a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
It’s Wednesday and three of us stopped at Ruan Thai for dinner. The air outside is chilly, stagnant and bone dry, but that is set to change Thu and Fri with winds and lots of snow in the forecast. The mountains are expected to get more than a foot, which I am sure the skiers are eagerly anticipating. I just hope I will be able to drive to the airport on Friday.
I finally got over a bad cold I had and was well enough to fly out to Utah for my project on Monday night. Speaking of cold, the Salt Lake City area is off to a chilly start for 2013. Even the Salt Lake Tribune newspaper says so. Temperatures here have yet to rise above freezing (32°F) since the start of the year. It does look like it will happen on Wednesday – but only to dip down to an estimated 13°F (-11°C) on Thursday night.
There was some football fan frenziness going on in Seattle on Sunday with a Seahawks play-off game against the Washington Redskins. The Seahawks rallied to a 24-14 win, after being down at 0-14. The picture shows the ’12th Man’ flag on the newly painted Space Needle dome (those are pine trees). And what does 12th man mean? It’s a term for the fans in the stadium during a game. Several American football used it at one point, then Texas A&M registered it as a trademark, and in 2006 filed a trademark lawsuit against the Seahawks. The lawsuit was settled out of court, and the Seahawks continue to use it. (For the life of me, I don’t quite understand why — were we not creative enough to come up with something different?)
Starbucks offers ‘Reserve’ coffees – coffee limited to a particular location’s harvest. I like good coffee, but if I were to go for these ‘Reserve’ coffees it would be more the romantic appeal of the exotic location than the flavor and ‘notes’ of the coffee that would motivate me. And better be prepared to pay up to 3 or 4 times the going rate for Starbucks house coffee. Sip it slo-o-owly and do not knock over that cup!
These cool polyhedron light-fixtures were in Munich airport as I made my way to the gate, on Tuesday. Very nice, I thought – and I wondered if they have a mathematical name. It took a little bit of research, but it looks to me that the core is a rhombi-cuboctahedron (an Archimedean solid with 8 triangular and 18 square faces). And then when you add the pointy star extensions onto the faces, it becomes a great stellated rhombi-cuboctahedron. Yes! (Admittedly all the extensions are not the same length, but hey, close enough).
I bought a few more feathered friends for my modest collection at department store Kaufhof Galeria in Munich. The ostrich, the snowy owl, the falcon and the brown vulture (these are from manufacturer Schleich). Can a serious collector ever have too many specimens in his/ her collection? (No.)
I got home in time Tue night to see the US House of Representatives vote on the Fiscal Cliff legislation. As the graphic from the Wall Street Journal shows, there just had to be an increase in taxes after all the cuts since 1993. Federal income tax rates will only go up for individuals with income over $400,000 (!) and families earning more than $450,000 .. but since the temporary 2% cut (for 2011 and 2012) in Social Security taxes was not extended, taxes go ‘up’ for almost everyone, anyway. Next up: another Debt Ceiling fight – even though Pres. Obama says there will not be one? And the estimated $600 billion of additional tax revenue (over the next 10 years) from the Fiscal Cliff legislation is still not nearly enough to address the annual deficits in the US government’s budget. After the deficit had exceeded $1 trillion for each of the last four years (total debt now at $16 trillion), it could possibly drop below that in 2013.
I made it ! It was 9 hours from Munich to Newark Liberty International Airport (in the New York area), 2 hours of stressful connection at Newark, and then another 6 hours to Seattle.
At Newark (this is standard for USA international arrivals) you have to go through passport control, get your bags, clear customs, re-check your bags, and then go and stand in a very long line to go through TSA security again for your connecting flight. So the lesson is : try to fly directly home from overseas. If that is not possible, pack your patience and make sure you have two hours to connect, since one hour will not do it.
I am at Munich airport, and I am ready to go home. I did not get much sleep last night with all the firework-hubbub and noises outside. There is no prohibition on buying and shooting off fireworks in Munich, and boy, do the citizens go at it ! I also had to allow extra time for the train to the airport. The train would not be late, of course. But I could have read the on-line timetable wrong, or the New Years Day schedule could have been different from the usual Tuesday one. But not to worry, at Ostbahnhof station the signs confirmed that the S8 Flughafen train scheduled for 6.24 am, as I expected..
I kicked 2012 out the door and welcomed 2013 with a pils (German pilsner beer) and dinner in the hotel restaurant – and called it good. It’s only 11 pm but I have already heard and seen plenty of fireworks in the distance from the hotel room window. : )
Glückliches Neues Jahr !
Happy New Year !
Voorspoedige Nuwe Jaar !
Here are today’s highlights. I did get to see some modern architecture ! I am pondering if I should go out at all tonight – to brave the Germans ringing in 2013 in the streets – but I probably will. I leave for the States and for Seattle in the morning.
So .. what to do if you arrive on a wintry Sunday when most of the restaurants, shops and museums are geschlossen (closed)? Well, the trains still run and so you go where you can ogle some old architecture. (Hopefully today, Monday, I will get to see some newer architecture!). Marienplatz (Mary’s Square) is ground zero for the city center and that is where the New City Hall (neues Rathaus) on the north side is found .. ‘new’ being a very relative term here.
I arrived in Munich early Sunday morning. It is 32 F (0 C) outside, quite a change from the very muggy Johannesburg thunderstorm air we had when we boarded. The customs clearance and baggage claim process in Munich took all of 15 mins – amazing, might have been the quickest ever for me.
I am back at Oliver Tambo International airport, to make my way back to Seattle .. but I will spend two nights in an extended stop-over in Munich before making the final leg of the flight home.
This is the exit gate at Oliver Tambo International airport in Johannesburg’s parking garage. I am sure my American readers will appreciate the spiked barrier and the ‘wait for the green robot’ instruction. (Don’t expect a green robot cross in front of the car. ‘Wait for the green robot’ is South African for ‘Wait for the green traffic light’. And I love those mean spikes that will puncture your car’s tires if you do not comply .. as if the boom is not enough!).
The heat gave way to a cool rainy day in the Western Cape. I am at Cape Town international airport -heading north to Johannesburg on South African Airways* to visit a friend for a day or two.
*The national carrier is in financial trouble, but the South African government announced in October that it would provide US$ 600 million of financing over the next two years.
That’s what we call the day after Christmas Day in South Africa, too (after the British). The origins of the name Boxing Day seem uncertain. It is possibly derived from ‘Christmas box’ (present) and the cleaning up of debris, wrapping paper, and other remains of Christmas Day eating and drinking. So the year we called 2012 is running out – and so is my time on this trip to South Africa.
Royal apricots, that is. These are the last apricots of the season from the Montagu district, brought to us here in Stellenbosch by a family member. Apricot trees are of the species Prunus armeniaca, which means they are a type of prune, and that they are believed to originate from Armenia (although I see some web sources say China).
One cannot miss the giant strawberries from the Mooiberge Farm Stall on the way from Stellenbosch to The Strand on the R44 road. They are in season here, and tourists can wander through the fields and pick them on Saturdays and Sundays, and pay by the kilogram. I hope they go and check now and again if there’s still some left! Meanwhile, CNN reported just today about strawberry plants in the southern town of Qaqoortoq in Greenland. With the warming of the climate there, they are being tested there to see whether they will survive the harsh winter, and they seem to survive so far. So quite possibly the Greenlanders will have strawberries of their own !