Author: Willem

I will leave it to my savvy readers to identify the Party leaders on this very red iPhone cover from one of my colleagues here at work.

But what’s with the red cups?  Well. Those are red Solo cups. Around since the seventies, and manufactured in the state of Illinois, the plastic cup has since arrived as a pop culture icon in the USA. It is the informal beer, wine or soda pop goblet of parties everywhere. The cup’s merits are even praised in a (somewhat silly) song released last year by country singer Toby Keith. Warning : semi-explicit lyrics ahead !

Red Solo Cup from Toby Keith’s 2011 ‘Clancy’s Tavern’ album (songwriters: Beavers, Jim / Warren, Brett/ Warren, Brad/ Beavers, Brett) –
Now a red Solo cup is the best receptacle / For barbeques, tailgates, fairs and festivals / And you, sir, do not have a pair of testicles / If you prefer drinking from glass / A red Solo cup is cheap and disposable / In 14 years they are decomposable / And unlike my home they are not foreclosable / Freddie Mac can kiss my a— 

I only know Garfield* the cat from newspaper cartoon strips even though I’m sure there is a lot to be seen of him on the Cartoon Network in the USA.   Here on the hotel’s TV channel he speaks Mandarin, but his antics are easy to follow.   He is his old self with regards to laziness and eating obsessively! The name of the pooch is Odie.  That’s him with ears and tongue flapping while leaning out the car window.

*created by Jim Davis and published since 1978. Garfield is named after Jim’s grandfather.

‘Just Marry’ says the English on the hood of this Porsche wagon parked in front of the hotel where we stay. Even though Chinese weddings have been influenced by the way it is done in the West, some key differences remain.  The couple registers the wedding first, and then one or more wedding banquets (xǐ-jǐu 喜酒 or ‘joyful wine’) will follow – and those are far more important than the actual wedding itself. The bride and groom also have their pictures taken days or weeks before their wedding day with glamor shots from historic sites and picturesque spots.

The Year of the Dragon is an auspicious year for marriage in China, and so the number of marriages in 2012 is expected to be up 10% or more compared with recent years.

If you were king for a day in your sport, what big change would you make? asked CNN in a segment today of four sports champions. Tennis (Boris Becker*): Abolish deuce-advantage scoring – to make matches shorter.  Golf (Gary Player) : Push back the tee by 50 yards for professionals – to accommodate newer club and golf ball technology. Athletics (Sergei Bubka) : Use radio transmitters to report time differences between runners. Soccer : Use goal-line technology – to indicate if a goal was scored or not.

*On 7 July 1985, Becker became the first unseeded player and the first German to win the Wimbledon singles title, defeating Kevin Curren in four sets.  At the time he was the youngest ever male Grand Slam singles champion at 17.  Four years later in 1989 Michael Chang would win the French Open at an even younger 17 years of age.

.. and not only for weather, as I look out from the back of the hotel on the 8th floor over Dameisha at 7am in the morning. The Wall Street Journal reported on Feb 1 from Shanghai that the average housing price in 100 major Chinese cities fell for a fifth consecutive month in January as China’s property market continued to slow.  But look at the graph : the declines are fractions of a percentage, and seem to decline at a steady pace.  So not a sharp plunge in the Chinese real estate market for now.

Turning to the US real estate market, check out the S&P/Case-Shiller 10 city Index, a graph I found at http://www.housingviews.com.   Home prices are down some 30% from the peak in late 2005.  And there is no bottom in home values yet .. even with 30-year mortgage rates at a record low.

After the earthquake-tsunami in Japan in March 2011 and the damage sustained by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor, China officially halted the approval of new nuclear projects.  However, the China Daily news reported recently that a revised plan for the long-term future of nuclear power in China is ready .. and that the State Council may approve it in the second quarter of this year.   China can take advantage of newer and safer designs.  Contrast that with Japan where many nuclear power stations are now 40 years old, and two-thirds of Japanese oppose atomic power. Once the world’s third largest nuclear power consumer, there is now a real possibility that all nuclear power stations in Japan will be shut down or idle by the end of this year (see picture).

As recently as a few years ago, Japan got 27% of its power from coal, 26% from gas, 24% from nuclear, 13% from oil, and 8% from hydro. The remaining 2% is occupied by renewables such as geothermal power stations, solar and wind.  So the 24% is a lot of power generation capacity that will have to be replaced ! .. but it’s a number almost the same as the 23% nuclear power made up of Germany’s national electricity consumption, before the permanent shutdown of 8 plants there in March 2011.

So what’s going on in Germany? Well, a lot of things now have to come together for what is called ‘The Third Industrial Revolution’. Check out the Wikipedia entry for the term.