a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
Here’s my Monday morning picture, from my airplane seat at about 6.45 am. There was fog at San Francisco airport which delayed us by an hour, but we made it in fine (with no gremlins on the airplane engine right next to me*).
*Such as the gremlin making trouble for the airplane in ‘Nightmare at 20,000 ft’ in the Twilight Zone episode from 1963 and Twilight Zone, The Movie (1983).
It was the 2015 US Open Tennis Mens’ Final today and I watched most of it. I wanted Federer to win against Djokovic, but in the end he succumbed to the world No 1’s steadiness and nerves. Federer turned 34 (!) in August, but promised he will be back at the US Open next year. I am very happy about that.
From the US Open website’s report : ‘Yet for the undisputed best player in men’s tennis, he received surprisingly little attention during his two weeks in New York – the media glare reserved for Serena’s run at the Grand Slam and the exquisite play of a resurgent Roger Federer, who advanced to the men’s singles final without the loss of a single set. But when the last ball was struck at the 2015 edition of America’s Slam, it was the steady Serb who was holding his arms aloft in triumph, bringing them down just long enough to wrap them around the men’s singles trophy. In doing so, Djokovic completed arguably the greatest Grand Slam season since Rod Laver won all four majors in 1969.
Photos are from usopen.org.
Apple has announced their new iPhone lineup at the geek hootenanny* known as Apple’s September Event last week. I am going to spring for a new iPhone as soon as these are out, and I will have to choose between 6s and the bigger 6s Plus. I will pick the smaller one I think, and then what finish color? .. probably again Space Gray. There’s Silver, Gold, Space Gray and Rose Gold (read : Pink! so no. Not for men, I would argue). For some reason I have never liked gold for watch faces and watch bands, and so Gold is out, leaving the Silver, with its white bezel.
The other color to pick is the phone’s leather case and it’s really between black and a brown for me. Black is classic but maybe a little boring. So .. Space Gray with Black bezel & Black Case or Silver with White Bezel & Brown case.
*An old country word for ‘party’, used in a Bloomberg Businessweek article that describes the tremendous engineering and design effort that went into the new 3D Touch and other features that come with the new phones.
The events of 9/11 in 2001 now lie 14 years behind us. 
On the way to SFO airport today on one of the bridge overpasses on Highway 24, we noticed that the overpass had been decorated with lots of large and small American flags, with people waving at the cars below.
Security at the airport was not visibly tighter than normal, but on the plane the flight attendants were strict about not allowing passengers to stand at the front airplane restroom. During the flight one of the passengers in first class had some medical problem and fainted, but a doctor on board seemed to be able to eventually revive him. After we had touched down at Seattle airport, I think we were all just happy to be back on solid ground.
I discovered a Chipotle franchise near our office here, and now I go there at least once a week to pick up a Mission burrito. These are also known as a San Francisco burrito or a Mission-style burrito and is a type of burrito that first became popular during the 1960s in the Mission District of San Francisco. These burritos are bigger than the Mexican ones, and have additional ingredients beyond the basic rice, beans and meat.
I did stay up last night to watch the start of the new Late Show. Host Stephen Colbert made fun of presidential candidate Donald Trump’s denouncement of Nabisco for closing an Oreo cookie factory in Chicago and moving the operation to Mexico. (Oreos will still be made in three U.S. states).
P.S. I can report that it is still high summer in California : it was 100 °F (38°C) as I got into my rental car at 7.30 pm tonight ! .. and I see the projected high for Thursday here in Walnut Creek is 106 °F (41°C).
It was dark when I settled into my seat at 15A, but by the time we were pushed back from the gate at Seatac airport, the sun was just coming up.
The Labor Day holiday here in the USA is called the ‘last day’ of summer (unofficially). The kids have to go back to school, and the weather starts to change. For a weekly airplane commuter such as me, the difference is noticeable at the airport as well : fewer people and I might luck out with an open seat next to mine once in awhile on board.
Funnyman of The Colbert Report fame*, Stephen Colbert, is about to assume the role of the host of the Late Show on CBS, this Tuesday. (David Letterman retired from the Late Show in May after being the longest-serving late night talk show host in American television history). The Late Show is actually too late for me (it starts at 11.30 pm! – yikes), but I will definitely make an effort to check out the first shows hosted by Stephen Colbert.
*The Colbert Report was a satirically ‘conservative’ comedy show hosted by Stephen Colbert, but he once remarked during an interview, ‘I’m not someone with a particular political ax to grind. I’m a comedian. I love hypocrisy’.
origin of bumbershoot
bumber- (alteration of umbr- in umbrella) + -shoot (alteration of -chute in parachute)
first known use: circa 1896
I could finally unpack the paintings that I had shipped from South Africa that had arrived on Monday. One is a pastel drawing of my paternal grandfather, and the other two are oil paintings.
We’re in the final stretch of our project. We are fixing defects and making functionality improvements for the pilot solution, and then the final solution has to be rolled out to all of the rest of the target users. The next few weeks will be a busy time, since the full user group and the data conversions that support them is about ten times the size of the pilot user group and their data.
Some financial analysts argue that we’re in the early stages of a full-fledged bear market. Well, we will just have to wait and see. Many of today’s investors here in the United States (and as a consequence, the world at large) have lived through two fairly nasty bears: a decline of 58% from 2000 to 2002 and a 57% plunge from 2007 to 2009.
It was not too hard to get up very early for my 6.00 am flight out to California on Tuesday! .. since I was still more or less on Greenwich Time. But I needed a few cups of coffee to get me through the afternoon, of course.
I just
thought today of a special shipment I had sent from South Africa, and wondered when it will arrive here in the States, when the doorbell rang. There it was, with the DHL Worldwide Express courier : three bubble-wrapped paintings bundled together with FRAGILE stickers all over it. The air freight cost was not cheap at US$400 (actually it was, a previous quote had ran well over $1,000) – but the paintings had been done by my mom a very long time ago, had been in my parents’ house in Stellenbosch for many years, and so have a high sentimental value. I promise I will show the paintings once I open up the wrapping ! I am shipping myself out to San Francisco in the morning and still have to pack!
I had to hustle a little this morning to get to gate Z69 for Seattle at Terminal Z at Frankfurt airport on time. Several little travel time breaks went against me, and at the airport the automated baggage check machine would not let me check two bags (grrr) and I had to flag an attendant down. The extra bag fee is €75 ($84), said she – and yikes! no, I’m not paying that, I said. We got that squared away when I remembered I had a card up my sleeve : a Gold Star Alliance card. They waive the fee for a second bag. The passport check and security check was still ahead, but I made it to the gate in good time. The flight headed out northwest, across Greenland, Canada and some 9 hours later, made its descent in the Pacific Northwest.
I am staying overnight in Frankfurt before my trip back to Seattle. I packed in one last walk and a shopping spree at the Galleria Kaufhof (nothing too expensive, just a few items), and squashed everything into my carry-on bag. Marriott allows me to check out late, and so I did, at 1.59 pm (I was to check-out by 2 pm). It’s not so easy to get from the hotel to Tegel Airport with public transportation, but I did it anyway. It’s ride a U-bahn ride on the U2, step over the the U12, and get out at Zoologischer Garten. From there, there is an express bus to the airport – except it was a little late today (so even in Germany buses run late sometimes). I had plenty of time at the airport, though.
Here are some of my favorite pictures from all the places I checked into and checked out around the center of Berlin.
It looks to me from all the tourist buses and hubbub around Checkpoint Charlie* that it is Berlin’s top tourist destination, beating out even the very popular Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag building. I did not make it into the Checkpoint Charlie Museum (the line was too long), but there was a series of chronological, annotated pictures on display outdoors which I found very moving.
*Charlie is the ‘C’ in the NATO phonetic alphabet, not a person’s name. For more information that I could possibly document here, check out the excellent Wikipedia entries for Berlin Wall and Checkpoint Charlie.
I made it into Berlin’s Tegel airport in the afternoon. I dawdled a little getting out of the airport, taking my time to take the scenery in. Berlin’s new Brandenburg airport is under construction (years late and billions of euros over budget. So little Tegel airport with its hexagonal main building around an open square that Berliners have become very fond of, will be closed, but probably not before 2018. Walking distances are extremely short at the airport. Our baggage claim was RIGHT THERE at the entrance into the terminal as we stepped off the plane. And another 30 meters puts you outside the terminal where the taxis and buses are (no S-bahn or U-bahn train to take directly from the airport).
