Tags: RIP, Steve Jobs
What a sad day. What a huge loss. Steve Jobs was such a part of our daily lives, whether we used Apple products or not. His impact on our lives will be felt forever. A bit over two years ago I posted one of my favorite speeches of his on this blog, his commencement speech at Stanford University. A friend of mine put it well: “God wanted someone to invent iCloud!” RIP. I stay hungry, I stay foolish.
What an amazing experience.
I figured while we are in the area, we should take a trip to one of the islands. Fiji, Samoa, and the Cooks Island were all great options but I figured we would not necessarily make a special trip from Chicago to go to the Kingdom of Tonga. After SORA seeing some of the luxuries of NZ, and Australia, it made sense to go somewhere more “basic,” more “down to earth” if you will – but somewhere blessed with so much nature, beauty, and warm hearted people.
We stayed in one of the “best” resorts there but still close to the town so we’d enjoy the cultural activities and seeing the locals. Our room roughly cost us a couple of hundred dollars a night which is plenty there. But I tell you, in America, you would be paying less than $50 for that room. On the bright side, all night long we heard the sound of wild waves…what a beauty.
And God created New Zealand – Heaven on Earth.
Some have told me to try Alaska. They say it is as beautiful.
I went to school in Geneva years ago before you were born. The mountains here are at least as amazing. The drive from Queenstown to Milford sound was fabulous. The mirror lake was just amazing (see the pictures). And the flight back in such a small plane was magnificent. Will never take that flight again.
When I first started spending time in NZ, I told Nami and SORA to travel there as much as they can because NZ and Australia are so far away that we would not go back to the region. Guess what? The more I saw there, the more I said we would come back.
I am proud of Nami and many of our musician friends across the globe for all their efforts to collect money for Japan. Pictures below you will see Nami at a concert to raise money for the victims of the Japanese tsunami and earthquakes.
SORAsound collected money from some auctions. We talked to Sora’s school to run some activities to generate funds for the Japanese red cross. SORAsound used the funds generated from our auctions to match what the school had collected dollar by dollar (we had used that as an encouragement for people to contribute). Nami also worked closely with the school.
Special thanks go to our friends and all those who bid on our auctions.
A few trips to New Zealand in the last few months. When I can, I try to visit a new city with Nami and SORA. Fulfilling a promise to myself to take SORA to a new country each year. New Zealand is an amazingly astonishingly many other complimentary adjectives country. I was lucky enough to have lived in Switzerland and gone to school there. Great nature there. But, New Zealand….this too, VOW.
