Surfin’ USA

Visit to the Holy Land

As I wrote earlier, I spent three weeks in Israel this summer. My visit was part of a research cooperation that we at UCI have with a group at the Technion University in Haifa. My Israeli hosts arranged for a nice room on campus for me and I spent most of my time with work related to our project.

I did, however, manage to explore Haifa itself as well as go to Jerusalem for two days. The latter was especially impressive with its rich history and religious significance for several major religions. Most of my stay there was spent in the Old City with its maze-like alleys, street bazaars and countless churches, temples, shrines, etc. I had come prepared with plenty of information about various sites and their significance, but it was still tough to keep up with all the different religious denominations and their respective beliefs. Among other things, I visited the Western Wall of the Old Temple (the holiest site in Judaism) and followed the Way of the Cross, along the Via Dolorosa, to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, built on the site where it is believed that Jesus was crucified and later buried.

Naturally I’ve taken many pictures, a selection of which you can check out below.

All in all it was great trip, both from a work perspective as well as personally. Israel is a very fascinating country, and I hope I can return one day to visit more places, learning hands-on about its impressive history.

G’Day Mate!

After three weeks in Israel, I returned to California in early September for five busy days (hence no new entry on this page), where I had to prepare for this summer’s final trip: I was to present a poster at a conference in Sydney, Australia, for which I left on Sunday the 7th, taking a (looong) 14 hour direct flight from Los Angeles…

Well, I have just returned from this trip and I had a great great time. Fortunately I was able to squeeze in a few days of sightseeing in and around Sydney before the conference. I spent most of the time exploring Sydney itself but made a day trip to the nearby Blue Mountains National Park. I took plenty of pictures, some of the better ones can be found below. The conference also went well; I got some good feedback at my poster presentation, attended several interesting talks and met many new people.

P.S. I have not forgotten about the Israel trip, I just decided to write about Australia first.

Long overdue

I just returned from a great weekend visit to Jerusalem, a truly fascinating city. I will have some more details (and pictures) later, but first I feel I should catch up with my trip to Finland and Germany earlier this summer.

As you might remember, I traveled to Finland to attend a conference. On my last day in Helsinki I had some time to explore the city, of which you can find some pictures below. Helsinki reminded me quite a bit of Gothenburg (or Stockholm and Oslo, for that matter), and I liked it a lot.

After a week in Finland, I traveled on to Germany, to visit my family. The big surprise (although I was suspecting it to some extent) was that Teiko came to visit for a week as well, just in time for my birthday — what a great idea! On my birthday all of us (except for my sister’s boyfriend, who unfortunately couldn’t make it) visited the zoo in Arnhem, Netherlands, which was lots of fun (see below).

Update: I added four pictures from Teiko’s camera, taken on a day trip we took to the “Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord”, a nearby former steel mill area.

…and gone again

Since Wednesday I am now in Haifa, Israel. I will be here for almost three weeks, working with some people at the Technion University on a joint project. If time and money allows, I will take one or the other ‘touristy’ trip around here, so stay tuned.

Home sweet home (other side of the Atlantic)

After a long day of traveling with a fair amount of delays, I arrived back in Irvine yesterday night. In spite of the ongoing strike at Lufthansa, I flew from Dusseldorf to Chicago — with a 2 hour delay due to the strike (it seems I was still, Lufthansa started canceling intercontinental flights today). My flight from Chicago to Orange County was also 45 min late, after waiting in the takeoff line on the tarmac with dozens of other planes. In addition, one of my two checked bags didn’t make the connecting flight and will be arriving here today.
But given all the uncertainty beforehand (due to the strike), I am quite happy to be back in California in one piece and more or less as scheduled.

For those of you that heard of yesterday’s earthquake in the Los Angeles area, I was still in the air when it happened. The epicenter was reported to be ~50km northeast from Irvine. From what I hear the earth shook quite a bit for 30 sec, but there was no significant damage to buildings and structures. And more importantly, noone was hurt (in Irvine as well as elsewhere).

Home sweet home

I write this from my parents’ house, were I arrived late yesterday night, after flying in from Helsinki. The conference was over on Saturday, so I had most of Sunday to explore Helsinki as a tourist. I walked and saw a lot, it’s a really pretty city, reminding me of Gothenburg — in the end my feet were really tired and I slept until noon this morning.

Anyway, I will be in town for a little over two weeks, and I hope to run into a few of my old friends. My German mobile phone number for the time is 0163/6845919, so give me call or send me a message if you are in the vicinity!

Summer time is travel time

I am currently sitting in a lecture hall at the University of Helsinki, where I am attending the UAI’08 conference. I will have a poster presentation of some of my research work later today, and I am also involved in some things that my advisor is presenting here. Accordingly, the last few weeks leading up to this trip were very busy with preparation.

The conference will be going on until Saturday afternoon, after which I will have one day to explore the city on my own time, before I fly to Germany late Sunday, to visit family and friends for two weeks. (If you happen to be in the vicinity at that time, drop me an email!)

Backpacking in Yosemite

A few days ago, Teiko and I escaped crowded and busy Orange County for a while and drove up to Yosemite National Park for an extended weekend of backpacking. We made the trip up on Saturday, hiked from Sunday to Tuesday and returned late on Wednesday.

Saturday night we camped in Yosemite Valley, the central area where they have shops and hotels. Early Sunday morning we packed our backpacks and took a bus up to Glacier Point, where we started our 7-mile hike along the Panorama Trail to the backcountry camp in Little Yosemite Valley. With tent, water, food, and other things, I carried 50 lbs. (23 kg) and Teiko had 40 lbs. (18kg) on her back — so we were quite exhausted when we got to the campsite around 6pm that day. We quickly pitched our tent, cooked some dinner and went to bed early.

The next morning we left most of our things at the tent and started the 8 mile round-trip hike, climbing upwards, towards famous Half Dome. The last part is solid granite, which is so steep (I’d guess 80% inclination) that you have to pull yourself up on heavy iron cables that have been installed there. They say that lots of people get scared and turn around when they see the cables — and I have to admit, it is pretty intimidating. But Teiko and I decided that we didn’t drag ourselves up there for nothing, so we slowly climbed towards the top at 8800 feet (2700m), always setting one foot after the other, not looking up, let alone down. And boy, was it worth it! The views from up there are breathtaking! We spent more than an hour on the top of Half Dome before we got ourselves to climb back down again — still scary, but I found it a little easier then the way up. And what a great feeling it was to get off the cables and stand on solid ground again. Somewhere along the way back down to our campsite we then ran out of water (it was a very hot day), but eight long hours after we had left that morning we eventually got back to our tent thirsty but safely.

After a well-deserved good night’s sleep we packed up all our things the next morning and hiked another 5 miles back down to the main valley, where we pitched our tent again for the last night before we went off to indulge in some of the great achievements of civilization, pizza and beer. On the morning of our departure we went for another short hike to pretty Mirror Lake and made some photo stops on our way out of the park, before we eventually hit the road for the drive back south.

All in all it was a really unforgettable experience, even though both our feet hurt quite a bit afterwards and each of us had several mosquito bites that itched for some days. I’m definitely hoping we can return some day and explore other corners of Yosemite…

Obviously, we took tons of pictures over the days and it’s very hard to make a selection for a small gallery here. Therefore I’ll just refer to the extensive album that Teiko put together (click here), which is also the basis for the slide show above. I’ll conclude with a panorama shot of Yosemite Valley from Glacier Point, that I stitched together from several images (click for bigger version):

On the road again

Finally, here is the promised update. As I said, the last weeks have been filled with conference submission deadlines and I was mostly occupied with work-related things. In the end we submitted a few articles to different venues, I’m hoping the hard work will be rewarded by a positive response some weeks from now.

Once the deadlines had mostly passed, my parents came over from Europe to visit. They traveled quite a bit on their own, but Teiko and I joined them for an extended weekend trip to Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon. One week later my parents and I went up to the Santa Barbara region for two nights before they flew back to Germany. It was great seeing them again and the traveling was lots of fun! Below are some pictures, be sure to click the thumbnails for the bigger versions.

Back from the dead

Almost three months without any new entries here… my apologies!
I’ve been incredibly busy at work (since it’s high season for conference submissions), so not a lot of noteworthy things happened — and besides, I would not have had enough time time to write about it here.
I am hoping to catch up and share some pictures here over the next few days, so stay tuned.