/me waves

hey, howzit? my name is Thomas Grové. I am a lotek. For some reason I have chosen, or ended up having, many names. You may know me as one of the following: lion-gv, d-tao, thomas grové, tommy, grover, lithium ion, and thabonyana. looks confusing, but they are really multiple forms of the same name.

I'm half Afrikaans and half central Ohio. I sadly can not speak much Afrikaans but I'm trying really hard to learn Japanese. Language kicks my ass but my father speaks 7 different languages, most of them are afrikan. My family has been going back to South Afrika every 3 years or so since I was born. As my grandmother gets older we tend to go back more frequently. We've gone primarily to visit family but my parents have also seen to it that I received a world view at the same time.

During the days of apartheid you couldn't fly direct to South Afrika so we'd have to go via Europe. That was fine by me as I've been able to go to England, Portugal, Spain, and Germany on the way to southern africa. After visiting with my family who drink a lot of beer and eat a lot of meat and deep fried bread, my parents would expose me and my sister to the diverse and interesting countries of Southern Afrika. I've been to South Afrika, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Botswana, Zambia, Lethsutu, Swaziland, and Mozambique. I've seen ghettos, squatter towns, townships, towering ocean cities, gold and diamond mines, desert, traditional villages, 5 star hotels and 0 star tents, delta pans, lowfelt, highfelt, farms, and mountains. These are all aspects of southern africa. places where people and animals live. Among those animals is the Lion and it is magnificent.

I'm currently film student at Northwestern University. I love my production classes, I've always been good with my hands and I've always enjoyed using my imagination and solving problems. When I'm not taking film courses, I try to take eastern philosophy classes. D-Tao is my recording alias, it has 2 meanings. Tao is Swana for Lion. D-Tao is Swana for many lions. I thought that D-Tao looked cool and sounded cool so I picked that over just Tao. If you use a Chinese pronunciation of Tao is sounds "dao" which translates into way or guiding or the mother of reality/existence/nonexistence. Tao is also the Chinese character on the bottom of the 4 blocks to the left. It reads Lion, Wisdom, Happiness, Tao. Thabonyana, a name given to me by a member of the Basutu tribe means Little Happiness. My father's name is Sasutu name is Thabo which means Happiness.

I've always enjoyed video games and technology. As a film maker I use a lot of technology to help bring my imagination to life. I've always seen Li-ion batteries and thought... Lithium ion batteries look like my lotek name; Lion.... and thus the name lion now has many forms and meaning too. I like to use Lithium Ion (or some variant) when playing quake or other video games. I've been hooked on the computer since the 2nd grade when I got an apple IIc and I've been using them more and more since then. I socialize (write letters, talk on irc, vid conf, quake), entertain myself (surf the web, play games like quake, listen to mp3s), and express myself (edit videos, write this web page, compose music, create visual art) on my computer. How great! but I still find time and enjoyment in the real world with society and with nature.

I hope to one day own or be part owner of my own production company and its facilities. This may be located in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Vancouver, Cape Town, Columbus, or perhaps we'll have offices and studios in all of these places. I don't want to be tied down to just one place! But I definitely do want to have a place (or 2) to call home.

Well, I guess that's it for now. Please feel free to peruse my site and send feed back. If you would like to see my old "about me" pages just change the number in the URL. :)