Author: Willem

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Saturday/ safaris in Zimbabwe

The weekend edition of the Wall Street Journal reports that Zimbabwe’s economy is doing better, four years after they started pegging the Zim dollar to the US dollar, and with a coalition government in place.  ‘Zimbabwean safari guides are known as the best on the continent’ says the article that covers safaris in Hwange National Park.  Visitors get up close to elephants (presumably NOT to lions and leopards) on foot.   As for myself : I have vivid memories of the African safari experience from Botswana.  I will never forget the one time when I went for a short walk into the bush on my own (with no weapon).  As I approached a clump of bushes, the birds went quiet, and a sixth sense made me feel something was about to happen.  I felt the hairs on my neck stand up straight .. the next moment the bush exploded and a big buck crashed out of it, scaring the living. African. daylights. out of me.  Man! at the same time, what a relief it was!

Here’s the article, with a lioness facing an elephant. On her own she is no match for the elephant. But if there are four or five of them ..
The Hwange National Park is up by Victoria falls and the north eastern part of Botswana. My family and I went to an area called the Northern Tuli Game Reserve a dozen times when I grew up in South Africa.
Here is a picture from Botswana from, oh, 1988 or 1989. That’s my dad on the left, and me on the right (and two of my brothers and one’s girl friend).  The guys in front know every big tree and every bend in the dirt roads in the area.

 

 

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Friday/ Bent Burger

My friends and I went to Bent Burger in the Seward Park neighborhood for a burger and a beer. (No, the burgers are perfectly even and not ‘bent’. Bent is the family that owns the restaurant).   I had a turkey burger with yam fries : very good.

Bent Burger’s location in Seward Park.
Sarsaparilla a perennial, trailing vine with prickly stems that is native to Central America. It is used to flavor root beer, a carbonated soft drink.
Here is the menu from inside the restaurant, in chalk on a blackboard. (A spotlight make it impossible to take an evenly lit picture with a cell phone, so I tried to make some corrections to the picture with Photoshop).

 

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Wednesday/ what would you build here?

That is the question that Skanska* asks on this billboard in South Lake Union that made me stop and take a look at it.  You can also express your urban planning ideas on a website they have set up. (I’m still mulling over my ideas).  Amazon’s offices are just a block or two away.

*Skanska is a Swedish design-and-build construction and engineering company that is also doing some roadwork for Seattle’s Alaskan Viaduct replacement project.

Here’s the billboard. A good thing that there has been almost no rain in Seattle the last two months, or some brilliant ideas might have been washed away ..
A peek-a-boo view of the Space Needle through a new building on Terry Ave close by – where many Amazon employees work by day (and by night?).
Here is Skanska’s web site at www.400fairview.com. The most popular suggestions so far are for : a college-themed pub-and-grub place, a jazz cafe and bar, and a local Elysian Brew House Pub.
This urban design analysis is also from the 400Fairview web site.  Hey, I don’t know too much about urban planning and the ‘urban corridors’ in Seattle but it’s good to know that the bigger picture is taken into account as well.

 

 

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Tuesday/ don’t drop out (of high school)

Only about 3 out of 4 high school students graduate in the US every year (75%).  That is shocking. I watched a documentary last night on PBS channel where the question was asked ‘What does it take to save a student?’.  Well, sometimes it takes a lot, and too many times it just cannot be done despite the best efforts of special counselors and assistants at schools. Of the 4 students followed in the PBS documentary, one’s mom was in jail, one was facing deportation, another had a 2-yr old baby and a fourth one only wanted to play football and not go to class.

Here are some numbers from a study done at Northeastern University some years ago.

The Lifetime Net Fiscal Contributions of Adults 18 to 64 Years Old, U.S., 2007

Over their working lives, the average high school dropout will have a negative net fiscal contribution to society of nearly -$5,200 while the average high school graduate generates a positive lifetime net fiscal contribution of $287,000. The average high school dropout will cost taxpayers over $292,000 in lower tax revenues, higher cash and in-kind transfer costs, and imposed incarceration costs relative to an average high school graduate. Adult dropouts in the U.S. in recent years have been a major fiscal burden to the rest of society. Given the current and projected deficits of the federal government, the fiscal burden of supporting dropouts and their families is no longer sustainable.

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Monday Night Football Furore

It’s the Green Bay Packers 12, Seattle Seahawks 7. It’s the final play in the 4th quarter.  Seahawks rookie quarterback Russell Wilson pass deep left to Golden Tate (blue #81 shirt) for 24 yards.  It is ruled as a TOUCHDOWN (check out the animated picture from SB Nation).  The replay assistant challenged the pass completion ruling, but the play was — upheld. Place kicker Hauschka adds a point.  Seattle wins 14-12.  There’s more : the regular NFL referees are still ‘locked out’ due to a contract dispute, so the replacement refs had to do the best they can.  Today (Tuesday) the NFL admits an error was made but upheld the outcome of the game.  Even President Obama weighed in on Twitter (see below).  So we will see if the contract dispute with the referees get resolved soon.  My view : the NFL is awash in cash.  What is so hard about it?

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Sunday/ Seattle’s Great Wheel

This afternoon I went to check out our new and own little ‘London Eye’ Ferris wheel right here in Seattle.  (The Great Wheel has been in operation since the end of June, actually.  Also see seattlegreatwheel.com).  The Wheel was a $20m investment (funded privately) and is designed to draw visitors to the Seattle waterfront, in part to address concerns that the construction of the waterfront tunnel nearby will keep visitors away.

The Seattle Great Wheel is 175 ft (53.3m) tall and has 42 enclosed climate-controlled gondolas for a year-round operation. The London Eye is a lot bigger at a height of 443 ft (135 m).
I am standing below the Wheel on the pier. There doesn’t seem to be a gear track on the big wheel meshing with a pinion gear on the ground structure. Check out the sturdy black roller that is in contact with the wheel frame (to the left of the upper gondola).
The sun is setting on Elliott Bay and Pier 57, but no matter, the Wheel keeps going and will actually be lit up in different colors at night time. I will catch it another time for some night time pictures as well.

 

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Saturday/ buttermilk rusks

Here are all the ingredients lined up before they make their contribution to the recipe. I used canola oil instead of butter, and cholesterol-free egg mix instead of real eggs but everything else is what the recipe calls for.

So fall season has started officially here in the Northern Hemisphere.  It was a little grey on Saturday morning and I decided it’s high time I baked some rusks again, from a recipe I got from my mom a long time ago (1996 says the date on the hand-written fax with the recipe).  Rusks are hard, dry biscuits that are twice-baked to dry them out completely.  The pictures show the progression and the final result.  It takes a little patience to dry the rusks out, and the whole house smells rusky and biscuity afterwards, but hey, that’s not a problem. I discovered that there is such a thing as aluminum-free baking powder, and got some. Supposedly it makes for a better taste of cookies or biscuits that are baked with it.

The wet ingredients are heated up a little to make them play nice with each other and mix : the canola oil, the buttermilk, the egg and the sugar.
Here is the self-raising flour, mixed with bran flakes, salt and baking powder in a separate bowl.
The wet and the dry stuff have been mixed up nicely, and the dough pressed into a baking pan. It goes into the oven for an hour ..
.. and comes out nicely baked with a dry crust, but still moist inside.
So the big piece of baked dough is cut up into little pieces of rusk and put back into the over at low heat for about 4 hours. That dries out the rusks completely.

 

 

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Friday/ Mitt Romney’s troubles

Republican presidential candidate brought withering criticism onto himself this week with his remarks that surfaced from a private fund-raiser (see first picture).  During the same speech he also said (I’m paraphrasing) ‘if I get elected as president the economy will do better even if I do nothing’.  Really? The United States is spending $1.3 trillion every year that it does not have, adding to the $16 trillion national debt.

The ‘Briefing’ page from TIME magazine’s latest edition.
And here is a diagram published by TIME magazine’s Sept 17, 2012 edition. Looks to me as if the Corporate Income taxes ‘coin’ could be bigger, as does the Income Taxes one (just because there are no other big Receipts), and then on the Payments side, Defense could be smaller.   There is an on-going and bitter political debate about Income Security, Medicare and ‘Other’ payments.

 

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Thursday/ dishwasher trouble

Alright, next up to fix/ get fixed is my 10-year old dishwasher : it goes through the cycle, but only a little bit of water seems to enter the machine.  I had a Sears technician scheduled to come and take a look but when he called to confirm the appointment he said no, he cannot help me.  Sears does not repair Asko dishwashers (Swedish manufacturer).  So back to square one.  There is a lot of helpful repair information on the internet these days and I should check one or two simple little things myself.  For example, the float valve might be stuck, fooling the machine into thinking the water level in the bottom is higher than it really is.

P.S. ‘How Stuff Works’ says Josephine Cochrane invented the modern dishwasher in 1886.  She was a wealthy socialite whose servants kept chipping her fine china while hand washing it.  So she developed a rack and water jet system that debuted at the 1893 Chicago World Fair. The company she founded eventually became KitchenAid.

This picture is from ‘How Stuff Works’.

 

 

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Wednesday/ long day on the road

Traffic is stopped on Interstate Highway I-5 south as I enter Seattle around 7.15 pm.   That is lake Union on the left with the Space Needle above it.

I thought I left Seattle with plenty of time at 9.30 am to make my 1.30 pm meeting, but I made it with almost no time to spare. The offices of our client’s company was very hard to find.  And since I had to be back in Seattle on Thursday morning, I did not stay in Vancouver afterwards, but just made an escape from the southbound Vancouver traffic to get back to the border. (Aw.  I would have loved to walked around the city and take some Vancouver pictures, but it will have to wait until my next visit).

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Tuesday/ trip to Vancouver

I am driving up to Vancouver on Wednesday morning for work.  The official Google estimate of the drive time is 2h 42m but we all know that life is not that predictable. There is traffic, and there is a border crossing between A and B on the map!  I could have flown, it’s a 50 min flight, and I could have taken the Amtrak train, but in the end it all comes out in the wash and it’s going to take 3 or 4 hrs to get there.  And the car will let me stop on the way and drive around in the city a little bit (Canada drives on the right side of the road the way we do in the States).

The proposed route from Seattle to Vancouver from Google Maps shows a drive time of 2 hours 42 mins.
Here is a world map from Wikipedia that shows countries in that drive on the RIGHT in RED, and those that drive on the LEFT in BLUE.

 

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Monday/ Volunteer Park Conservatory at 100

I finally got my car back on Monday: brand new radiator, water pump, timing belt and all.  Still, I walked to Volunteer Park by my house for a little exercise on Monday instead of driving to the gym.  The conservatory there is 100 years old, says the signs on the lamp posts there.

The lamp post signs signs are nicely done, and fits with the style of the Volunteer Park Conservatory.
Here is the Volunteer Park Conservatory. Confession : I have never been inside, actually. It has always been closed every time when I get there.
This is the little ‘pump house’ brick building by the reservoir in Volunteer Park. A very utilitarian building but still with some redeeming architecture elements.

 

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Sunday/ a foot bridge for those afoot

The Wilcox footbridge connects the Seattle Arboretum (botanical garden) with the Capitol Hill neighborhood.  It gets pedestrians across the busy Lake Washington Blvd. below.  Weather-wise : still no sign of rain here in Seattle after a very slight sprinkle a week ago.  The Cliff Mass Weather Blog states that the first rain-bearing Pacific front usually reaches us around the third week of August.

Here is a picture of the Wilcox footbridge from Sunday.  Not a spectacular work of architecture, but still nice enough.  P.S. The little stuffed doggie is not mine! A child must have dropped it, and then someone else must have put it on the ledge.
Here is the Seattle Arboretum. The Wilcox footbridge is toward the north.

 

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Saturday/ the Seattle Boat Show

So .. what floats your boat? Are you a sailing enthusiast? It’s very romantic (romantic as in roaming, and adventure). Or would you go for a luxury motor yacht?  To buy one outright will take a hefty chunk of money, and then a bite every time to fill up your floating home-on-the-water’s 2,500 gallon tank with diesel.  Here are just a few pictures to give a taste of what was going on.

This is the powder blue South Lake Union Streetcar arriving at West Lake station to pick us up and go to Lake Union where the Boat Show is. There is also a brown one, and there used to be a red one and a purple one as well. I’m not sure how many there are and if they are rotated in and out of service.
Here’s the map. The blue at the top is Lake Union, a much much smaller lake than Lake Washington which is a little further to the east and which separates the city of Seattle from the ‘east side’.
This stop is ‘sponsored’ by Umpqua Bank. There is also a station with the alternate name of Amazon.com, named for the Amazon’s headquarters close by.
This is a motorized boat .. I am not sure of the model and name, I just like the classic hull shape and windows on the deck.   Some of these boats have really really big diesel tanks, up to 2,500 gallons.   That would enable a range of over 2,000 nautical miles, but it would cost around $10,000 to fill up that tank.
The sign on the side of this 70′ McKinna 2012 model boat says it was a demo boat, and is now priced at $2.5 mil (retail $3.7 mil). It has 4 staterooms and 4 heads (bath rooms), and is loaded with custom options.

 

Pretty flags on a Tayana yacht’s mast. There must have been a dozen yacht manufacturers putting their yachts on display. The styling and fittings could get updated almost every year. So if you are looking at a ‘2008 Jeanneau deck salon 45’ it tells you the year, the manufacturer, the yacht’s style (deck salon means the deck is raised and has windows on the sides, letting more light in, a plus for the cloudy Northwest weather), and the yacht is 45 feet long.
A classic analog compasses, found on the rear of the yacht by the steering wheel. I am sure they will continue to be fitted on modern yachts as a back-up to all the navigation digital equipment.

 

Here’s what it’s all about ! .. navigating through the straits and islands, and taking time to explore the scenery and the coves and bays. (Picture is of a map fitted on the table on the inside of one of the yachts).
We’re done looking at the yachts (tall masts in the distance) and now we’re in the motorized yacht section.  I am actually on the top deck of a big boat, and there’s the Space Needle in the distance.
Here’s a little impromptu show of water acrobatics we ran into.  Best from what I could tell the jet ski’s powerful water pump is used to propel water into the orange tube with enough force so that Mr ‘Iron Man’ can control it and use it for defying gravity.

 

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Friday/ to Repair or to Replace?

My 1996 Toyota Camry (yes! I know it’s an old car) is in the shop for serious repairs : the radiator, water pump and timing belt all have to be replaced.  I decided to graph out the average annual capital cost from when I bought the car (in 1996, new), along with the average annual maintenance cost, all adjusted for inflation.  I left out insurance and gas costs but included tires and lubricants.  The bottom line : money-wise there is still no justification for replacing the car.  But there is a lot more such as confidence in the car’s reliability, the ‘image’ projected by driving a 17-year old car and missing out on the new technology and better fuel consumption of today’s cars.

Here’s a Toyota timing belt. The belt itself is not expensive ($40), but it takes a lot of workshop hours to get the old one out and the new one in.
Here’s my analysis of the Camry’s average annual costs in $US 2012. I took inflation to be 3% annually since 1996. Once the red part (maintenance) makes the average total costs go up-up-up, it’s time to replace. But even with expensive repairs, this will happen very gradually. It’s more a matter of losing the reliability of the vehicle, and other factors, that will drive the decision to replace the car.
Here is a self-portrait of me in April of 2000 (outside Denver, Colorado) when I made the trip up to Seattle from Houston with the car (about 2,500 miles one way, it took 4 days!).

 

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Thursday/ my tin cup souvenir

I am back in Seattle from my New York-Pittsburgh trip.  This little saki cup* made from 100% tin is a souvenir that I bought back. *I bought it in a Japanese book store in New York.  For some reason I just feel attracted to metal items that’s a 100% pure element (gold and silver coins fall in that category!).  And I know there are controversies around tin : the big tin mines in Indonesia have an appalling safety record, and there is a mine in Democratic Republic of Congo controlled by a renegade militia.

Here is the cup. It’s small : that’s a US quarter coin next to it. Tin is not easily oxidized in air but melts at the low temperature of around 232 °C (449.6 °F).
This picture is from my prized collection of all the elements, which I made by scanning pages from the 1962 edition of the Time-Life book ‘The Elements’ and cutting them up into single pictures, one of each element. Did you know that Brits call tin cans simply – ‘tins’?

 

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Hey! It’s my 1,000th Post!

(Wednesday evening). Here’s my little black rental ‘number’ that I motored around with from the airport to the hotel and to client meetings in the Pittsburgh area.  It’s a 2012 Volkswagen Jetta SE (2.5-liter five-cylinder engine puts out 170 hp, price around $US 19k).  It’s a very nice, very solidly built car with precise handling and sharp braking. It’s just smaller than the car size I’m used to with my Toyota Camry.  The smaller steering wheel bothered me a little as well.

P.S. Yes, it’s my 1,000th post! How about that?

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Tuesday/ the Steel Building and the Gulf Tower

It was a sombre day in the USA with the 11th anniversary of 9/11.  Here are three pictures of the same downtown Pittsburgh scene from my hotel room window Monday night and Tuesday.   The very tall building on the left that runs out of the picture is the headquarters of US Steel.  It has 64 floors and was completed in 1970.  Its outside is steel and it is called – quick, want to guess? – the Steel Building.  The Gulf Tower next to it with the colorfully lit top at night has 44 floors and was completed in 1930.

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Monday/ downtown Pittsburgh

Downtown Pittsburgh is at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, which form the Ohio River.  The city was founded in 1758 and named after British statesman William Pitt.   Pittsburgh no longer has its famous steel mills within the city limits but is now instead home to an economy based on healthcare, education, technology and financial services.  There are many theaters in the cultural district downtown, and I ran into stunning architecture and building adornments there on Sunday as well.

Downtown Pittsburgh is at the confluence of the Allegheny and Monongahela rivers, which form the Ohio River.

 

I don’t have the names of these buildings!   I just loved the contrast of the old architecture (not sure what style this is .. Baroque?) brushing up against the sleek modern stone and steel building.
I will go and stay in the William Penn hotel just to be able to admire the canopy while I wait for my taxi to take me to the airport. (I stayed at the Marriott a few blocks away).
Check out the detail of the metal work on the canopy. Out of this world.
Colorful mural painting on an exposed brick wall.
Here I am on the Andy Warhol Bridge, also known as the Seventh Street Bridge looking at the city’s skyline. The bridge spans the Allegheny River. I am surrounded by the bridge’s custard color!
And this is the Rachel Carson Bridge, also known as the Ninth Street Bridge.
Canopy of the Renaissance Center in the cultural district.
Here’s a Heinz ketchup triceratops in the square at PNC World Headquarters : a tribute to Heinz Company that has had its headquarters in Pittsburgh for more than a century now.
There was also a mosaic mirror tile Stegosaurus.
Beautiful ironwork detail on a gate in a building downtown.
This ornate clock dates from 1898 and is on the corner of the Macy’s department store, declared a national landmark.
The First Presbyterian Church in downtown Pittsburgh.  Reminds one a little of Notre Dame, does it not?
A skateboarder came riding into my picture of the old downtown and its tall buildings. This is Fifth Ave.
Here’s where the triceratops and stegosaurus are. No, it’s not a Mormon temple! It’s the plaza inside the PNC Bank’s world headquarter buildings.

 

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Sunday/ to Pittsburgh

I have to be in Pittsburgh on Tuesday, and it’s too far to make it to Seattle and back.   So I took a 1hr30 min flight out to Pittsburgh on a United Express jet (about 30 seats).

Here is a picture I snapped shortly after we took off from Newark International Airport. Check out the Freedom Tower, and lower Manhattan. The big island is Governor’s Island, with Ellis Island in front of it (below it), and then on the far right is Liberty Island with the Statue of Liberty (just a green speck).
Here is where Pittsburgh is on the map — still in the Eastern Time Zone, and not too far from the Great Lakes and Canada.