Quantum Thoughts and Christstollen

2009-02-08T18:54:00.001-08:00

silence is golden but ducttape is silver

Happiness

2009-02-08T18:50:00.000-08:00

One of the great secrets to happiness is to be immersed in an activity that is complex, where you have the skills to match that activity. By stretching your mind as you work, you enter into a state of mind where you lose all sense of time.

Keeping it Real 2008- day two (may 2nd)

2008-05-02T21:34:00.000-07:00

Brrr. woke up quite cold, despite the fluffy. again gorgeous day. said goodbye to Kitty (or Katy?) and her husband, and paddled towards sicamous.
"it is not rick to go round the world these days. You can pay a lot of money and fly round non-stop in less than forty-eight hours, but to know it, to smell it and feel it between your toes , you have to crawl" (Jupiters Travels by Ted Simon, cited in Back in 6 years, Tony Robinson Smith). That must be right. i was definitely crawling, but without that i would probably not have heard the millions of frogs quaking along the highway- frogs that have only one thing in mind... you know.
there are some very strange things you start to notice on a really long bike ride: one is, butterflies are really fast- they are not idly flapping their pretty wings, they actually can go quite quick, quicker than i at least. same for bumblebees- its an astonishing experience to ride side by side a bumblebee, let me tell ya. or trucks- usually i think that they are rather annoying- except uphill, when the air flow they create pulls you along with them.
then there is the heritage aspect- i stopped at "the last spike"- the last spike that connects the trans-canadian railway. hammered into the ground on November 7th, 1884. a rainy morning and apparently the poor guy who had the honor of hitting that spike home, messed it up- bent the first spike and had to use a second one.
best part of it all are probably the random ppl that you meet- today, it was the guy who works at "The Last Spike" at Craigellachie. two degrees- civil engineering and forest biology- who told me all these little great tricks for a cross-rockies bike ride. how would he know? well, i did one two, before he became the loving father of two and tried to avoid working in either of his two degrees (hidden message?). According to him, there will soon be leg cramps- but a quarter cup of apple cider vinegar each morning can cure them very easily. mmhm yum.
no matter- the absolute favorites of the day are Nicole and Graham- who granted me asylum in their little house- (even though they are out of town!) and the best welcome i have ever had: little notes, relaxing shower gels, dinner prepared. I am mind boggled- really thankful and really full of good food.
and now i will go sleep- tomorrow: up to the pass!

Keeping it Real 2008- day one (may 1st)

2008-05-02T21:24:00.000-07:00

Woke up this morning around 6:30- still half asleep. That was some really good moollee yesterday.

One look out the window tells me that it did not snow, in fact it is a super beautiful, blue sky sunny day. I say goodbye to Adam and have breakfast with Nat- really good coffee by the way. a last nice warm shower and a lot of dillidalling around. I finally made it onto the road around 11ish. WOOOOheee! Of I go, up the first hill on sexsmith and then the backroad to winfield. Through an odd detour-non paved road and along okanagan lake towards vernon. I decided to take the backraod to vernon, because it is appearently very scenic. It is gorgeous. It is georgeously steep. It is a funcking gorgeously long steep hill, I f-ing hated it; hated it vigoroulsy all the way up- but then I liked it.

Well, took me about 3? Maybe 3.5 hours to get to vernon. The thought of coffee and some treat the only thing that kept me going. The date bar was delicious. Sean joined me for about 3/4 of an hour for a chat about ice climbing all all kinds of other fun stuff.

Left vernon behind, on my way to enderby-partytown. Passed a poor hitchhiker twice! Will probably see him again in revelstoke. Made it into and out of armstrong, my butt getting sore, my legs weak, still another 13k to enderby…boo. Paddle paddle paddle. I don’t want to admit it, but I was pretty glad when I got into enderby- a 89.9km ride- not counting the fucking hill on the backroad to vernon. Next goal: find a place to stay. There are currently two functioning motels in town. 79.90$ or 80$ plus tax. Haha. There is something about a good night sleep. But whatever it is, it is not worth 80$. So instead, I went to subway to get myself some dinner, and ran into kevin- no no a different kevin, one who I had never met before and who I asked if there was anywhere else towards sicamous maybe- he lived in grinrod, and almost offered me to stay at his place. But only almost. We left it at the - 'well, if I see you on the way....' non-commitment. Anyway, turns out that the other four ppl I had asked if there was another place between enderby and sicamous were either not sure, or sure that there might be a slight chance for a motel in sicamous. Another 40km. Yak. So, I got onto me bike and paddled- watching out for any deserted barn on the way. Why else did I bring my sleelingbag?

Around 5 k past enderby is the cedar park inn (6376 Highway 97A). Since asking does not cost anything, I knocked at the door, with my most exhausted look on my face (which was not difficult at all). No vacancy. Broom-cuppoad, shed, barn, garage, anything? turns out there is this old stinky rv in the back, which Kitty let me have for free and brought over drinking water and water for the toilet and a little heater! Super sweet! I looked everywhere, but the only flowers I could have stolen to thank her, were her own. l'll have to leave at least a note tomorrow morning. So and now i am sitting in my downjacket (cause I am still quite chilled) ready to go to bed at 9:10pm, which I will do shortly, and then off to another day of fun paddling. Jeicks.

Keeping it Real 2008- the night before

2008-05-02T21:12:00.000-07:00

8:30om. i am finally done packing- and repacking, and then packing again. and cleaning up little bits and pieces around the house. stored my last little bit of stuff in a box and the box with some more stuff in the dresser. jeez- how can one person accumulate so much stuff in just two years? i feel the urging need to downsize. to dispose off my worldly possessions. for now all those worldly things are neatly packed in a storage room- i just could not make myself to throw out the clothes i have not worn for at last 4 years.
I said good bye to kevin- with a tear in my eye- it really is a little bit like the end of an era, and biked my first 10km to Nat & Adams domicile.
well fed by Nat's fan-freaking-tastic Mulle (or molle?) Adams home brew and Katy's newest gossip, i went to futon- fearing that what was forecasted could become true: cold, rain, flurries. hey, but where better to hang out for another day than with N&A? the night sky was clear, stars sparking.

Permanent Residency

2008-04-05T21:12:00.000-07:00

i never thought i would cry for joy because i sent my passport away for 120$.
i finally got a little peace of freedom- to work wherever i want.

When life comes full circle

2008-03-15T22:46:00.000-07:00

A year and a half ago, i flew home from Germany. i watched "in her shoes" on the plane. a total chick-flick. light entertainment, made to make young girls cry but a movie soon to be forgotten. it was odd- i cried, in the plane, next to the cute buy, and i tried so hard to conceale my sappiness (he had turned off the movie 10mins in). What made me cry initially was a poem by- i know now- Elisabeth Bishop "the are of losing". after that things changed. not because of the movie or despite of it. they just changed.
tonight i watched "in her shoes again". this time, i knew the poem, and i knew the lines, cause just last week i had written a 'reading journal' for exactly that poem for my creative writing class. funny, that after all that analyzing on my own, i had still missed the important part- the art of losing does not talk about losing a lover, but losing a friend. just as i have.
the movie has of course a good ending. may be my friend and i have too...

2007-12-21T22:39:00.001-08:00

the odds are good...but the goods are odd

one up one down

2007-11-07T18:19:00.000-08:00

one step further up the ladder to permanent residency, one committee member down. all in one day, 'delivered'-ironically-by the same person.
should i be laughing or crying?

2007-11-05T16:12:00.001-08:00

"Everything will always be OK in the end." ' But what if it is not?" "But what if it is what not?" 'What if all isn't good in the end?" "Well, that is easy- then it isn't the end yet!"

From the Vinyl Cafe- Sam's Predictions

What would you do if you won 30 million?

2007-11-04T19:36:00.000-08:00

what started out as a "what do you talk about in an hour car ride to Penticton" with Brandon, Brody and Craig might as well be an answer to "what do you want in life"?

what do we want? what do we wish for? house, car, family, jaegerzaun (picket fence)? if i would put an adjective to what i wish my life to be i would chose adventurous.
i wish to be able at any given day to wake up with the sun and go outside, without worries about a missed job or appointment. i wish that i am able to climb up rocks and ascend mountains, descent into caves, squeeze through the tight holes of possibility and time. i hope i will have the courage to kick shins when they deserve it*, and give comfort to a friend even when it means that it will make me uncomfortable**.

*PH
** PK

2007-10-21T16:53:00.000-07:00

sometimes friendship means to leave

On Supernovae and Assholes

2007-10-16T21:21:00.000-07:00

on January 15, 1934, the journal Physical Review published a very concise abstract of a presentation that had been conducted by Zwicky and Baade the previous month at Stanford University. Despite its extreme brevity-one paragraph of twenty four lines- the abstract contained an enormous amount of new science:it provided the first reference to supernovae and to neutron stars; convincingly explained their method of formation; correctly calculated the scale of their explosiveness; and , as a kind of concluding bonus, connected supernovae explosions to the productions of a mysterious phenomenon called cosmic rays, which had recently been found swarming through the universe. the ideas were revolutionary to say the least. neutron stars wouldn't be confirmed for thirty-four years. the cosmic rays notion, though considered plausible, hadn't been verified yet. altogether, the abstract was, in the words of Caltech astrophysicist Kip S. Thorne, "one of the most prescient documents in the history of physics and astronomy".

interestingly, Zwicke had almost no understanding of why any of this would happen. according to Thorne, " he did not understand the laws of physics well enough to be able to substantiate his ideas". Zwicky's talent was for big ideas. others- Baade mostly- were left to so the mathematical sweeping up.
Zwicke also was the first to recognize that there wasn't nearly enough visible mass in the universe to hold galaxies together and that there must be some other gravitational influence- what we now call dark matter. one thing he failed to see was that if a neutron star shrank enough it would become so dense that even light couldn't escape its immense gravitational pull. you would have a black hole. unfortunately, Zwicky was held in such disdain by most of his colleagues that his ideas attracted almost no notice. when, five years later, the great Robert Oppenheimer turned his attention to neutron stars in a landmark paper, he made not a single reference to any of Zwicky's work even though Zwicky had been working for years on the same problem in an office just down the hall.
(Bill Bryson, *A Short History of Nearly Everything)

2007-10-16T21:09:00.000-07:00

what, oh what makes the world go round?
no really- i have a good idea of what makes the world orbit around the sun, but what causes it to spin around its axis?
anyone knows?

IDEAS

2007-10-15T21:46:00.000-07:00

i just came home from a fabulous talk by Paul Kennedy- a veteran broadcaster for CBS and host of the show IDEAS. really, he does not strike me as much of a veteran. he is neither an particularly old, crumpled fellow, nor does he seem to be an advocate for the great things we accomplished by war (this said not to diminish the good deeds and sufferings war veterans have endured).
Au contrair- he seems rather a very fresh mind, witty, deliciously funny and young at heart. maybe it is a certain gift, to not only speak about IDEAS and why IDEAS matter, but to make people think while listening, coming up with great new ideas just by themselves.
what is an idea i wonder? a sudden thought, or understanding? a glimpse into your own mind? sometimes it is the fascinating feeling when you suddenly seem to understand a deeper underlying truth, just like an epiphany that suddenly hits you. in any case, it generally leaves you refreshed, no matter what time of day (and after 5pm i rally am not a fresh thinker), eager to go and Google all kinds of things, starting with the guy who invented a computer who could convert writing into speech ( and is apparently a little bit of a nutter) to Kierkegaard's philosophical believes, from Machiavelli's history of Florence to whether the golf stream really stopped running for almost a week sometime in 2005...
Those were only some of the ideas Mr. Kennedy touched upon but they all leave me with a feeling of 'i cant wait' till i finally download the podcast for his show to be able to bath in more entertaining fresh ideas i might or might not have thought about myself, listen to more thoughts about 'the catcher in the rye' (admittedly, i am actually quite proud that i have read the book and it makes me grin with a fond memory of the young Master Walker who lend it to me). I am looking forward to reading about the 5 historically grand meals in Mr. Kennedy's Book that he will hopefully finish soon, and wonder if an hour long speech could have any sustained impact on the handful of university people that went to listen.
yet more, i wonder, who is Mr. Kennedy? who is that person who could deliver an hour of insight with only three very well hidden 'aehms' , attentively watching his audience and not once looking down onto his one pager script of a thoughtful filled evening?

2007-10-14T20:18:00.000-07:00

Shantaram
Vinyl Cafe
Siddhartha

2007-10-14T19:46:00.000-07:00

Love the truth, and be true to love.