Month: June 2012

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Friday/ what’s good for Massachusetts is not good for the United States?

The US Supreme Court on Thursday upheld President Obama’s near-universal healthcare law.   Below is Republican Party nominee Mitt Romney on Japan’s NHK TV on Thursday vowing nonetheless to repeal it ‘on Day 1 when I am in office’.  And so all the political pundits look forward to him explaining why he is denouncing the federal law – now upheld by the Supreme Court – that is almost identical to the one he championed as governor of the state of Massachusetts.  The US Supreme Court held that per the Constitution the US government can tax its citizens, also as a penalty for not signing up for health insurance.  Meanwhile, on Tuesday in Japan, Prime Minister Noda pushed through legislation (that still has to be ratified) to double the national sales tax from 5% to 10% starting in 2015 in an effort to reduce Japan’s national debt.

P.S. Tropical storm Doksuri tracked further south of Hong Kong and only brought wind gusts and some rain to us here in Dameisha

NHK TV used the news clip of the US Supreme Court announcement to explain ‘constituional’ and ‘unconstitutional’ and ‘uphold’.

 

 

 

 

 

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Thursday/ very hot .. and a storm

It’s very hot out here .. it’s more the steamy humidity that is a problem.  There is also the tropical storm named Doksuri approaching (wind and lots of rain), and we’re on a T1 alert. The storm is projected to make landfall in the Hong Kong area early Saturday morning.  The symbols and the map are from the Hong Kong Observatory website.

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Wednesday/ Seattle’s new ultra-green building

This building is in Capitol Hill in Seattle not far from my house.  (The picture is from TIME magazine).   There used to be a neighborhood bar in its place where my friends and I would go to many times for a beer!  Anyway .. the building is very, very green (energy efficient) and the target for it is to collect energy and use it so sparingly that it can be run ‘off the grid’.   I cannot say that the flat roof flush with solar panels does a lot for me from an architectural point of view but hey .. it soaks up the sun rays.  (Yes, we do have sun in Seattle!).

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Tuesday/ ‘blue’ is back

‘Blue is back’ says the box of Smarties chocolate bean candies (Nestlé’s version of M&Ms that I bought in South Africa).  Yes, but which ones are blue? I see periwinkle and lavender but no blue.  Must be the ‘no artificial colours’ that mutes the colors. Aww.  I guess Nestlé wants to avoid the situation that Mars candy company had some time ago.  Red M&Ms were discontinued from 1976 to 1985 after the FDA banned Red Dye No. 2 — even though M&M’s did not contain this dye.

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Monday/ arrived

The pictures are from Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo airport.
The airport stores are well-stocked with African handicraft and souvenir items, and seemed to be doing a brisk business even though it’s winter time and not the tourist season.

Our Airbus A340-300 was filled to capacity. The number 4 engine did not start properly, though, and we went back to the gate for a check-up.
Take your time, technicians, I thought .. make sure everything is A-OK. All was resolved after 30 minutes, and we were on our way.

This wire frame-and-beads Nelson Mandela is outside the ‘Out of Africa’ store that is filled with locally made handicraft and artwork.
It’s not too late to buy a bronze vuvuzela and go make some noise at the Euro 2012 soccer!
The stuffed monkeys must be vervet monkeys – they have black face with a white fringe of hair, and are overall grey.
This is the last few hours of the long flight out to Hong Kong from Johannesburg. We have just completed flying over Viet Nam.
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Sunday/ at Cape Town airport

I am at Cape Town airport.  It’s a 2-hour hop to Johannesburg and then onto a direct flight of 13 hrs to Hong Kong from there.  I resisted buying any more Afrikaans books (already bought 4), t-shirts or bottles of South African olive oil that are shaped like Table Mountain !

Cape Town to Johannesburg is 2 hrs. Johannesburg to Hong Kong is 13 hrs.
I found the ‘donkey with pajamas’ (as we sometimes call zebra here in South Africa) at the lounge entrance. Zebras are good subjects for black-and-white pictures. 🙂
Check out the items on the South African Alphabet book’s cover.
Among others : Aardvark, Braai (barbecue), Koeksister (syrupy twisted doughnut), Leeu (lion), Mahem (crowned crane), Miskruier (dung beetle), Nelson Mandela, Protea (the national flower), Rondawel (Africa-style hut), Taxi (minibus taxi)
Olive oil in a bottle shaped like Table Mountain (on its side).
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Saturday/ 0 0 0 W P

Here is an unusual license plate I spotted at a traffic stop, so let me decode it for you.  I think it says ‘O-o-oh! Western Province’.  The Oh as in O Canada, the national anthem, and Western Province is probably a reference to the local provincial rugby team with their venerable striped jerseys.   The Western Province rugby team is the arch enemy of the Blue Bulls, the team from up north in the Pretoria area.

The wiggly stripe at the top is Cape Town’s ‘Table Mountain’ and the Afrikaans in ‘WP jou lekker ding’ is very hard to translate — but it more or less means ‘Western Province, you sexy thing.

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Friday/ t-shirt

I like to look for t-shirts that shows the city or country that I find myself in. This one is by Quiksilver with their wave-and-mountain logo (depicting a tsumani?). And it does explain that the big SA stands for ‘South Africa’. The small print is of South African beaches and surf terms. The most famous South African surf beach – Jeffreys Bay – is missing, though.

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Thursday/ Stellenbosch buildings

Thursday was overcast and cool which made for good picture-taking weather.  All the buildings are from the central area of Stellenbosch.

The ‘old main building’ of the University of Stellenbosch was completed in 1886 and recently renovated. It is built in a style that could be called Cape classical.
This is the Sasol Art Museum is on Ryneveld Street in a beautiful red Dutch Neo-Classical building dating back to 1907. The building was previously home to the Bloemhof school.
This is Crozier House in Victoria street.
This is Van der Stel liquor store on Andringa street, a simple building but I love the roof arches and the Victorian style trim.
This church is called the ‘Mother Church’ and this building and tower were consecrated in 1863. The style is neo-gothic, built from plans from Carl Otto Hager, a German master builder and architect from Dresden.

 

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Tuesday/ at the grocery store

I am staying in the town of Stellenbosch in the Cape Town area with my family for the week.  Here are some of my favorite offerings from the big local grocery store – that sells much more than just groceries.

Stellenbosch is South Africa’s second oldest town after Cape Town (which is a city and not a ‘town’). I think in the USA we tend to call everything a ‘city’ regardless of its population or size.

 

Stuffed Springbok, mascot of the South African rugby and cricket teams.
This variety of protea is called ‘pink ice’ and is the hardiest of all proteas. The king protea is South Africa’s national flower.
South African stores offer a wide range of locally produced fruit juices. This one is a blend called ‘Whispers of Summer’ (it is winter here right now).
And here is my jar of Marmite. First marketed in the UK in 1902, the product name may have been derived from a famous French soup, petite marmite. A “marmite” (pronounced “mar-MEET”) is a French stock pot or cooking pot – like the one pictured on the front of the jar and shaped somewhat like the jar itself.

 

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Monday night/ arrival in Cape Town

My journey to Cape Town at the southwestern tip of Africa was complete on Monday evening.  Here are a few more pictures from the connecting airports.

The escalators up to the cavernous lounge at Doha’s premium connection terminal.
Porcelain souvenirs from the shop downstairs. (Hmm. The camel looks a lot friendlier than the oil sheik).
And here are some furry camels from a caravan depiction.
The flight tracker on the flight from Doha to Johannesburg shows us crossing the equator. The blue blob on the right is one of the great African lakes, Lake Victoria. By surface area only Lake Michigan-Huron and Lake Superior (in the USA) are larger than lake Victoria.
I love these African patterns .. in Johannesburg’s Oliver Tambo airport.
And this life-size African elephant is made from wire mesh with little beads. (Amarula is a cream liqueur manufactured in South Africa – made with sugar, cream and the fruit of the African marula tree).

 

 

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Monday/ at Doha airport

We arrived at 4.45 am local time with the sun just coming up from the east.  So one of two 8 hr flights done, and the next one is due south to Johannesburg.

The Qatar airbus with the oryx on the engine that brought us from Hong Kong. I am standing in the door of the bus that is taking us to the transfer terminal.
And here is my Google Places map. We are at the old airport. There is a new airport terminal under construction about 4 km away which will open in 2013.
It is summer in the desert, so these temperatures are in Celsius, of course! (90 F at night, goes up to 110 F by day).

 

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Sunday/ to Cape Town via Doha, Johannesburg

Here is how I will get to Cape Town from Hong Kong.  It’s on Qatar Airways with two 8 hour flights and then the ‘hop’ down to Cape Town on South African Airways from Johannesburg.  The stop in Doha shows where Qatar is : a kingdom on the small Qatar Peninsula on the much larger Arabian Peninsula.  Qatar is arguably the world’s richest country : it’s estimated 2011 GDP per capita was $102,943 according to the International Monetary Fund.

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Sunday/ Tsim Tsa Tsui

These pictures are from near the Tsim Tsa Tsui station in Kowloon, along Nathan Road.  It is warm and muggy outside!  Walking around makes you break out in a soaking sweat for that ‘swimming in it’ feeling.

The Prince jewelry store on Nathan Road is new.
A collection of piggies from 7-11, one is issued each month.
This is the underpass by Nathan Road and Salisbury Road.
This sign is at the Hong Kong Arts Centre. The Eight Immortals are a group of legendary xian (“immortals; transcendents; saints”) in Chinese mythology. Each Immortal’s power can be transferred to a power tool (法器) that can bestow life or destroy evil.

 

 

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Saturday/ Hong Kong is wet

My flight to South Africa is on Sunday.  It rained all Saturday which was fine with me : I could use it as an excuse to relax in the hotel and catch up on what’s happening in the world with the TV coverage of the elections in Greece and in Egypt this weekend.  I did catch the Marriott SkyCity’s shuttle bus to the Tung Chung station and shopping mall close by.

This is inside the Tung Chung station entrance : a map with directions for the aerial tramway to the Big Buddha hill on Lantau island.
This picture is displayed in a travel agency's window. The construction of the Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau Bridge is underway, slated for completion late 2016. The dotted line is a sea tunnel that will allow ships access to the Pearl River Delta.
My acquisition from the Puma outlet store at the shopping mall by Tung Chung station : three t-shirts. Count the pumas on the three t-shirts! How many? (Answer: 9, of course - for the nine loves the big jumping Cat has.)

 

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Friday/ to Hong Kong

Shenzhen at 91°C (33°C) on Friday at 5pm.
Our driver stopped for gas in Shenzhen, explaining that the ¥8.32/ liter (US$4.96/ gal) is a lot cheaper than the HKD18/ liter (that's US$8.37/ gal! yikes)across the border.
And here's the gas pump.
New construction to be seen as we were approaching the Shekou Shenzhen Port border crossing.
The main stadium of the 2011 Universiade in Longgang district has been around a year now, but still a highlight for me to check out as we drive by.
Here is the mainland side of the Shenzhen Bay Port crossing. The Hong Kong customs is behind this one.
.. and once the bridges to Lantau island come into view, you are almost there. It is a 2 1/2 hour drive from Shenzhen, border crossing wait time included.

It is time for a get-away from the slog at work. A colleague and I got the van to Hong Kong on Friday for our flights from the airport this weekend.  A little travel disaster struck me when I got out of the van at the hotel : inadvertently left my cell phone on the seat, with the driver disappearing from sight as I ran back out of the hotel.  We did have his phone number but as I was trying to figure out the dialing codes for mainland China to call him from my room, the front desk called.  Was I the person that left my phone in the van?  Yes, yes!  I said.  May we ‘inconvenience you, sir’ into coming down to the lobby to get it?  (You can inconvenience me all you want!).  And there he was, the driver with my phone.  Don’t worry so much! he said, as he handed me the phone.

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Thursday/ bring your parasol

par·a·sol [par-uh-sawl, -sol] noun
a lightweight umbrella used, especially by women, as a sunshade.

Parasols are not used much in the USA (why is that?), but they seem to be quite popular in China – especially when the sun is scorching down.   This is not far from where I work.  It is lunch time and a good thing that the cafeteria is close by !

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Wednesday/ the tokiトキ

I had to find out what the deal with this bird is : several nights now I have seen reports about it on the Japanese TV channel NHK.   One evening there was a news clip showing a nest with a new chick in it.  The researchers watching through a camera with a telephoto lens were beside themselves. Well, it is a toki or a Japanese crested ibis. The birds hover on the brink of extinction.   They used to be found in pine forests and wetlands all over Japan, China and also in South Korea.  A small population does remain in Shaanxi Province in China – but in Japan there are only 5 breeding pairs, on Sado Island in Niigata Prefecture.  They are all fitted with GPS devices, designated as National Natural Treasures.  I see some websites show its scientific name as Rhacophorus schlegelii – but Wikipedia says it is Nipponia nippon.  It does not get any more Japanese than that !

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Tuesday/ the papya is a ‘tree melon’

Here is my acquisition of the day from the fruit market : a papaya (in Chinese木瓜 mù​ guā), which means ‘tree melon’.  Yes, papayas grow on trees with a single stem that can get 10m (30ft) tall.  Papayas have good stuff inside, with lots of vitamin A and vitamin C.

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Monday/ Apple’s WWDC 2012 logo

I checked into the news reports about Apple’s annual world-wide developers conference in San Francisco (WWDC 2012) and found this beautiful conference logo. (There is a new operating system for the iPhone and iPad on the way, new Macbook computers but no iPhone 5 announcement.  That’s fine with me.  I’m not itching to get a new phone!).