Here’s Denver depicted in Starbucks coffee mug format. There is snow for the mountains in the forecast for Friday, prompting speculation that some of the Colorado ski resorts may open earlier than usual this year.
Wednesday/ Rocky Mountain high
Tuesday Oct 1
(So the United States government has shut down at midnight last night, and ‘Obamacare’ is open for registration).
Here on the oil company project in Denver we are keeping our heads down and working away to complete the design phase of the project. The PwC project manager came into my office today with two ‘new’ PwC members in tow, introducing them just by name. After I greeted them, I asked :‘And what will you guys do on the project?’ not disrespectfully; but in a chummy kind of way. Oh, said the project manager, Ryan is the quality assurance partner and Reed is the client partner for the project. ‘Ah, very good’, I said, feeling a little awkward that I was so informal with them. Oh well – how was I to know, is that not right?
Monday/ phở (say ‘fah’)
Mondays start very early for me with the travel out to Denver – so I don’t want to spend too much time waiting for my food at a restaurant on Monday nights. So that’s where the Vietnamese noodle (phở) place here on 16th Ave in downtown Denver comes in. They serve up a quick, hearty bowl of noodle soup and I have already been there three or four times.
Sunday/ that Washington Circus
That Washington circus that we sometimes call the US Government is at it again. Not Washington State, Washington DC .. and to be fair, the circus is in the House of Representatives, not so much the Senate or the rest of the government. Right now it looks like the US government will shut down at midnight on Tue Sept 30th – which is surely some kind of joke. How long will it stay ‘shut down’? Will the armed forces stop their work? (No.) Will Medicare and Social Security payments stop? (No.) Will the National Parks close? (Yes.) Will the government offices close? (Yes.) The Tea Party Republicans just cannot get over ‘Obamacare’, for which registration officially starts Oct 1. Just this Monday a woman across the aisle on the airplane from me told her seat neighbor: ‘I know what they (the Government, the Democrats, the President) are doing, and it’s socialism’*.
*No, it is not. It is helping the citizens of the country to buy more affordable health insurance. It is democracy. It helps everyone compete in a capitalistic system on a more level playing field. Socialism is an economic system characterized by social ownership of the means of production and co-operative management of the economy [Wikipedia]. And Republicans that support corporations and business throw the word around at a time when ‘social ownership’ of the economy is at a 50-year low. Wealth is more concentrated at the top than ever. Fortune 500 corporations sit on tens of billions of dollars of cash. Unemployment is still way too high.
Saturday/ lots of rain
We are having a ‘big weather event’ (as the meteorologists like to say) here in Seattle this weekend : lots of rain with gusty winds at times as well. The first big storm of the season can make trouble and bring down tree branches and there was indeed a power outage in parts of the city.
Friday/ going home
The week, that had me in and out of three hotels and three cities, is finally done, and I’m leaving the maple leaf country.
I need to get a Nexus card to speed my way through customs here. My US Global Entry credentials is not enough. One would think that it’s good enough, but no : you get through the US Customs in a jiff, then the Canadians that handle the airport security line say no! we don’t care. Go stand in line with those 300 other people for security. Ha!
Thursday/ to Toronto
We did our thing all day in several one-hour work sessions with the effort to win the contract for a big gas utility. All told, we pulled together 31 hours of presentation material last week and last weekend – no mean feat. We packed it in at 5.30 pm and made it into Toronto shortly before 9 pm. My colleague and I will stay over and go to the PwC Toronto office tomorrow. We have to send out an updated set of documents to the prospective client.
Wednesday/ to Detroit, and into Canada
It was quite a journey from Denver to Detroit and into Canada. I got into Detroit at 10.00 pm, and had to navigate to the city and the Ambassador Bridge into Canada and on to the little town of Chatham where I’m meeting my USA colleagues and PwC Canada colleagues tomorrow. I pulled up at the Holiday Inn Express at exactly midnight local time in my rented white Chevy Impala.
Tuesday/ Moorish Revival architecture
Our project office is on Sherman street in a bland office building in downtown Denver (it is modern inside, and I am not complaining about that) .. but check out this spectacular building in the Moorish Revival style right across from it. (Confession : I had to look up the building’s style on line, I’m not that smart about architecture). I guess the days of building in red brick and in the Moorish Revival style are gone for good? All the more reason these buildings should be protected from the wrecking ball.
Monday/ the Africa lounge
I walk by the Africa lounge in terminal A at Seattle-Tacoma airport every Monday morning these days. The lounge is just an ordinary airport bar with a bar counter, and some tables and chairs, but still makes me smile. Why? It makes me think of Africa, and the one time I saw a real lion up close on my grandfather’s property he owned in Botswana. I have a close-up picture of the beast glaring at us on the open Jeep(!), and I will have to look for it the next time I get home in Seattle, and post it on here.
Sunday/ a break in the rain
So fall* is officially here! It was supposed to rain on Saturday in the city but it didn’t .. we did get some rain on Sunday. When it stopped, I was ready to get out of the house for a bit, and went for a walk on 19th Ave. *We say fall in the USA and Canada, elsewhere it is autumn!
Friday/ like Switzerland
I was ‘Switzerland’ this week, and I do not mean I ate a lot of chocolate*! No : I stayed neutral and did not involve myself in a battle. I was needed in two places at the same time next week (Denver and Toronto). So I stayed out of it and let the matter get resolved at a higher level. The final resolution is that I will go to Denver until Wednesday, and then on to Toronto to help out there.
*The Swiss eats the most chocolate in the world per capita!
Thursday/ at DIA
DIA stands for Denver International Airport. Back in the ’90s when the newly opened airport had trouble with the baggage carousels, a sarcastic newspaper heading read : ‘DIA is DOA’. I did not get a rental car for this trip – so it was great to just sit back in the taxi. It’s been a blue sky and cool weather week; a welcome respite for the Boulder residents that have to clean up after the flooding.
Wednesday/ no tapir?.. actually, no taper
So I see the US stock market jumped up today at the unexpected announcement from the Fed that there will be ‘no taper’. (The Federal Reserve Bank will continue to buy assets to stimulate the economy, and not scale down their efforts for now). But the giddiness might not last long. Seems that the Tea Party- controlled Republicans are planning to shut down the US government to ‘defund’ Obama-care. (What does defund even mean? And psst. That’s not going to happen, Republicans – defunding the President’s signature legislation that has already gone before the Supreme Court, and was upheld). And then what? Another debt ceiling fight? The stock market will definitely not like that.
Tuesday/ Thai dinner
The ‘Wild Bangkok’ Thai restaurant
here in downtown Denver is nicely decorated inside .. and they serve up frosty Singha beers in Singha mugs. I was on my own : a welcome moment of respite after a long day of talking to lots of people. I enjoy the cold beer while the summer is still lingering before its final goodbye. It was a day of sunshine here, welcome weather after the historic 100-year flood in the Boulder area that destroyed some 120 homes. The roads around Boulder are extensively damaged, so much so that people have to be airlifted out.
Monday/ in the pink
I had to get up with the early birds (or even before them) for my early flight out to Denver. At least I got some sympathy from my project manager here in Denver when he learnt I took the 5.15 am flight. ‘Whoah! There should be a law against that – for flights to leave that early’, he said.
Saturday/ spider’s web
In summer, I have to watch for spider webs as I walk from my back door to the garage. This one was in the main walkway between the garage and the shrubs six feet away.
The world champ for spinning webs is Darwin’s bark spider, discovered only in 2009 in Madagascar in the Andasibe-Mantadia National Park in 2009. From Wikipedia : ‘Its silk is the toughest biological material ever studied, over ten times tougher than a similarly-sized piece of Kevlar. The web of Darwin’s bark spider is remarkable in that it is not only the longest spanning web ever observed, but is among the largest orb webs ever seen, at an area of up to 2.8 square metres (30 sq ft). Nephila komaci, discovered in 2009, and some other Nephila species also make webs that can exceed 1 m (3 ft 3 in) across’.
Friday/ flu shot time again
I know it’s still ‘officially’ summer but I went out on Friday and got my flu shot anyway. It looks as if it’s an uphill battle for the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta to convince people to get a flu shot. I guess people are too busy, or think they don’t need it. And then there are conspiracy theorists out there that say it’s just a money-making scheme from the drug companies.
Thursday/ flash floods in the Denver area
We had Seattle weather all week in Denver (rain), and Colorado weather in Seattle, I think. (Wednesday’s high in Seattle of 93° F/ 34°C was a record high for this time of year).
On the drive out to Denver airport this afternoon, some off ramps from the freeway were closed due to standing water, or flash flood water. The flooding is worst in Boulder, not too far northwest from the city of Denver.
Wednesday/ remembering 9.11
I am still catching up as quickly as I can with all the team members and all the work that had been completed so far on the project, so that I can make a contribution.
There were no special announcements in remembrance of the 9.11 events 12 years ago here at the office, but I am sure it was on everyone’s mind. It is a day in the USA that is going to be very hard to forget, for a very long time.