The COP21 ’21st Conference of the Parties’ starts on Monday in Le Bourget, France (it’s in the greater Paris area). The conference is the annual meeting of all countries which want to take action for the climate.
Black Friday
Black Friday comes after Thanksgiving. The ‘door buster’ video footage of customers charging into mall stores seems to be a thing of the past (thankfully) .. but even so, overall 2015 holiday sales here in the USA are forecast to reach an all-time high of $630 billion. Of that, $93 billion will be spent online, up almost 10 percent from 2014. I was checking out the merchandise on offer on-line .. with a new digital camera is still in my shopping cross-hairs. ‘Cyber’ Monday is coming, of course – a term used to promote on-line sales just, what, 5 years, 10 years ago – that already seems outdated and almost quaint.
Happy Thanksgiving !
Wednesday/ a full moon
There’s a beautiful full moon in the Northern skies here tonight. I see its Native American name is the Beaver Moon. The next full moon is due on Christmas Day, and it is going to be the Cold Moon. (It’s cold already!).
Tuesday/ the ‘Free State of Bottleneck’
Here’s a cute story that ran in Monday’s edition of the Wall Street Journal, of a slice of country in Germany that was an accident of careless map drawing after World War I. I love maps, and to boot, I was born in the Free State province of South Africa. (It used to be called the Orange Free State, after the Orange River. After 1994, it was simply renamed to the Free State province).
Here is the link to the WSJ story.
Monday/ World-wide Travel Alert
I think all travelers – and especially those of us traveling internationally – are scratching our heads a little, as to what to make of the ‘Worldwide Travel Alert’, issued on Monday by the US State Department. I am more or less always careful when I travel overseas, and I don’t advertise my nationality. (But make no mistake : I am sure I do stick out like a sore thumb with my gigantic Canon camera and its frequent use to take pictures, when I travel. Ah well). I have been fortunate in that the worst that has happened over many years of travel is the surreptitious stealing of my wallet from my backpack in Hong Kong. On a different occasion a customs agent in Lagos airport that took my passport, and then could not find it when returned as instructed with my luggage, to get it back. (They found my passport after 20 mins in a desk drawer).
Sunday/ Amazon’s book store
I finally made it to Amazon’s book store to go check it out. The book store is a good size but not nearly as large as a typical cavernous Barnes & Noble book store. (The world’s largest book store has been on line, for a very long time, of course). The store seems to offer a carefully selected set of books, almost all with ‘customer reviews’, on various topics. I was a little disappointed with the smallish sections for math, science and information technology, but admittedly my book preferences may not be very mainstream. There are Kindles on display (of course), and fairly large children’s and youth book sections. I really hope that there will always be a plenty of book stores around, with new books, old books, serious books and books just for fun. And I still want at least some of my books – the really good ones that I treasure – printed on paper.
Saturday/ South Africa’s nuclear power plans
It was March 2012 when I was approaching the end of working in China, and one year after the Fukushima nuclear power plant disaster (in Japan, after the earthquake and tsunami), that the influential news magazine The Economist declared nuclear power ‘the dream that failed’. The writers did admit that nuclear power will stick around for a long time (conventional reactors as opposed to fusion reactors, that is).
South Africa for one, is looking to add eight new eight new reactors at an estimated cost of some $50 billion to the sole nuclear power plant* on African soil. This would pump an extra 9,600 megawatts (MW) of power into the national grid. China, France, Russia, South Korea and the United States are bidding to construct the plants, with the winner expected to be announced early next year. It will be fascinating to see who wins the award. China and Korea are contending that they can construct standard international nuclear power plant designs (such the AP1000 from Westinghouse-Toshiba) for 50% of the typical capital cost.
*The Koeberg reactor north of Cape Town that contributes 2,000 MW or 4% of the country’s electrical power generation.
Friday/ stop the xenophobia
One week on from the terrorist attacks in Paris, it is clear that the psychological blast zone extends well across the Atlantic and into the political discourse here in the USA.
‘Register all Muslims in a database’ says Donald Trump. ‘We have no way to properly vet these (Syrian) refugees’ says the other Republican candidate for President, Ben Carson. (Not true. Syrian refugees are mostly families with small children and have gone through several rounds of rigorous screenings and interviews by groups such as the U.N. High Commissioner for Refugees, the International Organization for Migration, Homeland Security and the State Department before reaching the USA. The vetting process for Syrian refugees is very thorough and can take several years).
Unfortunately the public has always been prone to refugee and immigrant panic at times like these. After Pearl Harbor, there was the forced relocation and incarceration of some 120,000 people of Japanese ancestry who lived on the Pacific coast, in camps in the interior of the country [Wikipedia]. Horrible things were said of Jewish refugees fleeing Nazi Germany. And now Syrian refugees get the blame for what has happened in Paris because of one attacker’s Syrian passport. (The rest were French and Belgian nationals. So should we stop French and Belgian people from coming to the USA?).
Thursday means going home
It was Thursday again, and I got to go home. (Yay!). Today I had to host two WebEx* virtual training sessions, the second one from San Francisco airport, until I had to board my flight. Man! The free airport wi-fi was as poor as the signal I could get from my supposed 4G personal ‘Mi-fi’ device. But we struggled though it somehow.
*WebEx is an application that transmits the trainer’s computer screen to all the participants’ screens.
Wednesday/ Monterey Bay
Monterey Bay was named after the 5th Count of Monterrey of Spain, in 1602. The whole bay is a marine sanctuary, and has one of the largest underwater canyons in the world. Singer-songwriter John Denver died at the age of 53 when his experimental aircraft crashed in Monterey Bay in 1997.
Tuesday/ John Steinbeck House
We drive in to Salinas every day from Monterey, and I have just not been able to get away from work to go check out the historic Steinbeck House on Central Avenue. The house was the boyhood home to the author John Steinbeck(1902–1968), and he lived there on and off until 1935. The house is noted for its Queen Anne architecture and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1989.
Monday/ ok .. if I must (wear a Fitbit)
Would I like to participate in my firm’s team fitness competition? inquired my colleague. The firm will throw in a free Fitbit*. I was still um-ing and ah-ing when they signed me up anyway, and now I have a Fitbit around my wrist. I will give it a try for a week or two (but what do I do with my favorite Seiko wristwatch? maybe I will try to wear both).
Check out the sample sleep pattern below, collected by a Fitbit. It’s clear that time in bed is NOT EQUAL to time asleep! Fitbit does not count ‘restless’ or ‘awake’ time. There is a little accelerometer in the band that measures activity. So all the sleeper has to do is wear the band, and tap it for a second or two to when he/ she goes to sleep.
*A very popular fitness tracker-gadget worn around the wrist that tracks one’s physical activity, and even one’s sleep patterns.
Sunday
There was blanket coverage of the events in Paris, and ISIS, all weekend on the cable news networks here in the USA. Yes, ISIS* is waging war in Iraq and Syria, but is involved in many, many more countries and places in the world. ISIS is at the same time an idea-state, a state of mind, a territory, and a terrorist organization.
*ISIS stands for Islamic State in Iraq and Syria because the group’s territory straddles the border between the two counties. The acronym ISIL is sometimes used, and stands for Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant. The Levant is the historic name given to the entire region east of the Mediterranean from Egypt, east to Iran and to Turkey.
Saturday/ standing with Paris
World landmarks have been lit up in blue, white and red to show solidarity with Paris and with the French people, in the aftermath of Friday night’s terrorist attcks.
Friday/ pump some hydrogen
Here is a hydrogen gas dispenser station that I noticed as I was filling up my rental car with fossil fuel gas on Thursday. Whoah, cool ! Let me take a closer look, I thought. I’m still on the look-out for catching a glimpse of a FCV (Fuel Cell Vehicle, such as a Toyota Mirai), on the freeways here in California.
Thursday/ departure at sunset
I spent some time in Salinas this morning, and then drove up on Highway 101 by San Jose, Palo Alto and Mountain View up north to SFO International Airport to catch my flight to Seattle. Here is a picture of San Francisco Bay shortly after our take-off from the airport.
Wednesday/ more Monterey
It was Veterans Day here in the USA, and we are saluted our war veterans around the country. I had time this afternoon to go check out the Monterey waterfront and walk up to Cannery Row and the Monterey Bay Aquarium.
Tuesday/ staying in Monterey
I’m staying in Monterey, but did not have a lot of time to look around on Tuesday. (I hope to have more time on Wednesday). I chose to drive up to Salinas via Pacific Coast Highway (the locals just called it ‘PCH’), also called California State Route 1 or simply Highway 1.
The drive took me through Castroville, that bills itself as ‘the artichoke center of the world’.
Monday/ driving to Salinas
I packed my bags on Sunday and traveled out on Monday morning. I was not going to the project office though. We now have users in the field that have started to use our system, so I drove down to Salinas after arriving at San Francisco airport.
It was very wet at San Francisco airport, and it rained all the way during my drive down to Salinas as well.