(It’s actually early Thursday in the hotel in Dameisha). The pictures are all from the flight to Incheon airport in Seoul, and at the airport itself. Good news from North Korea is the announcement that the NK government has agreed to implement a moratorium on long-range missile tests, nuclear tests, and nuclear activities at Yongbyon, including uranium enrichment activities.
Tuesday/ at Sea-Tac airport
I made it through security and now I’m waiting for my flight to Seoul. It looks like our flying machine is an Airbus A330-300. It’s 11 hrs to Incheon airport and then 4 hrs to Hong Kong for a late Wednesday night arrival. So the rest of my Tuesday is about to disappear in thin air and I will have to catch the outcome of the Michigan Republican primary election on the other side!
Monday/ packing up
I’m packing my bags for one more trip on Asiana Airlines to Hong Kong via South Korea’s Incheon airport (outside Seoul). Incheon airport was constructed over water about 1-3 meters (3 to 10 feet) deep. These types of airports are inevitably subject to some subsistence. Incheon’s is expected to be about 2.5 cm (1 inch) over the next 20 years. Hong Kong’s airport appears to be the best-engineered marine platform in the world and had hardly budged since 1998. Then there is Japan’s Kansai airport built over the sea 5 km off Osaka at a depth of 17-18 meters (56 to 59 feet). The world’s longest 2-tiered bridge connects it to the city nearby. It sinks 2 to 4 cm in any given year, so in 20 years’ time, it may sink 40 to 80 cm (16 to 33 inches). Yikes! .. however, the soil engineers from Osaka University are confident it will not sink completely into the ocean.
Sunday/ The Artist has it
So what’s (really) old in film is new again with the 2011 silent French romantic comedy drama film The Artist, directed by Michel Hazanavicius, that took the Best Film award at this year’s Oscars. (The film already has a Golden Globe award and a French César Award). I read on-line that 80% of silent movies were destroyed when modern sound film (the ‘talkies’) started to take over in 1929.
Saturday/ 2012 Lunar New Year ‘forever’ stamps
I got some 2012 Lunar New Year stamps for my collection. The US Postal Service issued them as ‘forever’ stamps. Forever means there is no explicit price on (so the price can go up forever?). First Class postage might soon go from 45c to 50c .. so in theory, investors can make 11% overnight by buying a ton of stamps at 45c before the price goes up. (A little difficult to quickly dispose of the little paper investments).
On Thursday the USPS announced that it plans to shut 223 of its 461 mail-processing plants by February 2013. Maybe I should have mailed that property tax check after all ! The agency has gotten rid of about 140,000 jobs in the last five years, mainly through attrition, but still had about 650,000 workers at the end of 2011.
Friday/ King County property taxes
I braved the steady rain yesterday to go downtown and pay my property taxes. (I’m not putting a check for several thousand dollars in the mail!). The offices on 500 Fourth Ave have a diamond pattern on the exterior. And where does my money go? Only 17 cents on the dollar go to the county, and 50 cents to schools. Where in the country would property taxes be the highest? Westchester county in New York State. On this side of the country on the west coast it is Marin County in the San Francisco Bay area. The artwork is from a construction site close by. That must be an Ursus arctos horribilis (grizzly bear) with the American buffaloes (bison), but the curly clouds and background images are definitely Asian.
Thursday/ some ‘panda burger’ for you?
The Singha beer is from the Jamjuree restaurant where my friends and I had some wonderful Thai food Thu night. The the ‘panda burgers’ are from Wednesday night’s Jay Leno Show. The prankster offered the product to people on the street (supposedly from a small area in China where it was legal to hunt them!). The first two passers-by just said ‘Sure! I’ll take a bite‘ and ‘Pretty good!’ . Finally a young woman said ‘Are these really panda burgers?’. But she was a sport and tasted the burger as well. Aww. Leave the panda bears alone. See how cute they are on the card from the World Wildlife Fund?
Wednesday/ sleeping in Seattle
The Electric Light Orchestra sings that a cure’s been found for good old rocket lag (in 2095) in their song ‘Here is the News’. But hey – it’s only 2012. So travelers jetting across the world and I still have to make do with sleep remedies that are no silver bullet. Melatonin does not work for me – at least not the recommended 5 mg. I now use prescription zolpidem (generic ‘Ambien’) which is definitely effective to putting one to sleep, but for no more than 4 hours. I take it only for two or three nights, get up when I can no longer sleep, and then take a 2 hour nap later in those first few days. After that my body is up to its own devices to get fully adjusted! And how does the stuff work, anyway? Well, it’s a short-acting hypnotic that inhibits neurotransmission – brain activity – by binding at the same site as the brain’s natural inhibitor called GABA.
The stuff works quickly : in 15 mins! So not long before you start to drag and g o t o s l e e e p ..
I thought this picture below of a neuron was very cool (picture from Wikipedia’s entry for ‘neuron’). A neuron is an electrically excitable nerve cell that transmits signals. The connections between nerve cells are called synapses.
Tuesday/ Greece’s bailout
Greece’s latest bailout has been approved by the European Union members : some €123bn. (Japan’s NHK TV put President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, and Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, in the outfits of the classic Nintendo video game Super Mario brothers*). The target is to reduce Greece’s debt to 120% of GDP by 2020. (Yikes). Count among the skeptics Germany, the Netherlands and Finland – given that derailments in Greece’s adherence to austerity measures have happened several times now.
So Greece’s finances are in terrible shape, but the whole of Eastern Europe, and the I’s : Italy, Ireland and Iceland, have have debt ratings of ‘speculative’ according to Standard & Poor’s.
*Pop quiz : what is Mario’s younger brother’s name? Answer – Luigi.
As a footnote, public debt in the USA at the end of 2011 was some $15 trillion, close to 100% of GDP. The Congressional Budget Office is worried about it, and during June 2011, called for ‘large and rapid policy changes to put the nation on a sustainable fiscal course’.
Presidents’ Day
The third Monday of February is celebrated in honor of George Washington, the first President of the United States. (Yes, the official name for Presidents’ Day is Washington’s Birthday .. and his actual birth date was February 22, 1732). The Republican party’s candidates were out campaigning and I havesay most reasonable people will be taken aback by some arguments being made. Rick Santorum actually compares President Obama to Adolf Hitler, saying that Americans at that time waited 18 months before acting against Hitler thinking ‘he’s not that bad’. And this is a guy now leading/ on a par with Mitt Romney among Republicans in Michigan for the state’s upcoming Feb 28 Republican primary. Romney’s father George was chairman and president of American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962, and the 43rd Governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969.
Sunday/ the trip’s little acquisitions
And here they are : this past trip’s purchases that I brought back.
Saturday/ in Seattle
It’s still Saturday but I’m in Seattle and thrilled to be home. Check out the pictures and their captions from the trip out of Hong Kong with a stop-over in Seoul.
Saturday/ on the way to the airport
I am about to go downstairs to check out and hop on the shuttle that takes passengers to the airport a stone’s throw away. The South China Morning Post reports on an on-going story of a local Shenzhen company that is sueing Apple over the iPad trademark. So far a Hong Kong court has ruled in Apple’s favor and a mainland court against them. I suppose in the worst case Apple can call its pad an ‘iTab’ and continue selling it in China. It is not known how many iPads have been sold in China so far. Another report tells of Kim Jong-il’s eldest son that was kicked out of a Macau hotel after running up a bill of US$15,000.
Friday/ at the Sky City
The week went by in a flash, and I am on the way home to Seattle. I sent a last urgent e-mail when everyone was boarding the bus for Dameisha. From there we had a van take us through the border. Right now I am in the Marriott Sky City hotel by Hong Kong airport for my flight out in the morning. The first three pictures are from Shenzhen and the two bridge pictures from Hong Kong on the way to Lantau island where the airport is.
Wednesday/ winter cheer
On Wednesday night we had a beer and a burger/ a British fish-and-chips at the Sheraton Dameisha to bid a colleague good-bye that is leaving the project. (The project is nearing its completion for all of us anyway). The LED decorations are still in place outside the hotel, and add some cheer to the winter nights. The Water Sky Hotel across the street has a new white sign. Very nice, but I miss the old yellow neon tube one that it used to have. At least the warm red one for the Meisha hotel close by, is still in place!
Tuesday/ it’s no Party without a red Solo cup
I will leave it to my savvy readers to identify the Party leaders on this very red iPhone cover from one of my colleagues here at work.
But what’s with the red cups? Well. Those are red Solo cups. Around since the seventies, and manufactured in the state of Illinois, the plastic cup has since arrived as a pop culture icon in the USA. It is the informal beer, wine or soda pop goblet of parties everywhere. The cup’s merits are even praised in a (somewhat silly) song released last year by country singer Toby Keith. Warning : semi-explicit lyrics ahead !
Red Solo Cup from Toby Keith’s 2011 ‘Clancy’s Tavern’ album (songwriters: Beavers, Jim / Warren, Brett/ Warren, Brad/ Beavers, Brett) –
Now a red Solo cup is the best receptacle / For barbeques, tailgates, fairs and festivals / And you, sir, do not have a pair of testicles / If you prefer drinking from glass / A red Solo cup is cheap and disposable / In 14 years they are decomposable / And unlike my home they are not foreclosable / Freddie Mac can kiss my a—
Monday/ Garfield speaks Mandarin
I only know Garfield* the cat from newspaper cartoon strips even though I’m sure there is a lot to be seen of him on the Cartoon Network in the USA. Here on the hotel’s TV channel he speaks Mandarin, but his antics are easy to follow. He is his old self with regards to laziness and eating obsessively! The name of the pooch is Odie. That’s him with ears and tongue flapping while leaning out the car window.
*created by Jim Davis and published since 1978. Garfield is named after Jim’s grandfather.
Sunday/ just marry!
‘Just Marry’ says the English on the hood of this Porsche wagon parked in front of the hotel where we stay. Even though Chinese weddings have been influenced by the way it is done in the West, some key differences remain. The couple registers the wedding first, and then one or more wedding banquets (xǐ-jǐu 喜酒 or ‘joyful wine’) will follow – and those are far more important than the actual wedding itself. The bride and groom also have their pictures taken days or weeks before their wedding day with glamor shots from historic sites and picturesque spots.
The Year of the Dragon is an auspicious year for marriage in China, and so the number of marriages in 2012 is expected to be up 10% or more compared with recent years.
Saturday/ Boris Becker on tennis rules
If you were king for a day in your sport, what big change would you make? asked CNN in a segment today of four sports champions. Tennis (Boris Becker*): Abolish deuce-advantage scoring – to make matches shorter. Golf (Gary Player) : Push back the tee by 50 yards for professionals – to accommodate newer club and golf ball technology. Athletics (Sergei Bubka) : Use radio transmitters to report time differences between runners. Soccer : Use goal-line technology – to indicate if a goal was scored or not.
*On 7 July 1985, Becker became the first unseeded player and the first German to win the Wimbledon singles title, defeating Kevin Curren in four sets. At the time he was the youngest ever male Grand Slam singles champion at 17. Four years later in 1989 Michael Chang would win the French Open at an even younger 17 years of age.
Friday/ gringos at the Tequila Coyote Cantina
Friday night found nine gringos (foreigners) upstairs at the Tequila Coyote Cantina., a Mexican restaurant in the Futian district in Shenzhen. There was even a page with Tex-Mex items on the menu. After some translation difficulty for our request for a pitcher* of margarita cocktail mix, the restaurant improvised and brought the good stuff out in a Carlsberg beer pitcher.
*the Chinese word for pitcher is ping 瓶