Every morning as I walk to the office from the Hilton Garden Inn, I catch a glimpse of the Colorado State capitol building. Recently the dome has started to emerge from the curtain around it.
Ever since I started working in Denver in September, the Colorado State capitol had been shrouded in a scrim : a curtain that can be heated, and withstand strong winds, so that workers could complete its $17 million rehab with no interruption. The entire dome is covered in thinner-than-paper Colorado gold. The gold bullion used for the new gild was donated in 2011 by mine owner AngloGold Ashanti. The 24-karat gold, valued at more than $116,175, was shipped off to Florence, Italy, and milled into gold leaf. The Capitol had been constructed from 1886 to 1903, and the dome was initially covered in copper. [Information from a report by the Denver Post dated 12/26/2013].
I walked right up to the Colorado State capitol dome today at lunch to go and check it out up close. It is located at 200 East Colfax Avenue in ‘uptown’ Denver.
Start your Big Day with clean hands, says my Hilton Garden Inn bar of soap.
We ‘recoiled in horror’ on Monday night as our server in the restaurant sneezed, turned around and immediately blew his nose. This was right after putting our food on the table. He had a heavy cold, poor guy. But were our plates full of germs? What about the glasses of water? Should we drink those? I guess it helps not to think about these things too much .. it will surely turn one into a germophobe, unable to touch anything or anyone.
I worked on adding to my iPad music library this weekend. I also discovered that I can read Adobe .pdf documents with the iBook application. So I decided to try and salvage the contents from a CD that I bought in 2000 in South Africa with large collection of Afrikaans poetry on it (‘Die Groot Verseboek’/ ‘The Big Book of Poems’). It wasn’t easy. The CD had customized reader software on it, that could only run on pre-Windows 7 computers. I dusted off an old notebook computer that still had Windows XP on. Then I had to manually cut and paste the content from the reader frame into MS Word. The reader application crashed several times during these attempts : either because it was unstable, or because it was loathe to give up its digital treasure. But hey, I bought the CD, and I want to transfer the content over to my iPad. So I ended up with a 600 page Word doc, which I will reformat and see if I can add an index and links into.
I show one of my many favorite poems below, with a rough translation of the last verse in English. It is by Gottfried Watermeyer, was written in 1948 and is titled ‘Ballad of the Drunk Party’.
Love is the bitter glass the dry glass, the dark glass; love is the after-sorrow that fits the hollow of the heart.
This is what the poems will look like on my iPad. I chose Century Gothic for the font, and make the titles bold in 24pt. The rest is in 12 pt font size.My 8 year old Fujitsu notebook computer is hanging in there with its Windows XP operating system. I dusted it off and used it to read a CD ROM with Afrikaans poetry, so that I could transfer the material to my iPad.
1. In the news here on Friday : unemployment down to 6.7% in the USA in December, but the labor participation rate of the population is the lowest in 35 years. Is there really that many baby boomers retiring? And why was only 74,000 jobs added in December when most economists thought it would be 200,000 or more?
The George Washington Bridge brings traffic from New Jersey into New York City. Picture from Wikipedia.
2. Then there’s the George Washington Bridge scandal, the world’s busiest motor vehicle bridge : from Sept 9 to 13, 2013, dedicated toll lanes for one of the Fort Lee entrances to the bridge’s upper level were reduced from three to one without notification of local government officials and emergency responders. The orders were issued by aides and associates of New Jersey Governor Chris Christie. The closures caused massive traffic congestion, with major delays for school transportation and police and emergency response within Fort Lee. Was the Governor involved, and was it political retribution for the major of Ft Lee’s refusal to endorse Christie for governor in the Oct 2013 election? Time will tell.
3. Finally, it’s the Seattle Seahawks and the New Orleans Saints in an NFL post-season playoff on Saturday here in Seattle, on the road to the Superbowl. The Seahawks are favored (they beat the Saints 34-7 just in December), but they have to do it again.
A sweater for sale in the fan shop. That’s the foot of a Sasquatch (abominable snowman),the alternative logo of the Colorado Avalanche ice hockey team.The Pepsi Center is a multi-purpose stadium : used for ice hockey, basketball, and even musical concerts. Justin Timberlake is scheduled for a show later in January.This is during a break between one of the four periods. Those are zambonis on the ice, the ice resurfacing machines, The machine is named after its inventor, Frank Zamboni. Also check out the in-stadium only blimps (‘Dream Big’ advertises the lottery!) that are radio-controlled with little electric propellers.Here’s some action on the ice. The Colorado Avalanche bested the Ottawa Senators 4-3 in overtime. The Avalanche team captain is Gabriel Landeskog, a Swedish national.
On Wednesday night we had a project team event : going to an ice hockey game here in downtown Denver’s Pepsi Center. (Yes, we DO work here in Denver as well!). We had great seats ($103 said my ticket, a good thing I did not have to pay). It was not a sold-out event, but there was a pretty good turn-out, given that it was a week night, and that it was pretty cold outside.
It was really cold in Chicago on Tuesday, and even colder in Canada.
We made it up to 4°C/ 39 °F here in Denver on Tuesday – which is a lot warmer than most places here in the USA. I had to hang in there : it was effectively my first day back at work after the break, and I still have jet lag. And what does the cat picture have to do with Tuesday? Well, we stopped by a colleague’s house here in Denver last night. She has one of these, but a black and white one. Seems like the purr-fect cat for a cold night.
Wikipedia’s picture of a Maine Coon cat. Also known as American Longhair, is a breed of cat with a distinctive physical appearance and valuable hunting skills. (Wikipedia]
It’s here! .. it’s 2014! Happy New Year! My family and I did not make a fuss about it in Stellenbosch, all of us retiring to bed well before midnight. I did hear ‘Ob-la-di Ob-la-da, life goes on’ from celebrations at a farm or wine estate close by our house, but not enough to keep me awake.
In South Africa there will be a general election in April (but Pres. Zuma is likely to get elected again despite his unpopularity), and in the USA there will be mid-term elections in November. And Obamacare is kicking in for real with the newly insured.
P.S. The protea flower arrangement is from the lounge at Cape Town International airport. I have started my journey back to the United States, but will stop over in Munich for a day or two first.
Stellenbosch artist ‘Portchie’ (49) at one of his paintings. [Picture from http://www.rapport.co.za/ website].Here is the house. The price tag is a secret. It is not ugly, but it towers somewhat over its surroundings. I assume the louvred panels slide into the walls to reveal window panes. And the main entrance is a very odd form : very narrow and very tall. Why is that?
There is a flap over an enormous house and art studio that is nearing completion here in Stellenbosch, one being built for a local – very successful – artist that goes by the name Portchie (real name Jan Hendrik Viljoen). The local taxpayer association contends it is too big and that the style does not fit in with its surroundings. ‘Wait until it’s done’ says the artist, and ‘One cannot please everyone’.
I love this picture, taken from a children’s book by artist Philip de Vos. The lion was taking a nap, and is opening one eye to answer a question from the zebra. The zebra had inquired about a magical tree called Bojabi. The tree bears mangoes, melons and pomegranates.
It rained this morning and so Marlien and I went to check out some book stores and to have coffee. I can buy books here off the shelf that I would still not be able to get through Amazon in the USA : those from local publishers, or those in Afrikaans. (There is a South African website that offer these for sale on-line, though. They will ship it overseas, but of course at an additional cost, and it takes 6 to 8 weeks).
There are no Starbuckses in South Africa, but plenty of coffee shops. The Vida e Caffe franchise is one that is well represented in the Western Cape.
Today’s edition of local newspaper ‘Die Burger’ (‘The Citizen’). ‘Beaches chock-a-block’, says the main picture.
I made a run to Cape Town International Airport today to pick up my friend Marlien that arrived to visit me for the weekend. A sales poster inside the arrivals hall of the airport advertised shark cage diving. Will it cost me an arm and a leg? No, it’s US$ 135 per person. ‘Free trip if no sharks were seen’ and ‘Boat maintenance is pre-scheduled and done regularly’ says the operator’s website. But no, I still think I will pass it by!
The facade of Cape Town International Airport terminal. The airport is the third busiest in Africa, and processes about 8 million passengers per year.
So what do South Africans do on Boxing Day (officially changed to the Day of Goodwill in 1994)? They relax, put away the left-overs (food and wrapping paper) from Christmas Day, and go to the beach if they are lucky enough to be close to one of the beautiful beaches here. I watched a lot of BBC News yesterday, and I see that Boxing Day in the UK is a very, very big day for shopping there.
A tweeted picture from London’s Westfield Shopping Center. INSANE, says the tweeter .. but people would not be there if they did not like it, right?
Here he is : the Man of Steel that also goes by Superman and Kal El, and Henry Cavill as a mortal human.
Bryan made sloppy joes and tater tots for Gary and me on Saturday night. (It was very yummy. Check out the Wikipedia entries below . both are classic American ‘dishes’). And then we watched ‘Man of Steel (2013)’ with Henry Cavill as the latest incarnation of the Superman character created 75 years ago by DC Comics. I liked it, and thought the scenes between Kevin Costner as the dad raising young Clark Kent, were well done. But I see there is criticism as well from long-time fans : there is an awful lot of destruction in the film and Superman (gasp!) kills the archvillain, general Zod in the end. Apparently that is not in character for Superman as superhero. The movie’s costume designers also did away with the ‘trademark’ red outerwear/ underwear over Superman’s blue costume. Oh well : the times and fashions change even for a superhero.. or not?
Here is a cartoon depicting Jason from the ‘Friday the 13th’ American horror flick franchise that comprises twelve slasher films. (Source : http://www.divine-project.com/friday-the-13th).
(It is Saturday as I write this post). With the Friday the 13th drawing for the $425 million Mega Millions jackpot prize failing to produce any winner lucky enough to claim the fifth-biggest jackpot ever, officials raised the amount to $550 million for Tuesday’s drawing. Nine people did nab $1 million prizes for matching the first five numbers. I guess I will keep my head down and work and not even go buy a ticket. Is that what Samuel Goldwyn meant when he said ‘The harder I work, the luckier I get’? South African golfer Gary Player said something similar in his quote from long ago : ‘The more I practice, the luckier I get’.
It’s warming up here in Denver from the deep freeze, but by Tuesday the day highs still had not reached up to freezing point (32 °F/ 0°C). The streets and sidewalks are free of snow and ice, for the most part .. but I still watch carefully for ice as I walk to around. Ice is very, very slippery, and the table of ‘coefficients of friction’ shows exactly that. (The coefficient of friction is an indicator of what horizontal force is needed to move one object over another, or one object resting on the surface of another).
Check out these selected values from a table that I found on the engineeringtoolbox.com website for static friction coefficients. Ice is a very slippery substance, even more so than teflon !
A great photo of Nelson Mandela appeared on Friday’s front page of the printed edition of the Seattle Times.
What a remarkable life, and to live to be 95 after all he had been through, I thought when I saw the news on about Nelson Mandela’s passing away on CNN in the lobby of our building yesterday. The taxi driver last night told me the entire day on National Public Radio (NPR) was dedicated to Mr Mandela.
I remember being a student in Stellenbosch in 1985 with the country in really bad shape : violent protests in cities and towns were going on across the country. In then-president minister PW Botha’s famous Rubicon speech, he refused to release Mandela from prison. (That happened five years later, in 1990 under pres.FW de Klerk. The ruling National Party had tried to create designated homelands inside South Africa where black South Africans were expected to exercise their political rights, but that had failed). The political activists on campus told us we would have a democratic election in seven years. They were not off by much, since that happened 9 years later in April 1994. As the election took place, I watched the long lines of people waiting to vote. I was not upset or angry, but emotional and entirely not sure what to think. It was a pivotal and watershed moment in the country’s history. For me, looking back now, apartheid was not only about oppressing black people. It was about brainwashing the privileged (me) into not questioning authority, and about doing one’s duty and serving one’s country.
But how far to other people, very different from oneself, does that duty extend, and what is the concept of country in one’s head? To this day here in the USA there are people that have a very hard time accepting Mr Obama as president, and accepting the concept of a rainbow nation where people of all colors live together in peace and harmony.
It is -20°C (-4 °F) outside.Here is the view of snow coming down on the Sherman Street Event Center and everything else, this morning from the 18th floor where I work.The city of Denver has some 100 snow plows. This one may have a load of magnesium chloride as well. Magnesium chloride helps to prevent the ice bond, allowing snow plows to clear the roads more efficiently.
The snow plows were out in the wee hours of Wednesday morning already to clear the streets. Our hotel had a shuttle for us in to work, which was really nice. But on the way back my colleague and I had to strike out on foot back to the hotel with our winter wear (scarf, gloves, woolen skull cap) and tread carefully on the icy streets and sidewalks. It is really, really cold if one is not used to these temperatures (that would be me). I think I should go out and buy a few pairs of long johns.
We were ogling a fire across the street today from the 18th floor where we are working, but the Denver Fire Dept quickly got it under control. Meanwhile, the temperature outside has dropped into the teens°F tonight (almost -10°C) with snow sifting down. We made it back to the hotel after work, and have a shuttle lined up for the morning to take us to the office. Yes, we are wimps, would the locals say, or the hardy residents from Montana or Canada.
We are working across the street from the Warwick hotel on the left. (We used to stay there before moving to the Hilton). Today there was a fire in the parking garage building right next to it, with black smoke billowing from it. The fire brigade was on the case and quickly got the fire under control, though.
Look at this .. I received a little souvenir United business card from this morning’s flight’s captain (Molly Flanagan, she absolutely must be Irish, right?) thanking me for all my flying on United.The front of the card.
We flew away from a large winter storm system that is going to trek across the country from the Pacific Northwest from Monday night onwards.. but we won’t escape it even here in Denver. The weather service predicts the temperature is going to go from 41°F/ 5°C today to 4°F/-16°C on Wednesday, and to -12°F/-24°C on Thursday. I don’t think we can walk even the 7 blocks to work in -12°F/-24°C weather. Time will tell what happens !
Here’s Denver’s beautiful blue sky at our arrival at 8.45 am this morning. It’s not going to last, though. By Thursday anything remotely wet – or not – will be frozen solid.
