P.S. It’s a white Christmas in Seattle, with an inch or two of snow falling overnight in the city. White Christmases are rare in Seattle, but in 2008 four inches of snow blanketed the city on Christmas Day.
Geseënde Kersfees! Merry Christmas!
Friday/ Heineken’s ‘Cities’ beer bottles
Here is what the latest edition of Heineken’s ‘Cities of the World’ campaign beer bottles look like. (They have been around since 2014). Heineken sells its beer in 192 countries, says its website.
Thursday/ inside the First National Bank building
I checked into the First National Bank building in Cape Town on Thursday, in a quest (unsuccessful so far) for a few new 2017 South African 5-rand coins.
The building was designed by famed architect Sir Herbert Baker, and inside the banking hall’s dome there are four beautiful plaques.
There is a lot of history in the plaques, and I did some on-line research to find the full explanation for them.
Sunday/ the rhinos are coming
More artwork .. this rhino in The Watershed building in the V&A Waterfront is part of a public art exhibition campaign to save the rhinos. There are fewer than 5,500 black rhinos and 22,000 white rhinos left on the planet and poachers are still killing them at an alarming rate.
Saturday/ the Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa
The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) opened in September 2017. The art collection is housed in an old grain silo complex at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town.
Sunday/ a young Mozart
We had another pitch-black national news day here, with a church shooting in Texas that left 26 dead and 20 wounded.
So it was really nice to see a segment on the Sunday night documentary program ’60 Minutes’, of a music prodigy, a 12-year old British girl Alma Deutscher.
Science doesn’t yet understand the human brain and its ability to create something new, nearly enough, to explain her extraordinary abilities.
Robert Gjerdingen is a professor of music at Northwestern University in Chicago, and a consultant to Alma’s education. He says very difficult assignments given to her, when she was six, and seven, came back, and it was like listening to a mid-18th century composer (Mozart, Mendelssohn). She is a virtuoso on the piano and the violin.
In December, the Opera San Jose Orchestra will stage Cinderella in Alma’s American debut.
Friday/ not-so itsy bitsy, spiders
Halloween (Tuesday Oct 31) is almost here. The decorations are up, on homes and apartment buildings. I love these – visible from far away. ‘Man! is that what I think it is?’ I thought, and walked up to inspect them.
Friday/ the ‘Luncheon of the Boating Party’
Here’s my latest puzzle project : the wonderful impressionist painting, Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party. It’s fun to use the artist’s colors and textures to build out parts of the picture, and then to find out how they link up in the big picture.
[From Wikipedia: As he often did in his paintings, Renoir included several of his friends in Luncheon of the Boating Party. The painting, combining figures, still-life, and landscape in one work, depicts a group of Renoir’s friends relaxing on a balcony at the Maison Fournaise restaurant along the Seine river in Chatou, France. The painter and art patron, Gustave Caillebotte, is seated in the lower right. Renoir’s future wife, Aline Charigot, is in the foreground playing with a small dog, an affenpinscher. On the table is fruit and wine].
Friday/ la plume est plus forte que l’epee
That’s French for ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ .. a phrase first mentioned in 1839 in a play called Cardinal Richelieu by playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The phrase became commonplace soon after that, and today its translations are used in many languages (my information obtained from bbc.com).
Thursday/ Grimm’s Fairy Tales at 200
The brothers Grimm’s fairy tales were first published in 1812, so this year marks their 200th anniversary.
I have had my eye on a South African publisher’s ‘Die Mooiste Sprokies van Grimm (2010)’ (The Fairest Fairy Tales of Grimm’) with illustrations by artist Piet Grobler for a while now, and today I finally purchased it.
Wednesday/ 丁丁 在西藏 Tintin in Tibet
It was cold in the office yesterday. The new building’s heat pump was not working for some reason. Back at the apartment in Dameisha at night, we still hear a barrage of fire-cracker pops and fireworks go off, as the week-long celebration of the Lunar New Year continues. It is cold in the apartment as well. Our $12 space heaters from Shenzhen’s Walmart are not quite up to the task of warming up the entire apartment, of course.
Anyway, sticking to the theme of cold: below are the snowy cover pages of the English & Chinese versions of ‘Tintin in Tibet’. Tintin translates to Ding Ding in Chinese.
[From Wikipedia] The Adventures of Tintin (Les Aventures de Tintin) is a series of comic strips created by the Belgian artist Georges Rémi (1907–1983), who wrote under the pen name of Hergé. Tintin in Tibet is the twentieth book in the series. It is said to have been Hergé’s favorite of the Tintin series (previously The Secret of the Unicorn), and was written during a personally difficult time in his life, as he was divorcing from his first wife. The story is unlike any previous Tintin books, before or since: there is a small number of characters and no enemies, villains, spies or gangsters. This adventure revolves around a rescue mission of Tintin’s Chinese friend Chang Chong-Chen.
It is also unusually emotional for a Tintin story: moments of strong emotion for the characters include Tintin’s enduring belief in Chang’s survival, the discovery of the teddy bear in the snow, Haddock’s attempting to sacrifice himself to save Tintin, Tharkey’s return, Tintin’s discovery of Chang, and the yeti losing his only friend. Indeed Tintin is seen to cry when he believes Chang’s fate, something he is only seen to do three times throughout the entire series (the other occurrences being in The Blue Lotus and Flight 714).
Tuesday/ more of Hong Kong
Here are a few more pictures from my weekend in Hong Kong.
First, a quick refresher orientation of the Hong Kong area. Hong Kong Island is at the bottom of the picture. Kowloon (literal meaning ‘Nine Dragons’) is across Victoria Harbor to its north and west. My hotel was on the Island towards its west, but the MTR (Mass Transit Rail, red dots) whisked me around, anywhere I wanted to go. It goes under the water, in tunnels under the harbor (thin red line). The roads shown on the map that cross Victoria harbor all run across massive suspension bridges. (Note: this is an updated map from 12/2020 on Google Maps).
The street scene pictures were taken late on Saturday night in the Tsim Sha Tsui district in Kowloon. The little propeller fans were at New Years Fair in Victoria Park the (northeast on the island). The double-decker street tram with Chinese basket ball star Yao Ming is on the route that runs on the north of Hong Kong island.
Wednesday/ red lanterns
The red lanterns that the apartment complex’s management have put up are just spectacular. I finally figured out how to use the bracket function on my camera to slightly over-expose the image to make the lantern ‘glow’ in its dark surroundings.
Sunday/ more of Hong Kong
Pictures from exploring Hong Kong.
