Wednesday/ especially thick biscuit II

So! These are the biscuits that came out of the Especially Thick Biscuit box.  The biscuits are in the mold of ‘rich tea’ or Marie biscuits.   They are good and ‘super big’, but not thick in dimension.  It turns out the thickness refers to the consistency of the biscuit.

Tuesday/ especially thick biscuit

This cardboard box with the cute translation is from the grocery store at work.  I will see if I can find some of the ‘especially thick biscuit’ on the shelf tomorrow !

Monday/ rain

Monday morning was very wet.
This is the Dapeng Fortress billboard at the entrance of Da Peng, the town where we work, seen through the bus window.

 

Sunday/ sea turtle floatie

The rain showers from Saturday gave way to nicer weather here today.  It was still cloudy but in the mid-80s.  So there were plenty of visitors to the Dameisha beach, and the sellers of swimwear and swim floaties were out in full force as well.  This sea turtle was one of my favorites.

Saturday/ The Three Kingdoms

I found this picture on a side door of a restaurant I walked by here in Dameisha on Saturday night on the way to dinner.  The warriors are from the Three Kingdoms period, the period 220 A.D. to 280 A.D. immediately following the loss of the Han Dynasty rulers.  The red in the picture may well symbolize blood, as the Three Kingdoms period was one of the bloodiest in Chinese history.    Still : books, television dramas, films, cartoons, anime, games, and music on the topic are still regularly produced in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and Japan.  [Information from Wikipedia].

Friday/ yáng ​méi 杨梅

These are Chinese bayberries (yáng ​méi 杨梅) from the fruit market close to where we work.  They are about the size of a US quarter coin, sweet, tart, and have a round seed in the middle of the fruit.

 

Thursday/ arrival in Dameisha, China

 

Our approach into Seoul was from the south this time.
Here is our Boeing 747 bulging bird waiting patiently at the gate in Seoul for us to board, to take us to Hong Kong.

We flew across Japan and approached Seoul from the south this time.  The connection time there was just right : stretched my legs, brushed my teeth and then boarded Asiana’s Boeing 747 that took us to Hong Kong.

It was only three hours to Hong Kong, and we arrived there at 10.30pm Thu night.  That made for my usual midnight border crossing into mainland China.

At the candy store in Seoul airport : Erik the Yellow Viking M&M.

 

Wednesday/ at Sea-Tac airport

I made it to the airport with two hours to spare before the flight to Seoul departs. I usually try for three for an international flight.   I had e-mails to send off and I almost left my electric toothbrush in the bathroom – not a calamity to leave it behind, but still. And as always : don’t forget the charger.   Below is my flight from Flight Aware .. the usual trek across the Pacific to Seoul, and then down to Hong Kong for a late Thursday night arrival.

Tuesday/ packing up

I am getting ready to go out on Wednesday for my next trip to China.  It’s a new project.  So last chance for anything that needs to go with to make the cut and jump into my suitcases. (If only it were possible to snap my fingers and the suitcases just assemble themselves! ).

Sunday/ salmon from the Copper River

This is some sockeye salmon from the Copper River that I grilled in the oven simply as is. cooked. The meat is redder and more flavorful than most other salmon.

The limited catch of wild salmon from the Copper River in Alaska arrived in Seattle on Friday.  ‘Copper River’ salmon is not a species .. the salmon from there could be King, Sockeye or Coho, as explained on the web site   http://copperriversalmon.org/facts/species

 

 

And check out this picture (from Associated Press) with the Alaska Airlines crew showing off a big old salmon that has just been flown in.  Makes me wonder if they had it on board inside the plane.  And better watch out! those uniforms may need to be sent to the cleaners immediately!

Saturday/ walking around Capitol Hill

This artwork is in the Safeway grocery store on 15th Ave.
The green house on the corner of 13th Ave and John is at least a 100 years old, and now has a brand new set of small apartments brushing up against it. (I believe they are apartments and not condos).
The view of the Capitol Hill Light Rail station from John Street is not much different, but the tunnel boring from Capitol Hill to the University of Washington is now complete. Still a long way to go to 2016 when the station opens!
This artist is at work the corner of Olive Way and Belmont. I couldn't quite make out the lettering.
And this truck was parked on 15th Ave and sold organic parfait ice cream (it has custard in, so more egg than regular ice cream). There were lots of people in line the first time I walked by .. and parfait is French for 'perfect'.

Here are a few pictures from my neighborhood walk last around Capitol Hill on Friday night.  The streak of summery weather is coming to an end with rain in the forecast for Sunday.

 

Friday/ Facebook’s flat IPO

Alright, I confess : I watched CNBC-That-Wall-Street-Cheerleader-Channel for coverage of the Facebook open and for the close.  The close turned out to be more exciting than the open.  It would have been bad if the stock price had not stayed above its initial offering price of $38 on its very first day .. but then again, that $38 share price is stratospherically expensive.

Here are the rounded price-per-sales ratios for
Facebook   Google   Microsoft  Apple
25              5            3.5          3.5

Yikes. So now the 8 year-old Facebook public company is worth $105 billion.  CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s share of that is $19 billion.

Thursday/ dry cucumber soda

I have been battling a sore throat all week but felt well enough tonight to meet my friends for our weekly beer-and-a-bite at The Elysian Alehouse here on Capitol Hill.  No beer for me tonight, though – so I chose a cucumber flavored ‘dry’ soda (=has very little sugar) from Seattle-based DRY Soda Co.  It was quite nice!  And my dinner was curry chicken stew with cauliflower, rice and pita bread.

 

Tuesday/ Solar Eclipse due on Sunday

There is a annular (ring-shaped) solar eclipse due on Sunday that will start in southern China, be visible over Japan, and then over parts of the western USA as well.
We may even see a partial eclipse in Seattle but I’m not counting on it : there is rain in the forecast for Sunday!  (But don’t feel too sorry for us .. we have had spectacularly sunny weather for the last several weekends here in Seattle).  Below are some cool pictures I found on-line that shows what’s going to happen.

The NASA picture is at http://eclipse.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEmono/ASE2012/ASE2012.html

P.S. The answers for Monday’s Mazda picture : 1. Guy with Bugs Bunny tie has ‘big hair’; 2. Hot dog eater gets ‘stabbed’ with beach umbrella anchor; 3. Shark ‘eats’ surfer; 4. Guy ‘grabs’ black bikini gal’s – um – top; 5. The Titanic ‘sails again’.  Yes, it wasn’t too difficult, but it was fun, right?

Picture from National Astronomical Observatory of Japan- The moon will be between the earth and the sun, but its apparent diameter will only be 94% of the sun's apparent diameter. So the 'ring of fire' will be relatively thick.
NASA's picture that shows where on the surface of the earth the annular eclipse of May 2012 will be visible.
From the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan - A detail picture of sites and times when the annular eclipse is going to appear over Japan.
From http://www.timeanddate.com/eclipse/in/usa/seattle - Local times for viewing the (partial) eclipse in Seattle

 

 

Monday/ Mazda print ad from 2005

Check out this old but cool Mazda print ad from a South African magazine that I found in my study while cleaning out some boxes with magazines today.  ‘Spot 5 things that are not what they seem’ says the ad, and enter the answers on-line to win the Mazda. (Ignore the green line in the middle – it’s where the pages from the print ad meet). I will give the answers tomorrow.

 

Happy Mother’s Day!

Happy Mother’s Day to all moms!
It was a perfect weather day here in Seattle.  The blossoms are from close to my house.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Friday/ very very blue trees

I found these very very blue trees today in downtown Seattle, across from Westlake Center.  The blue was applied by Australian artist Konstantin Dimopoulos and is a mixture of powdered azurite (a vibrant blue copper mineral rock) and water.  The big chess game took place close by.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Thursday/ drink the Kool-Aid?

I had to drink a lot of yucky electrolyte before going to the clinic here in Seattle for a routine check-up today.  The pharmacist suggested that I could flavor the stuff with Kool-Aid if I wanted to.  So I bought some ‘Lemonade’ .. but the electrolyte on its own was not that awful and I didn’t need to flavor it after all.  But it made me look up where the phrase ‘drinking the Kool-Aid’ came from.

‘He drank the Kool-Aid’ suggests that the person has mindlessly adopted the dogma of a group or leader without fully understanding the ramifications or implications (from Wikipedia).    And so it turns out the phrase refers to the infamous 1978 Jonestown Massacre where religious cult leader Jim Jones’ followers followed him to death in a mass suicide.  A shocking 909 people died in Jamestown that day.  All the Peoples Temple members drank from a metal vat containing a mixture of Kool-Aid (that some say was actually a different brand called Flavor Aid), cyanide, and prescription drugs Valium, Phenergan, and chloral hydrate.

Wednesday/ Wall Street does not ‘like’ hoodies

Here’s Mark Zuckerberg making quite a fashion statement at his arrival in New York City on Monday to meet with investors : wearing his hoodie and sneakers.  Wow! Where’s your suit, dude? Zuckerberg notes on his Facebook Timeline (of course) that he wore a tie every day in 2009 to show everyone that was an important year (after the 2008 financial crisis).  And as Doug Gross notes in the CNN story : ‘Maybe Zuckerberg, sitting on the verge of a blockbuster stock offering, no longer feels the need to prove himself’.

(Picture from cnn.com) Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg arrives to meet with investors in New York on Monday while wearing his hoodie.

 

Monday/ the Facebook IPO

Social media giant Facebook is set to go public in the next few weeks, possibly as early as May 18, initially priced at between $28 and $35 a share.  Mark Koba from CNBC says the IPO is ‘set to raise the roof off Wall Street’.  The valuation may go as high as $100 billion (which most analysts deem extravagant; by most measures it should be closer to $50 billion).

The list of risk factors noted in the Facebook prospectus is sobering and in some ways I think I am Exhibit A for the risks.  I have a Facebook profile with 40-some ‘friends’ but I have stopped making posts there.  I don’t message my ‘friends’ or ‘poke’ them, or spam them with silly game requests (think Farmville) or with quizzes. I don’t like that Facebook mines information I write about to send me and my friends marketing messages.  And finally – I don’t like every one of my ‘friends’ (the non-friends ‘friends’) to know every thing about me.

But hey – maybe I am old and cranky (non-social?) and there is a return on an investment to be made if one lets the dust settle and see where the stock is a week or two from the IPO.

The first page of the Facebook Prospectus.
What's not to 'like'? (Statistics from the Prospectus).
Mission : 'To make the world more open and connected'. Yes - but you have to be on Facebook to 'connect', which is unlikely if you live in China, Russia or Japan where users have their own local social networking platforms.