Author: Willem

We took the Pacific Surfliner (it’s an Amtrak train) from Solana Beach station to San Juan Capistrano (only about 1/3 of the San Diego – Los Angeles rail line shown below.   The first picture shows the tracks at Solana Beach, then there is a map of San Juan Capistrano surroundings.   The emu is from a petting zoo right there (the emu is not for petting, though).   The southbound train was tardy, arriving 35 mins late, but was about 90% full.   The reactors are from San Onofre Nuclear Power Generating Station.  The starfish is from a tide pool on Solana Beach where there was a very low tide.   The sun sunk into the Pacific Ocean at 4.44pm already! so it was time to go.   And what looks like a lunar module from far away is a life guard station from closer up !

 

 

It was a beautiful day today in San Diego (could the sky have been any bluer?), so my brother and I went to Torrey Pines State Park and beach for a short hike.    The torrey pine grows naturally only along a small strip of coast from Del Mar to La Jolla, and on Santa Rosa Island some hundred and seventy miles to the northwest.

Seattle is ‘cold’ and wet but I am very happy to be home.   The Chengdu billboard is from inside Hong Kong airport (if ‘real China’ is meant to say Hong Kong is not ‘really China’, well then, I guess Hong Kong can counter with ‘you got that right!’).  The puppets are from a display at Seoul airport.  In ancient times Korean parents would hang a straw rope called geum-jul across the main gate of the house for 21 days to indicate the arrival of a newborn and to ward off evil spirits (the parents look very happy!).    The phoenix is the latest Hermès scarf on display in their store, the bibimbap was dinner on the way to Seattle (this is before I threw in the white rice, red pepper paste and sesame oil and stir it all together – and before I knocked over a small glass of water on my seat neighbor’s leg.  I apologized profusely and jumped up and got some napkins to mop up the water.   Yes, I’m a clumsy idiot but at least it was not red wine or coffee!).   And finally, the Airbus A-330 from Korean Air that brought us across the Pacific, at the gate at Seattle airport.

.. for my flight out to Seattle on Wednesday morning.  We went across the border at the Shenzhen Bay (Shekou) border crossing again, and it was nice to have a very short line of cars in front of us to deal with.    The suspension bridge picture is on the way to Lantau island where the Marriott Skycity hotel is, right by the airport.

Yes, yes, I am in the Marriott Courtyard hotel as I have done many weekends before.   Too much money and stress to travel elsewhere for the weekend after a long, hard slog at work.  The dragon pillow is from Ikea (I now regret that I didn’t buy it), and the Lego characters and stainless steel tube chess set from Sogo department store in Causeway Bay.   Times Square is close by and always has an artsy outdoor display going at the mall entrance.  This time they had white trees  that reminded me of African boababs, with doll houses and giant lollipops below.   I think the gigantic high-res LED sign at the Emperor Watch and Jewelry store right there, is new.   As for the billboard of the wild-haired – nerds? -throwing the TVs and PCs around : my sentiments exactly!  ( at least sometimes).

The night-time pictures are all from around Central Station on Hong Kong island.    The ‘usual suspects’ Bank of China, Hang Seng Bank Corporation and Standard Chartered Bank are showing themselves off in gaudy night colors.   (Yes, there is a Occupy Hong Kong movement.   But unlike in Europe or the USA, unemployment has been falling in Hong Kong, a minimum wage was introduced in May and there seems to be little fall-out left of the 2008 banking crisis).  Can the billboard’s school kids with their red bow-ties be any cuter?  The building with the LED paneled strips going up is the AIA Insurance building.   And the building with the Season’s Greetings lights is yet another bank building.

Check out my little terracotta warrior replica, a gift from a colleague that visited Xi’an last weekend.    The real terracotta warriors date from the 3rd century BC and were discovered only in 1974 (!) by local farmers in Lintong District, Xi’an, Shaanxi province.   It is an UNESCO World Heritage site.   Current estimates are that in the three pits containing the Terracotta Army there were over 8,000 soldiers, 130 chariots with 520 horses and 150 cavalry horses (the majority of which are still buried in the pits).    I got the second picture from Wikipedia’s entry .. check out the rest of the entry at  en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terracotta_Army.

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I hitched a ride into Hong Kong with a colleague that was taken to the airport.  The drivers that take us there have vehicles with plates for mainland China as well as for Hong Kong.  So we could stay put and not have to deal with the throngs of daytrippers.   Even so there was such a long wait for vehicles at the first crossing that the driver gave up and went to the Shekou crossing all the way over on the west side of Shenzhen.   We caught a glimpse of the 2011 Universiade Student Olympics stadium.  The Google map doesn’t show it but there is a suspension bridge to Lantau Island where the airport is, that gets one across the water.   From the airport I took the train to the city.   The promenade at the Hong Kong Art Museum is one of my favorite places in the city.     The guy in the boat is about to scoop up some floating debris in Victoria harbor.  Nearby at the Harbor City mall a crowd were snapping pictures of Pixar and Disney characters on a Happy Holiday display.   And up the street at the 1881 Heritage Plaza some recent graduates used the display of horses and carriages as a backdrop.  Check out the smart duck, the rose and the chipmink they are posing with.  I guess those are gifts they got from family or friends for graduating.