I am Here to Wonder

Chaplaincy trip to Holy Island in Northumbria, also known as Lindisfarne. *  A cloud of witnesses. To whom? To what? To the small fire that never leaves the sky. To the great fire that boils the daily pot. To all the things we are not remembered by, Which we remember and bless. To all the things That will not notice when we die, Yet lend the passing moment words and wings... Louis MacNeice (1907-1963), excerpt from  Fanfare for the Makers

Christmas Carols service at King's Gilbert Scott Chapel.

Advent service of carols and poetry at King's Gilbert Scott Chapel: I was only allowed to photograph the pre-service rehearsal as the service itself was very solemn and formal. Also, I was an acolyte so I guess I couldn't be in two places at once anyway.

Chaplaincy weekend away at Cumberland Lodge, 17-19 November 2017, in which I spent four hours walking to Windsor Estate from Egham Railway Station at night with my tripod and rucksack. I wrote two pretentious poems from title-prompts for one of the activities there: ADVICE TO YOURSELF WHEN YOU ARE STRESSED Remember, if you will The bleak corridors, choking heights and stale-green grilles, the Breathlessness – discordant drumbeats and falling Card towers. And stars, for it was not so long ago When they crumbled into floorless depths from Dark paper skies. And those aching gashes Sheltered fiercely in scholarly pretention – the round sound of Weltschemerz , Camus’ hurt in original French –  As if a foreign script’s mysterious loops and accents Could paint your secret paralytic pain. But remember also How an autumn raindrop in Windsor is most beautiful hanging  From the tip of a weak weeping twig Extending uselessly from a tired bough, trembl...

This time I went at sunset because my friend came over and we didn't know what else to do. July is almost ending so the raptors that I've been desperately trying to photograph are quite done with their nesting and public appearances. The visitors and passage migrants have long moved on except a very tardy few; I've been seeing a sizeable number of pacific swifts lately but unexpectedly far from the beach. They are too quick for my camera, which is just an excuse for me being too lazy to try harder, which is also a pity because those swifts are tagged as 'uncommon' here and they'll likely be on their way in a couple of weeks. Anyway, mostly only the lonely natives are left. This tropical concrete island seems bent on offering me sorry scenes just as I prepare to move into a university that disgusts me (NUS). But I have no choice and neither do the beautiful and savage migratory birds. But as John Muir said, 'Nature is ever at work... allowing no res...

Because I miss the birds in Alaska and because I have not recovered from jet lag and don't want to, I headed out to the seaside at Pasir Ris Park at sunrise to look at the birds. I got some stares at my binoculars and telephoto because normal people don't do this stuff here. I had to look up all these on Nature Society's Birds of Singapore app because I don't usually do this stuff either. I wish the app would say more about what the bird does and where it is in the food chain and the tree of life, etc, though, instead of just giving names. Feynman was my childhood idol and what he said in a BBC Horizon interview has stuck with me:

17-24 June 2017 I haven't had a holiday to somewhere nice and wild for a year because of A-levels but we finally went on an UnCruise trip to Southeast Alaska on the EV Wilderness Explorer! It was a very small ship - more like a boat, really - even for an expedition vessel, which was what made it so great. There were seven guides (I think) for only 70 guests onboard so it felt very homely. Everyone was really friendly and we quickly got comfortable with one another. The guides were unbelievably knowledgeable about ecology, evolutionary biology, geology (all the -ologies you can think of); I feel some of them could replace a couple of my previous school's H2 Biology teachers (cough). They will need more teachers like these if they want us to stop sleeping in lectures any time soon. I wish we had a chance in school to get out a bit more and see things for ourselves, which was what the Wilderness Explorer was all about:

14-16 June 2017 The National Park and Forest, not the games. I wanted to do some camping here but in the end we decided to stay at Lake Quinault Lodge as it was more convenient for our luggages. We went to Beach 4 along the Olympic coastline. On our way down I saw a beautiful bird; it appeared quite suddenly so my settings were all wrong. Later in Alaska, one of the guides on the Wilderness Explorer identified it as a Bohemian Waxwing, using a 'Birds of Alaska' field guide. I like how I didn't see it in Alaska but saw it here:

On a particularly clear night some time last year, I discovered that the stars seen from Pasir Ris were surprisingly bright for a heavily light-polluted city like Singapore. So some time in May on a new moon, I got out my flimsy tripod that I had received for free (and which died in Wales by freezing) and put my camera on it. This was my second time shooting stars, after trying it out in Taiwan  and ending up with some terrible pictures. I've made some improvements since, I think. I used a 50 mm prime and I know that's not a good choice for astrophotography but the widest aperture on my kit lens was and still is too small: f/1.8, 15 s, ISO 800, 50 mm, Nikon D610 Two months later, I accidentally caught the milky way! But I didn't (and still don't) quite know how to make it pop out: f/3.5, 25 s, ISO 500, 24-85@24 mm, Nikon D610 In November, I decided to make a personal commemoration of Armistice Day which falls on 11 November. It's not celebrat...

29 December 2015 - 1 January 2016 We stayed in Caerllan cottage, a small National Trust cottage in Llandysul, Ceredigion. As this was in mid Wales; the scenery was decidedly different from Pembrokeshire in the south which I visited on a school trip in 2013, especially in winter. There weren't many animals to see in winter except birds, sheep and ponies. We thought we could catch a glimpse of some dolphins but found none. There were, however, a fathomless multitude of stars which was great because I'd just upgraded my camera to the star-shooting D610.