Category: General

The 2012 Republican National Convention is set to start on Monday in Tampa, Florida .. or will it have to be canceled due to Tropical Storm Isaac set to arrive there just in time to make for a lot of rain and wind? And did you know that in the politically-charged and possibly protest-filled streets around the convention center, water guns will be strictly prohibited? Concealed handguns, on the other hand, will be perfectly legal.  Republican Governor Rick Scott refused a request from the police to issue an executive order prohibiting the transportation of firearms in downtown Tampa during the convention.

We walked by this bus last night on the way to dinner.  First, the deer is not typically Chinese.  And then the characters are from what I can tell but the ‘Nuy Ek Gnot Iy’ below it is definitely NOT Pinyin (the official system to transcribe Chinese characters into Latin script).  Google translate cannot help, even with the ‘Detect Language’ option. Hmm.

Five of us had our beers and a cocktail and some food in the lobby of the Sheraton Dameisha tonight.  Downstairs a band was playing songs to the theme ‘Caribbean Festival’.  One song was Eric Clapton’s The reggae version of  Eric Clapton’s 1977 song ‘Wonderful Tonight’.  Here is the first part of the song’s lyrics :

It’s late in the evening; she’s wondering what clothes to wear.
She’ll put on her make-up and brushes her long blonde hair.
And then she asks me, “Do I look all right?”
And I say, “Yes, you look wonderful tonight.”

We go to a party and everyone turns to see
This beautiful lady that’s walking around with me.
And then she asks me, “Do you feel all right?”
And I say, “Yes, I feel wonderful tonight.”

Here is an updated picture from my China Daily newspaper that shows the heavy rainfall the typhoon brings.

Snow (other than that on high elevations such as the big Drakensberg mountain range) is big news in South Africa.  On Tuesday, snow was reported in all nine provinces of the country, possibly for the the first time ever.   Here’s another one : a third typhoon in one week made landfall on the east coast of China on Wednesday – typhoon Haikui -possibly the first time that has ever happened as well.

We drive by this road sign every day on the way to work. (I like the little pictures). So we start out in Dameisha, and we go to Dapeng where the offices are.  I was curious to see where the two beaches mentioned on the sign were – and marked them on a Google map.  The little green island called Tung Ping Chau belongs to the Hong Kong territory, oddly enough.

I get my live (or previous day) Olympic Games coverage from China Central Television.  The rest of the coverage I look for on-line.  So that is how I stumbled onto the O-lymp-ometer : an invention of the National Post newspaper from Canada.  I like the term for the meter .. but what to make of those very Canadian (British) terms ‘rubbish’ and ‘lovely’ ?

It’s mid-summer here in south China, so it’s warm and muggy almost every day.  I try to stay indoors but we have to walk to the cafeteria for lunch, which can be quite a sweaty affair even though it is just two or three blocks away.  We are all very thankful for the cool air of our bus at the end of the day.  One of the world’s great inventions, remarked a colleague : the air conditioner.

May I present one more exhibit from the uppity Mix-C mall in Shenzhen?  This is a 2013 Rolls Royce Phantom.  It lists for around $500k in the USA.  I had to ask a colleague to read the lettering.  Mm, looks like it says ‘ghost’ he said.  Good enough!
Rolls Royce is owned by BMW these days.  China overtook the U.S. to become Rolls Royce’s biggest market for the first time in 2011.  Towards the end of 2011 the inventory of a special $1.2 million red Year of the Dragon Phantom model was sold out (the reports from Bloomberg and others do not say how many cars that was).

I really liked this bone china plate that was on display at a Shenzhen department store this weekend, and wanted to buy it.  It’s a new design, but alas, not for sale on its own.   (You have to buy the whole dinner set of 20 pieces).  I immediately saw the dragon in the middle, but did not realize right away there is also a phoenix.  The dragon and the phoenix are still used together as principal motifs for decorative designs on buildings, clothing and articles of daily use in China.

Sunday was clear and sunny which meant the crowds from Shenzhen visited our eastern outpost of Dameisha with its public beach in droves.    The streets fill up with cars and buses and the sidewalks with people and vendors selling food and beach paraphernalia. The picture was taken at sunset, which comes around 7 pm at this time of the year.

It was still raining steadily on Thursday and so the umbrellas were out.  I am sitting on the bus on the way to lunch.  It is nice of our driver to drive us to lunch when it rains since it is only two blocks or so to the cafeteria from the offices where we work.  .

For my readers that are not in the USA, there was a massacre in a movie theater in the Denver (Colorado) area at midnight on Thursday at the opening of the new Batman movie there.   A heavily armed 24-yr old guy shot 70 people, killing 12.   So it is ironic 1. that I had mentioned ‘bullet’ in my post for Thursday, and 2. that USA Today newspaper’s Friday issue notes that $2.9 billion dollars’ firearms and hunting equipment was sold in the USA in 2011.  I see Amazon has 2 of the RAP4 MilSimX M4 Assault Rifle left in stock.  Only $795.  Should I jump at it and put one in my Amazon shopping cart?  (No – I should not.) Why do I see assault weapons for sale on your website, Amazon?  Why is there no law against it, lawmakers of the US Congress? What a disgrace.

It’s less than two weeks away, the opening of the 2012 Olympics.  Here is a very nice map of the venues in London and also outside that USA Today published in a special edition this weekend.  And the gold medal has shockingly little gold in!  It’s basically a silver medal.