to return to Germany sometime in the not to distant future whether just to visit or to pursue further education or work. As a result of my time this summer, I'll always feel a bit more at home in Germany than before.

London!

2007-08-15T10:17:00.000-06:00

Hi all! This week I have pictures for you from London. A lot of pictures actually. I think the shutter happiness was a result of traveling by myself (not worrying about holding up the group), having an extra day (3 instead of 2) and the architecture in the city (amazing and varied, as you'll see). So without further ado, pictures:

In order to get the cheapest flights I had some pretty convoluted travel arrangements. I left my flat at 2am Saturday morning, traveled to the train station by bike, then caught a bus to drive out to the alternate airport that the budget airlines fly out of. I arrived in London via Stansted Airport, took a bus to Baker Street (as in 221b Baker St.) and bought a ticket for the tube for the next three days. The London tube system is huge!

I got very familiar with the tube over the course of my trip. London is too big to see without it. My first stop was Westminister, with Big Ben, the Abbey, etc.

The soveriegn's entrance to parliament:

Then I took a walk along the South Bank:

I like the irony of this next photo. Apparently Margaret Thatcher dissolved the Greater London Council back in the 1980's and so county hall is now an entertainment center:

Also outside county hall is the London eye, a tourist attraction letting you get an aerial view of the city:

The Tate Modern, housed in a former coal factory along the south bank:

The Tower Bridger (not the London bridge, that's one bridge over). I just happened to arrive at the right time to see the bridge while it was raised:

Former warehouses, now ultra-hip apartments and stores. The bridgeways used to be for transferring stuff from docks to warehouses further inland:

Tower of London, too big to really fit in a photo!

There were lots of interesting clocks around the city:

Buckingham Palace horse gate:

The crowds at the palace are ridiculous. Here you can see a gaggle of tourists going crazy over one of the guards at the gate:

View of the palace from the park:

The guards at St. James palace have it a little better I think:

I don't think I would fine a park that was this crowded very relaxing!

Old and new in Piccadilly Circus:

I just love the archetecture of London; it has so much character! This is a photo of one of the "mews" I could see out the window from my hostel:

The English are known for their public programmes; there were lots of sites of construction and reconstruction and renovation in the city. One thing I liked though was that all the sites had signs describing the project and why it was being undertaken and the measures the builder was taking to protect the environment and control noise and dust:

St.Paul's Cathedral:

A concession to my mom who is always wanting to take pictures with me in them; This way I got a piece of the history of the site but you can see me in the reflection:

The label cockney meant that you were born with in hearing of the bells of Mary-e-bow church. I can see how this was a lower class part of the city at one time, look at how narrow the "streets" are! You couldn't fully extend your arms accross the width of these streets at times:

The leadenhall market stands out from the buildings around it:

This is a very cool building in my opinion, the Swiss RE tower:

Lloyds of London building, with all the infrastructure on the outside:

Three layers of the city. That's the edge of Great St. Helen's (where Shakespeare worshiped) in the foreground, the ultra modern Swiss RE tower in the background and something in between:

The vastness of the bank of London building is similarly impossible to capture on film:

I thought this simbolized the power of the bank (at least at one point in time. The text reads: "The Bank made this way through the corner for the citizens of London":

While I generally find cities too crowded to be comfortable, I think I could probably put up with the crowds for the opportunity to live and work in buildings with so much character and history! I don't care much for the newer and more suburbian parts of the city, but if I could live and work in these older quarters where the old streets meet the new towers, I would be tempted.

The view from the pedestrian bridge looking towards St. Paul's:

A highlight of my trip was seeing a performance of Shakespeare's "Love's Labors Lost" at the reconstructed globe theatre. It's only 5£ for a standing ticket, (about a third the price of the cheapest tickets anywhere else!) and you're right there in the middle of the play experiencing it roughly the way most Londoner's would have centuries ago. The show was quite good; a pretty outrageous comedy if you're not familiar with it (I wasn't).

Hyde Park was a little calmer than St. James Park:

I ate my dinner there.(Food in London is generally rather expensive, so I found a grocery store and bought bread and cheese and peaches for a couple meals.)

The entrance to the subway at hyde park corner:

Brittish museum of natural history. I didn't have time to go in but the building is pretty awesome:

The Old Royal Navel College and the Queen's House in Greenwich.

Greenwich has a very distinctive feel to it (as do each of the other older parts of the metropolis):

Greenwich park was almost empty by way of comparison to the other parks in the city:

Another view of the Queens house and marintime museum from up at the royal observatory:

Marker for the prime meridian:

This is just a cool hotel I saw in Russell square near the British Museum:

The British museum, absolutely gianormous. I only had time to see a few of the exhibits. (I explored Chinese, Korean and Japanese history and art.) The nice thing is that all the major museums are free! So you don't feel too bad just stopping in for a little while just to see some of these incredible collections.

One last piece of cool London architecture:

Overall, I really liked the city. While the crowds were annoying, (London is bigger than any of the cities I've visited in Germany and has significantly more tourists!) but the continuity of the history is something I haven't seen anywhere else. I also found the Londoners to be quite pleasant. While it may have just been the lack of a language gap (It took some getting used to being able to just walk up and ask a question; not try to sort through whether you knew how to ask or if it was really important to know anyway.), but I was amazed by how polite and friendly all the people working at the different stores and info counters were. And I don't think I ever heard a Londoner complain or even give an exasperated look to the crowds of bumbling tourists or that one extra person who squeezed in to the subway car already full to the bursting point. Now England is know as a land of the characteristically poor food, late trains and long queues, and it may be that this stereotypically English trait of just bearing up with it is partially to blame, but it does make it much easier to bear it when the folks around you aren't making a fuss. This was probably the thing I enjoyed most of the little bit of English culture I experienced.

A quiet week

2007-08-05T11:08:00.000-06:00

Greetings again from beautiful Darmstadt.

It has been a rather pleasant week here: weather neither grey and rainy nor scorchingly hot, a productive week at work and some time between travels to catch my breath. However, this is less fortunate news for you at home since it means there's less to write about.

I'll begin with some pictures. These were taken last weekend; we decided to use up the last day on our rail pass by taking a journey down the Rhein river, since the pass is also good for travel on one of the riverboat lines. We started in Mainz; here you can see the church near the river.

I believe these Rhein cruses are tourist favorites for two reasons: First, the river here runs through a beautiful valley with towns nestled allong the coast at intervals.

And secondly, because the banks are positively crowded with castles. (A natural place for them as the hills provide a good view and control over the water is important in trade.)

As you can see, it was a grey, somewhat rainy day, so I stayed below for much of the time just reading, but it was a good chance to relax (forced away from the computer and my work) and it did make for some impressive river vistas:

That was my Sunday and it was very well spent I must say, I only which I'd taken more time like that since the week turned out to be quite full. I'm entering the final press (less than three weeks left now!) and there is of course much to be done at work and places to see and projects to finish and souvenirs to buy. Fortunately, the time I've put into studying organization methods and repeatedly trying to instill good working/resting habits in myself has had some payoff. I've managed to have a not too stressful week while getting a lot of work accomplished as well as trying to perfect my granola recipes. It helps that just about all my work is something I've done for fun once in a while.

This weekend has proven quite restful as well. On Saturday, I rode my bike to the Schloss on Frankenstein Berg. This castle is traditionally the setting for Mary Shelley's book by the same name. The castle is perhaps the most reminiscent of the mythical castle I held in my mind before coming here, though it is mostly a ruin now. The castle is on top of a small mountain (think Appalachian size) and has an excellent view of the whole area it's roughly 15km south of Darmstadt and the view extends easily to Frankfurt. There's also a restaurant along side the castle and it appears you can get married in the chapel next to the keep. When I was there I remember thinking that it seemed to be one of the most romantic spots I've been in Germany, though I may just have been tired. (15km is a lo-ong ride uphill; at least for me!) Unfortunately, all this and I forgot to bing my camera, so I have no pictures to share of the place.

Well that brings us up to date; as the title says, it's been a quiet week. Next weekend however, I'll be headed to London, so you can expect more travle stories in the next post. And then home!

This is not Spam!

2007-07-27T08:41:00.000-06:00

Heh, Google apparently thinks my blog is a tool for spammers, so who knows when I'll actually be allowed to post this but here it goes anyway.

The most recent news of note is my trip to Berlin last weekend. That's right, finally gotten around to seeing the capital and a tiny taste of what used to be the GDR. It's actually pretty amazing as you walk around the city to think that there was a major world division here for 20 some years. The city feels quite whole now in my opinion; most of the tourist attractions are actually on the east side of the wall.

Berlin is truly a wealth of modern history though. Nearly every major event from the French revolution to the fall of the wall has left its mark on the city. Berlin was the home of the notable "enlightened-despot" Fredrick the Great, Napoleon claimed the statue on top of the Brandenburg gate when he conquered the city, but when the Prussians(leaders of the newly formed German state) trounced France in the Franco-Prussian War, they brought back the statue and renamed the square Pariesier platz so that hundreds of Germans would be walking all over Paris every day. The city was obviously key in the events of both world wars and served as living testament to the hostilities of the cold war; with the fall of the wall really signifying the end of the cold war in most people's minds.

Being the capital city and a seat of culture, Berlin also has some pretty impressive museums. I only visited the Pergamon museum, since we only had a few days in the city, but boy was it incredable! It's chalk-full of statues and columns from the ancient Greeks and Romans, as well reconstruction of the walls of Babylon and an extensive collection of early Islamic art. It's a great place to expand your appreciation for the foundations of western civilization.

Besides the amazing depth of history, the trip also proved to be a learning experience in some interpersonal areas. I think I've indicated before that most of these sojourns to other German cities have been undertaken with a subset of the other students who are also in Darmstadt on the same exchange program. Generally, this has added to the fun of the travel, but this trip there were some challenges that caused some conflict and ended up costing me some money.

In short, our group of travelers has never been the most organized bunch. Thus, we had much confusion about who was going when and where on this weekend and I ended up booking a hostel for some of the people in the week before the trip. Then, one of the folks I had booked for decided he really wanted to book somewhere else; there was a flurry of emails to get htings arranged, but it worked out fine in the end.

On the day we left (friday morning), there were 4 of us, to be joined by another when he arrived after work. Three of us were in the hostel I booked, the other two were in the other hostel. On arriving to Berlin, we decided to get tickets for the bus/u-bahn/s-bahn for the weekend to get around the city. Our initial idea was to each buy an individual pass for the weekend that included some deals at some museums, but when we got to the counter, the clerk pointed out that buying 2 1-day group passes would cost us about half as much. This is where I made the first mistake: we'd all traveled around together most of the time in the other cities, so I thought that sounded like a great deal, there were some concerns expressed (by the guy who had insisted on booking a different hostel), but they weren't super forcefully made and it seemed simple enough to just hand off the ticket at the end of the day so the other guys could get to their hostel (both hostels were in the same direction, one just further away than the other). It terns out however, that Victor(the guy expressing some concerns about the change of plan) had felt forced into buying the different ticket. There were some minor hard feelings, but they passed. Lesson number one, when working as a group, especially buying stuff, it's important to be extra sensitive to make sure concerns are resolved and that everybody knows exactly what's going on.

We had a fine rest of the day, but when we split up for our hostels, there came more trouble. The guys in the further hostel needed the bus passes to get to their hostel and to get back in the morning. No problems there, we set a time to meet and parted ways. But, the guys who left with the ticket are fa from the most organized of the group. When it came time to meet at 9:45am, they didn't show; turns out they didn't get into their hostel until super late and decided to change plans without informing us. They wanted to bike around the city and take a biking tour. This would have been fine except that we'd planned the day before to go on a walking tour of the city which left at 10:30 and there was no way they'd be there to hand off the tickets(they wouldn't use them since they'd be biking and we would since the tour stared in the city center, 5km away) So I learned another costly lesson, it's better to let the group split up earlier, before spending money and effort on group plans, rather than let it fall apart later due to poor communication and people really wanting to do their own thing anyway.

Despite the mix-ups, I still enjoyed Berlin; I just chalked up the monetary loss and the feelings of frustration to a lesson in group dynamics and leadership and tried to have a good time. All in all though, I'm glad my next trip will be a solo one where I can just enjoy the city and not worry about the details so much.

And now without further ado: Pictures!

First a couple of pictures from inside the glass dome on the Reichstags. This is the primary visiting area, which looks down into the main hall in which the parliament meets. The glass is supposed to represent transparency of the govn't process and the mirrors allow the parlement to look up and see the people to whom they are responsible.

It was horribly rainy, but as a result it wasn't crowded as I'm told it usually is. This one's from out front:

Siegestuele (Victory tower) in the middle of what used to be the royal hunting grounds. Now a ~15km square park in the geographical center of the city:

The sony center, massive shopping center in west Berlin:

The Berliner Dom:

and The Berliner Dom + the second highest building in Europe...the East German TV tower! (The tallest is the TV tower in Moscow. The Communists had an interesting way of showing their might. :-P )

Statue of Fredrick the Great on Berlins royal street, Unter den Linden:

Ironically, this is the Catholic cathedral. it's under renovation, and while the side is all boarded up they've got some massive advertisement space:

The Humboldt University library. In the square out front there is a glass pane where you can see a room of empty shelves; this is a reminder of the event that took place in this square, where Nazi students and professors burned all the books in the library on Hitler's black list. The university now encourages an open air book market across the street:

Statue of Schiller out side the opera house. We unfortunately picked the one week this summer when there were no operas or concerts in the city.

The fair-minded Fredrick built two identical churches on opposite sides of this square, one for the French Calvanists invited over because of persecution in France and the other for the traditional German Lutherans.

This cafe overlooked "checkpoint charlie" the famous checkpoint in the Berlin wall. While none of the original checkpoint still exists. This was the station of the CIA in Berlin, and of course the KGB had an office above the cafe, just on the other side of the wall.

Some of the few pieces of the wall that remain:

Mural from the side of the former GDR "Ministry of Ministries":

The memorial to Jewish victims of the Holocaust:

and the famous Brandenburg gate:

There's one other picture I wanted to point out:

Sachsenhausen was the Nazi's prototype concentration camp and later served as Soviet "special camp" (where it was used to treat the German people the way the Nazis had treated their prisoners. I wanted to just walk through the place, rather than taking pictures everywhere, so I just took the one out front of the entrance. I would encourage you to take the opportunity to just walk through one of these camps for yourself. There's no substitute for seeing it in person, as brick an mortar, wood and stone.

The think that struck me most about the place is how familiar and real it is. When we hear the numbers and the shear brutality of the Holocaust; I think it becomes some foreign, unimaginable event, but the fact is that the place on the surface seems just like any other prison, I could envision the prisoners coping with their lot, living and dieing there. I could see the SS men just across the street singing and enjoying the latest popular movies. The place is utterly real, and startlingly similar to what I expect even approve of in a prison - except you could point: here, a man who couldn't take it anymore flung himself against the electric fence and killed himself, there, SS troops occasionally would drown someone in the wash basin, here, they killed by the hundreds and thousands.

It's a harsh thing to look and to see that it really could happen, really did happen, really could(will?) happen again, to real people, at the hands of real people, who eat and breath and think and dance just as I do. The message I see isn't "look how horrible the holocaust was" but "look how human the holocaust was".

And on that somber note I will leave you.

München & Heidelberg

2007-07-15T08:00:00.000-06:00

Greetings once again,

I've been rather unmotivated to blog of late. Things have been kind of crunched between all this travel and the demands of work and other projects. Here's the latest news:

Two weekends ago we traveled to München (Munich). We met up with a couple of Steve's friends who live in the area and generally got a pretty first class tour of the area through the eyes of a locals. They described Munich as "the New York of Germany". Everything is relatively expensive there; its the one place in Germany where they say it is easier to find a job than to find a place (that you can afford) to stay!

Josiah also joined us for the weekend, although it was only by the grace of God that we actually met up: We'd both forgot one piece of important contact information or anther and Josiah finally caught me just as I was about to leave the meeting area we'd established. I've come to a realization that it is vitally important to keep a backup of my most important information on paper and with me at all times. I'd told Josiah I would call him, but I'd forgotten that since my cell phone doesn't work in Europe, I'm using my advisor's old phone, which doesn't contain any of my numbers.

We missed out on the Deutches Museum for our antics, which is supposed to be the worlds largest museum of science and technology, but still saw most all the famous cultural sites. Munich is definitely a touristy city. Tourists flood the main square 3 times a day to watch the show in the Glockenspiel in the Neues Rathaus (clock tower in the new town hall).

I had a rather short and mostly unproductive week at work after Munich. I was tired from the late nights of travel, and simultaneously unfocused and stressed due to the ambiguous status of my project at work. Hopefully that'll change this coming week as I'll have a full nights rest Sunday and I've been given some clearer direction for my work.

Tuesday night was one highlight though; some of our Darmstadt RISE crew met up for a potluck dinner, ostensibly for the purpose of discussing travel plans. The food was quite excellent (I brought a salad) and everyone had a great time together. I've become thoroughly convinced of the value of these sorts of gatherings; food seems to naturally serve to bring people together. I think potlucks are especially nice since everyone has a piece to contribute. Meals in a dining hall or even prepared by one host for some guests just don't have quite the community building effect to them.

Josiah came through Darmstadt on his way to Paris on Wednesday so I took the day off to show him around the city. We again had a little trouble connecting, but not too much and I think we both had a pretty good time just wandering though the interesting parts of the city, chatting about travels, work, etc, and enjoying the tasty food available around here. I'm really going to miss the availability fresh bakeries, Döner and real ice cream. It was really fun to spend time with a familiar friend after spending several months with people I've only recently met. We finished off the day by meeting some of the RISE folks again for Döner and a movie (in english; it was the new Harry Potter film).

Josiah left on Thursday morning for Paris and I left just a bit later for the RISE program conference in Heidelberg. It was a rather odd experience to be among so many Americans for a couple days. The conference was pretty nice, though kind of boring. DAAD paid for everything and we got excellent food, good accommodations, toured factories and got a guided tour of the city. The conference was rather disorganized as much of our dealings with DAAD have been, but everything worked out even when dinner took 4 hours since everyone(~270 people) arrived at the restaurant at the same time! I discovered though that I've made a lot of progress in meeting new friends since the last time I was in a completely new place (freshman year). I found it pretty easy to wander off by myself and meet some of the other students at the conference and actually develop some contact to the point where I felt comfortable talking with them later on in the weekend. While I was by no means gregarious (especially since I was running short on sleep the whole time), but I had the confidence to be my introverted self while also taking some opportunities to meet new people.

Now on to the pictures:

There were many churches in Munich; In general, I liked them much better than I liked the Dom in Cologne both because they were generally lighter inside and because they had a distinctly more reverential atmosphere about them. There were several tourists like us, but they were real churches where real people meet to worship God, which I wasn't convinced of in the Dom.

We went up the tower in the Frauenkirke and got a chance to look out over the city:

The last afternoon in Munich was spent at the Schloss Nymphenburg, which is an absolutely massive palace that used to be the summer home of the royal family:

I didn't bother to take pictures in Heidelberg other than on our city tour. They wouldn't let us take pictures in the factories and there wasn't much of note otherwise. This is the (rather steep) path up to the castle:

Another way up is by tram:

Some of the castle:

The view of the city from the castle:

Germans seem to like to hold their festivals in the historical landmarks like castles :

A castle needs a big barrel to hold it's wine:

Looking up at the castle from the city:

The Necker River:

Thoughts on Germany

2007-06-30T07:57:00.000-06:00

Greetings,

Once again I've not been off traveling the country this weekend, so I'll just share with you some of the interesting things I've seen this week...actually, mostly today, since I've just come back from a very pleasant bike ride.

I decided earlier this week that I would plan a nice bike ride for my weekend, since I wouldn't be going anywhere and I don't particularly like carnivals, (Heinerfest, the biggest carnival weekend in Darmstadt; it actually runs Thursday through Monday and they close up most of downtown! It seems mostly to be fair rides and music and food/beer vendors though, so not to exciting to me; I may visit on Sunday just to see what it looks like.), and I didn't want all you back home thinking I'm sitting on my hands all weekend. :-P

Anyway, turns out Darmstadt is actually pretty close to the Rhine. We'd seen the Rhine from the the train on the way to Köln; the river was quite pretty so I thought it worth a bike ride. Actually, I went to the AlteRheine, a loop of the Rhine tha has been cut off from the main river (whether by man or by nature I'm not sure).

This was my original route. This is where I actually went!
Obviously you can see that I had a bit of an adventure figuring out exactly where I was going! It was fun though. It turned out to be a beautiful day for a bike ride, about 60-70 degrees F, cloudy, but only raining briefly once.

I packed a small lunch (bread, fruits and nusspli, like nutella, but actually better if you can believe that!!), my camera and a book, and resolved to have a picnic by the banks of the Rheine. I was hopping I could make it to the main river, but was unsure of how far I could reasonably travel; I probably could have made it if I knew the right path there the first time!

The trip was quite a success and I may have to repeat it another free weekend and see if I can get further now that I know my way better. The scenery was lovely; I think I finally came across a piece of the Germany that was in my head before I left. I took a few photos:

This is downtown Eschollbrücken:

The grain fields:

Anyway, the pictures don't do a great job of capturing it, but this rural setting just had the feel of what I'd held in my mind when I thought of Europe in general and especially Germany. It's good to know I wasn't entirely making things up. But it was a rather small view of the country.

Another very interesting experience: on the way back, on the more industrial side of Darmstadt, I passed a "Real-" which I though nothing of until I saw this sign:

Unfortunately, it's difficult to read, but it says something to the effect of "Wal-mart is now Real-, Expect more." and gives the opening date. Wal-mart is everywhere! Obviously I had to go inside and check out what the German Wal-mart looks like.

It was packed. Seems everyone was in there buying something. The store had the usual diverse selection from electronics to toys to clothes to groceries. It was an odd experience. My initial reaction to the thought of a US megastore in Germany is to crinkle up my nose. It doesn't seem right, my Germany has been shopping from small grocery stores and bakeries; it seems a horrid thought that German culture would become as generic, buy-everything-at-one-mass-market as the US has become. I 'm generally a fan of free market, bringing cheaper prices and more convenience, but it feels like an export that doesn't belong here, like it will squash the things I admire in the culture here.

But still, even in "Real-", Germany shows through: there is a large section of the store devoted to wines an beers and the shopping carts actually have a special metal tray for holding the 24 bottle crates that are so common here. The store felt like a truly international experience, I saw some of the most diversity of faces and languages I've encountered locally; the store was an easy place for people who don't know the ins and outs of there environment to get what they need. A collector for a wide variety of people; it was a bit of a muddle, a bit impersonal, but still an interesting blend. For myself, I'm enjoying trying to learn what the small stores in my area offer, and actually getting familiar with the people in the bakery I often visit on my way to work; I value the small sense of community I get from shopping in these places and it actually encourages me to buy more simply. I have enough to buy what I need for healthy meals; I don't need it to be cheaper, there's nothing more I need the money for. But I suppose, that I can share my Germany with the international superstores too, they each bring a different piece to this interesting place.

Well, That's about all I have for today. If you want to see the rest of my pictures from the ride you can go here(there's only a few more):

AlteRheine trip

Gcal Color Code Script

2007-06-23T06:29:00.000-06:00

On more tidbit for you (especially if you use Google Calendar):

I just finished coding this weekend a little greasemonkey script for Google Calendar. If you're not familiar with greasemonkey, it's a Firefox extension that lets you use small javascripts to modify the way websites appear in your browser. It's pretty handy for somethings and there's a large body of user contributed scripts that fix all sorts of web annoyances and add needed features.

My script is designed to let me color code the events in my calendar according to the categories I use to keep track of my time. The script could also be used for any other sort of color coding you might want to do. I wrote the script because Google only lets you use one color code per calendar, which is great when you're comparing your schedule with your friends, but bad when you want to see which of your appointments are classes and which are meetings, etc.

To use the script, you just add a tag like "!class" or "!work" to the title of one of your events. The script adds a little icon to the calendar list on the right hand side; you click it to switch between Google's color codes and the custom set. Perhaps some screen shots will help explain:

Using Google's colors:

Using user colors:

You can download the script at userscripts.org if you're interested. It's pretty easy to make your own categories and colors, you just find the tag in the script and replace it with a new one, or modify the RGB values for the background and border assigned to the tag e.g.:
'colors["!hw"] = new Array("rgb(103,51,0)","rgb(143,86,40)");'

Ok that's all the advertising for today, hope at least some of you found it interesting/want to try it out. (If you're not using Google Calendar, but are looking for a calendar program, you might take a look at it, it's pretty useful.)

Business as Usual

2007-06-23T05:28:00.000-06:00

Greetings at home and abroad! I have enjoyed hearing from many of you via email and snail mail recently. Thank you for the friendly notes; I will try to respond to all the mail I receive, but at the moment I'm still figuring out the postal system, so bear with me.

On a similar note, I feel I need to respond to some of the comments I've received on my last post about the cathedral in Köln. Apparently, my post came off as not valuing the beauty of the building itself or the ways in which the efforts of the builders and the dramatic results of those efforts could be/lead to worship.

It's not my intent to claim that the building isn't amazing and valuable for it's beauty and history alone, nor do I want to equate the building of magnificent buildings or works of art to building idols as the reformers sometimes did in their zeal to break with the catholic traditions. Quite the contrary, I have to agree with the comment that most American Christians have forgotten that worship extends beyond singing songs and that we likely need more visual and physical worship in our lives.

However, in reflecting, I still find the Dom in Köln more of a hindrance to true worship, than a help. The building is more of a monument to man than to God: all around the perimeter there are shrines to various notables from the city's history, the floor is tiled with the crests of noble families. When you add to this that it is a tourist attraction (and yes, the builders of this cathedral, which was built relatively recently as far as cathedrals go, would have known that their building was going to become an attraction for visitor to come to the city and admire the work) and thus even the art depicting Biblical ideas is valued for it's history and workmanship rather than it's message, I have to stand by my statement that the place is designed for the honor of the builders rather than in praise of God.

Possibly, with the tourism more controlled, there would be an atmosphere more of pilgrimage than of site-seeing; then perhaps the net effect would be to prompt people to worship God. Still, I am skeptical, I do not doubt that the place inspires awe, but inspiring misplaced awe is harmful rather than helpful. We can choose to worship God anywhere, and if we do, we'll find things that remind us of Him in all kinds of surroundings. But I think that worthwhile art, especially in the church, ought to provoke us to seek Christ, and I found little there that seemed designed with that aim. While it may be beautiful and awe-inspiring, all the beauty and awe in the world pale in comparison to Jesus, and are only truly beautiful in Him.

Ok, now that I've satisfied my need for theological correctness. I will lighten up a bit and admit that I've still got a lot to learn about true worship and that certainly if I missed out on an opportunity for deeper worship in my visit it's through no fault but my own. I do appreciate those who commented on the topic; to present the much needed balance to my perspective. :)

On a more mundane note, you'll notice that I'm not off traveling this weekend. While some of the other students are off in Prague this weekend, I'm taking a bit of a breather before July when we have trips scheduled for 3 weekends in a row (and 2 of those are 4 day weekends). I've enjoyed having a relatively uneventful week, just going to work, hanging out in the evenings, working on some of my ever-present projects.

I'm also giving thanks this week that I was able to finally decipher the schedules correctly and made it to church last Sunday as well as finding a college age Bible study meeting. While they're obviously all in German, it's still encouraging to receive reminders about what is really important and to encounter others who are also pursuing Christ.

Catching up

2007-06-17T04:43:00.000-06:00

Well I think I'm two weekends out of date by now so I'll try to hit highlights from both weeks though I'm sure I'll be leaving out all sorts of interesting things.

Last weekend our small troupe of RISE students in Darmstadt visited Köln(Cologne). The Köln train station is famous because it is built right next to the Dom, which is a huge Cathedral. It really pretty strange to walk out and see this massive intricate building stretching out in front of you. We looked around inside the Dom and paid 1 or 2 Euros to climb the thousands of stairs to the top of one of the spires. It's really impossible to fathom the effort put into building this sort of building. You look at it and either see a big building, which is impressive, but not huge by todays standards or you look at some small section of detail and see a lot in this small space, but lose sight of the fact that the whole building is full of such detail.

It a really impressive building, but walking through the inside, I kind of felt like I could understand why Martin Luther and others in his day saw a need for a reformation. I thing the building has been a sort of tourist attraction ever since it was built. It would be difficult to actually worship God in this place that was ostensibly build for that purpose. I had a brief conversation with one of my companions about how the place seemed built to impress people into believing in Christianity. Sort of like a, "wow, we should believe what they believe because they build massive temples!". which may sound simple to us when described that way, but really reflects a pretty common way we think; we want to follow a God that makes us look powerful.

I know that there is some good intentions that might go into building such a cathedral. With the right approach I think it could be a good reminder of how God IS a lot bigger than we are and that there is value in doing things just to praise Him. But that wasn't the feel of this place.

Annother funny thing was that weekend was "Church day" in Cologne so there were all sorts Christian events and meetings going on in the City center especially around the Dom. This group was obviously more of a protestant tradition or more of a "hip" modern efforts. They all seemed to have these orange bandanas and some of them had uniforms, it reminded me of AWANA in the US in some ways. Our group was generally annoyed by the gatherings though. Now, there's at least one member of our group that just has a chip on his shoulder about all things Christian, so I'm not suprised by his negative reaction to the meetings outright, but I also felt a bit uncomfortable about the events. There was mostly a lot of loud music, most notably some ear-shattering beatboxing, and a sermon or two. This whole thing struck me as Christians trying too hard to be "fun" and "hip". Now granted any sort of big event tends to have annoying music and such for people who aren't there for the event, but still it didn't strike me as much of a witness to non-Christians in Köln.

Anyway, we had a pretty good time in Köln: we visited a Chocolate museum, walked through this park that forms a belt around the whole city, had some tasty crepes, tried this pretty tasty drink called a Donerkeil (tastes sort of like licorice and cinnamon) that is apparently only found in Cologne and generally had fun being tourists. It's actually really funny, but visiting a place famous makes it a lot smaller in my mind. Cologne seems like one of those must see European cities before the visit, but after you've walked through the city for a day or two, it's a much more real place, just like any other city. Still interesting and worth visiting, but no longer so mysterious.

The week following the trip has been pretty uneventful. I have started to do some really work with the wireless sensors, mostly in preparing a small game of "Whac-A_Mole" with a laser pointer as the hammer and the Tmotes (our wireless sensors) as the moles for a demo this Saturday. The one motes would lite up an LED for each player (up to 3 players), the players then shoot their respective moles with the laser to score points, difficulty is increased by decreasing the time that the LED is on.

On Friday, Da-RISE folks meet up again to go to the "Schlosskeller"(Literally in the old basement of the castle.) because someone had seen a sign for this "latin-funk-jazz" group that was playing there. The entrance was 3 Euro, but couls have been atleast 5times that. The group called, Mann-mit-hut, was amazing; they played some really excellent tunes, the drummer and the keyboardist were really incredable to watch/hear. We stayed from ~10pm until 2am listening to their music. It was really great stuff. I wrote down the website: www.mann-mit-hut.net, but unfortunately, they don't have any sort of recordings. They do have a schedule online though so if you're going to Germany anytime soon, I'd take a look at it.

Most of the day Satuday was spend back at the office for the Electrical Engineering department open house. (Apparently TU Darmstadt is the worlds oldest EE dept. at 125 years old? maybe it's just Germany's oldest, impressive nonetheless.) It was actually a pretty good time even though I had to be there on a Saturday. It was a neat to get a chance to get to know some of the people in the dept better than just a brief introduction. There was also food provided for lunch and hanging out briefly soda in hand after cleaning up; it's always a good feeling to hang around with people after cleaning up form a successful event. You feel like you've accomplished something together.

After that, some of us went over to a party at Troje's house (Another co-worker). It was a tasty BBQ and I had a pretty good time, though it was a little awkward not to know more than one or two people and everyone was probably ~10 years older than me. Still one thing I'm learning here is how to just live with situations where I don't know exactly what to say or do. I kind of just sat down, had some halting conversations on German about what I'm up to here and listened a lot. People are actually pretty willing to accept you in their casual social groups it seems if you're polite and friendly; being ein Auslander (a foreigner) helps generate sympathy for lack of social grace and provides an easy topic of conversation. I actually started to feel pretty at home there. Troje even sent me home with some meat from the grill, which is what I ate for lunch today. :)

Parag and I walked back into the city after leaving the party since we live in the same direction and we had a pretty neat conversation about world politics, economics and globalization (Parag is from India), and ethics in engineering. It was a good conversation for a long walk.

Since I've already filled a lot of space, I'm not going to comment on all my photos from Frankfurt and Cologne, but you can find all the photos I've posted so far at:
http://picasaweb.google.com/mjeffryes/Darmstadt
http://picasaweb.google.com/mjeffryes/Frankfurt
http://picasaweb.google.com/mjeffryes/Cologne

Thanks for tuning in to this weeks edition of "Adventures in Germany". Tune in again next time same time(sort of), same URL.

New experiences

2007-06-08T13:47:00.000-06:00

Greetings Friends and Family:

It's only been two weeks that I've been here now, but it seems like it's been much longer. I know the city, know my coworkers, know most of the other students here for the RISE program, etc. And It's just now starting to no longer feel like a vacation. This is of course the reason for coming via some sort of exchange program, to actually try to get a taste of the way it feels to live here (that and the fact that it's much cheaper this way!). I don't really expect it's entirely possible to learn enough to say I'll know a place after staying for 3 months, but I think two weeks i long enough for my traveler's adrenaline to cool down and actually start to process the world around me.

It's been rather interesting to just land in a place where I don't have any previous connections and where my only real support system is my advisor and the people I eventually make friends with. It's been a chance to experience some perspectives I don't usually get a chance to. For example, the other night my flat mate invited me to a small party at the end of the hall. It he introduced his friends as the "alcoholics anonymous" of Karlshof, and there was a lot of drinking, but it was actually a pretty calm crowd. There was a larger party with loud music in the bar down below, but no music connected with this party. Anyway it was an interesting experience to hang out for a bit and talk to a few people (met an australian art history major who's been here for about 2monthes now). I had to get to bed relatively early on since I was planning to head into Frankfurt the next morning (pictures soon). When I thanked Zim for inviting me, he told me that really for these student parties invitations aren't necessary, if I see even one person I know at the party I should join in. I thanked him again and pondered the philosophy: it's a very casual approach to interaction that's pretty foreign to me, but I don't really think it's all that different from the culture back at HMC really.

They say you go abroad to learn more about your own culture really (that's what Paul, from Australia says anyway ;) ) and I think I gained a small little insight into the party people from north or west that I hadn't understood before. There is an appeal in the rather free conversation and mixing, and though the alchohol causes problems when people abuse it, the mildly drunk actually do seem to create a friendlier environment. (I still can't understand the loud music at some parties though.)

Anyway, despite the fun of learning these new perspectives, I don't think I'll really pickup the party scene; too late at night and I'm not really a fan of any form of beer, especially the stuff at parties (and they tell me the stuff in the states is worse!). I have learned that I can sit at a table of people I just barely know, say only a few words and still be a part of the group; maybe I will pick up a bit more adventurous social habits in some other form. (I've tried this sort of thing at the dinning hall back home though and it's never really succeeded I think it's mostly a matter of finding a group to attach to or participating in a group where everyone's pretty new. thoughts?)

I would appreciate your prayers though for finding Christian community. No one I've met so far is an active Christian, so I've kind of been stumbling around online to figure out times for church services with not much success. It's difficult to keep a focus on God when that's not on the mind of any of the folks I'm hanging out with. It's also a bit lonely not knowing anyone better than two week time. Thanks to those of you who have written and IM'd!

I'll leave you with some more pictures form the gardens in Darmstadt:

Entrance to Rosenhöher:

Infant mausoleum for the local royalty:

The wedding tower, built to commemorate the marriage of the local princess to the Czar:

Built by Czar Nicholas II so he could have orthodox services when he visited his in-laws:

This is all that was left of one church after the second world war. The bushes mark where the walls were:

Obenfeld: looking away from the city on the edge of the gardens:

Life in Darmstadt

2007-06-02T10:26:00.000-06:00

So last time I told you about the fun getting here but I didn't provide much in the way of descriptions of the place except a few pictures. Hopefully today will remedy that.

I'm living in a flat with 4 other guys: Max, Jens, Daniel and Zim. They're all German except Daniel who is actually an exchange student this semester from Luxembourg. They all have pretty good English skills (especially Max who has family in the US and has visited many times). They've been quite friendly, I've gotten to hangout and talk with all of them in our lounge. And they helped me to learn where the stores are and how to work the laundry machines.

Max is a funny outgoing guy; he seems to have limitless energy. He's studying materials science, which he described as 7 semesters of thermodynamics; doesn't sound fun to me, but he's enjoying it.

Jens is a quieter guy so I haven't gotten to know him as much; he was studying mechanical engineering, but he's switched to medicine recently. Apparently, the majority of students start their studies in science or engineering here because that's where there are the most jobs, but of course amny decide that they'd rather be doing something else after a year or two. (Germany has ~18% unemployment, but there is high demand for scientists and engineers.)

Daniel is from Luxembourg, as I mentioned earlier; he's here on exchange for the semester.(There are some pretty good programs for exchange across Europe it seems.) Daniel speaks the least English, but he has been one of the most considerate and helpful to me (perhaps because he knows what it is like to be new here).

Zim is not studying at the University like the others, but is studying Computer Science at the Fachschule, which is a private institution which focuses on more practical training. He also works part time as a programmer (he says he enjoys being a "code monkey").

I keep a bit earlier hours than most of my flatmates since I have to go to work at 7:45 everyday and like to keep a somewhat consistent schedule on the weekends too. I can walk to work in about 20-25min and I can bike there in about 15 - it's not as close as living on campus, but it's hard to complain about the commute! I took a couple pictures the other day along the streets I walk to work:

This is a better sample of the architecture in town.

This is the bike shop where I bought my bike, it's on the way to work. Unfortunatly, I already got a flat tire :( Those who know German will recognize the name of the shop is a bit of a play on words: "Fahrad"=Bicycle often shortened to "Rad", "Spar"=thrifty

A butcher shop I pass with "everything for breakfast":

I've visited many different grocery stores (The stores are generally smaller, but more numerous here); this one is run by a Turkish family I think:

I didn't take any pictures of the building I work in, but it's really not all that noteworthy. I'm working in moderately sized office with Matthias, my adviser and one other guy. I'm currently sitting where one of their colleges who's on vacation now sits. So far we've discussed ideas for the project a bit and I've been doing a literature search to find out about what's been done, but I haven't gotten down to the nuts and bolts of the project yet.

At lunch we usually go to "die Mensa", aka the student dining hall:

The dining hall is a rather different experience from HMC because there are actually 4 or so different cafeterias with different menus in the same building! They also price based on the food you take rather than buffet style, since students here aren't on any sort of meal plan, but just put money on their "uni card" for the mensa and the laundry room. The mensa is run by the "Studentenwerk" which also administers all the housing owned by the university, like Karlshof where I am.

Well, I've got a lot more I can share, but I think there's some sort of festival in the rose garden nearby so I'm going to check that out this evening. Epect pictures form me later.

The trip over and settling into a new place

2007-05-27T13:15:00.000-06:00

Well I survived the trip and the first few days! Actually, that's no small feat all things considered; I had a pretty crazy first day here. The flights over we rather uneventful. It was my first time on a transatlantic flight and I enjoyed all the dinner service, warm napkins to wash hands before meals and the newspapers/magazines they offered for reading on the plane. Hopefully, I didn't annoy the flight attendants too much with my poor German. :-P

The excitement began after we landed, consider this a guide of what not to do when traveling. First, my luggage was delayed, so I sat in the terminal for an hour or more and when I went to file my baggage report, I realized that I hadn't considered the importance of writting down my travel information on paper; I had most of my info on gmail! Fortunately, I could show the service representative where to find the address where I'm living (on my blog here!) and through the miracle of caching I was able to find the phone number of my adviser Matthias.

Once I'd cleared customs I attempted to call my family and also Matthias to give a status update. After, 3-5 tries of different calling cards, credit cards and the like I managed to figure out how to work the public telephones in the airport. Matthias told me the name of the bus/train (I wasn't sure which) to take and the name of the hotel, which I mostly understood, but not well enough to write anything down.

I changed the $10 or so I had in my pocket in to about 8 Euros which was fortunately enough for the train to Darmstadt. I searched for the train/bus Matthias told me to, but with no luck. The information desk staff told me to take the train to the Frankfurt main station and then to Darmstadt, which I ran off to do, but it proved a 20 minute task to decipher the ticket pricing and which track to go to. (I think I really annoyed the lady at the train info booth by asking a question in German and then completely failing at comprehending the answer. She then gave me an answer in perfect English although it was still so fast I almost didn't understand.)

Anyway, to begin to wrap up the story, I made it to Darmstadt, eventually figured out where the hotel was on a map and met Matthias. Matthias took good care of me: showed me my flat, helped me get all the various papers signed for bank accounts and temporary residence and rent and gave me some bedsheets since my luggage was still in Philidelphia. I went to bet around 7pm that night and slept exceedingly soundly.

The next day my luggage arrived, my stipend money came in and I got to meet the rest of my suitemates. Finally, some stability! We've got a long weekend here (Monday is Pfingstmontag a day off after the German Easter celebration) so I've used it to do some grocery shopping, hang out with and get to know my flat mates who are all pretty friendly and try to orient myself in the town. I want to praise God for taking good care of me even though my planning was far from perfect!

Unfortunately, I didn't really bother to take my camera out until today, when I went out walking, so there's not too many pictures even though I've seen a lot I've thought photo-worthy.

First, a few pictures of the flat:

My room is visible at the top of the stairs. It looks like this:

The view from my window is pretty nice:

The balcony out front:

A sample of the student art/graffiti present on most of the walls:

From my walk this afternoon (going away from the city):

A "bee garden" I passed (they sell honey):

I recognize that these pictures could easily be taken in the states (except the bienengarten), but that's part of the point; The newer construction in Germany looks very much like it does here, though I think they do a better job of building along with the natural environment rather than leveling it. I'll get you some photos of the city soon.

Well that's all for now; drop me a line if you want to say hello!

One Day More

2007-05-22T09:51:00.001-06:00

This is it: I leave tomorrow for Germany! I'm very excited, and a bit nervous, but I trust God will take care of me.

I just recently realized that some of you may not know the story of why I'm going to Germany. It's nothing much really: I've always had a vague interest in German culture, so I was considering spending a semester abroad, but I couldn't bear to miss a semester at HMC so I started looking for summer opportunities. I found a couple work abroad programs and applied. It was actually pretty straightforward; if you'd like to spend sometime overseas, do some internet searching it's a lot easier than you might think.

The program I'm participating in is called RISE ( Research Internships in Science and Engineering) sponsored by DAAD a German exchange program. Basically, German graduate students post internship opportunities online, US undergrad students apply for the positions and RISE matches the candidates and pays a stipend to cover living expenses. The project I am working on is titled: "MAC Protocols for the Mixed Mode Environment", which means very little even to me :-P . Basically, I will be researching and testing wireless protocols (a system of rules about how devices in a wireless network behave) which try to guarantee that a message gets from point A to point B in a reasonable amount of time, while trying to conserve as much power as possible. I'm going to be working at the Technische Universität Darmstadt in Darmstadt, Germany which is just a little south of Frankfurt. (If you're curious look at the map)

One more note: some folks wanted a way to get updates by email, so I've added a couple of buttons over on the left to let you subscribe either in your RSS reader or by email. Just type your email address and press the button and you should recieve an email everytime I write a new post.

Next time you hear from me I'll be in Germany!

A blog for my time in Germany

2007-05-16T14:18:00.000-06:00

This blog will serve as a place to collect and share my thoughts and experiences in Germany this summer. While I've occasionally considered starting some sort of blog type thing before, I've always been dissuaded by a combination of laziness and an unwillingness to subject anyone more than necessary to my writing. However, since the occasion of traveling to another country should provide with some worthwhile subject matter and honesty prevents me from promising to write diligently to all my friends, this seemed like a good time to start. (Besides this is a more socially acceptable way of talking to my computer when I'm lonely.) As to the title of the blog, the pun is intentional, I make no promises as to whether my posts will be more "honed" than "spat". ;)

If you want to try to have actual correspondence, I'll post my contact information in Germany as soon as I know it. I'm much better at responding to letters than I am about sending them in the first place, I promise.

I'm bringing my camera and I fully intend to take pictures, but experience suggests that you'll have to bug me often if you want me to remember them. :)

That's all I can thing of for now. I may post once or twice more before I leave to get the hang of this and once I leave I suppose I'll try a least once a week.

Edit:
I now know my postal address:
Matthew Jeffryes
Alfred-Messel-Weg 10 A-25
64287 Darmstadt, Germany