Category: General

The black muffin from the Muji-To-Go store at the airport is a new item, said the display.  (Hmm, and what makes it black?). And this Qantas 747 was j- u- ust pulling up to the gate as I walked by .. most likely in from Down Under.  My travel advisory says the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement that took effect on Thu Mar 15 and prompted some street protests in Seoul – but at this point everything seems under control.   The accord will remove duties on almost two-thirds of American farm exports, and phase out tariffs on more than 95 percent of industrial and consumer exports within five years.  Tariffs will also be lifted on Korean car parts to the U.S.  — which should increase South Korean exports of the products.

The green light has been given from the steering committee for our project’s ‘go-live’. (The last of the dragons have been slayed). So now the wheels are set in motion to move everything up from the Quality System into the Production System. That means all of our project’s extracted and converted data sets, additional system configuration table settings, program codes and user log-ins will be added into the live system.  Our project will add three more nuclear power stations to the three already in the system, for a total of 6 stations altogether.

There’s happiness 喜 (xǐ), and then there is double happiness 囍(also xǐ) !

The ‘double happiness’ term is really used in writing and especially used in connotation with marriage, as shown on this candy gift that each of us got from a colleague that is getting married soon.  The heart-shaped modification of the bottoms of the happiness characters is artistic interpretation, of course. And I cannot quite find out for sure how old the use of the heart ♥ symbol is.  Its uses started in Europe.

.

Tuesday is long gone in here in China (it’s 1.00pm Wednesday) – and almost gone in the USA.  But the politicos at politico.com are posting up-to-the-minute tallies of the precincts in the outcome of the Republican primaries in the ten states of ‘Super Tuesday’.  Wikipedia says the phrase Super Tuesday goes back at least to 1976 in US presidential primary elections.   Right now the state of Ohio is most closely watched, where it’s a neck-and-neck race between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum.  

Cycle Irina is churning off the South African coast and likely to remain over open water between Maputo and Richards Bay for the next 24 hours, says a weather report.  So it makes for very rough seas and a marine storm surge on the coast.  Currently : Wind: 55 MPH — Location: -29.4S 34.5E — Movement: S

Check out the Google Earth tracking map with this link to www.wunderground.com.

Tokyo is making a bid for the 2020 Olympics, and there was a section about it on NHK TV.  They hosted in 1964 and will be able to use some of the facilities after upgrading it – such as increasing the capacity of the 54,000-seat National Stadium to 80,000 seats.

Which other cities are putting in a bid? Here are all of them.  Baku and Doha are certainly not as well known as the other three!  Rome withdrew its bid after the government dropped its support, citing the financial difficulties of Italy and that the money is needed elsewhere.

This morning the air was foggy and the streets were soggy.  I knew about the fog Thursday morning even before I rolled out of bed.  A fog horn that must be close by on the coast sounded a few times in the night. Fog horns emit sounds at around 50 Hz, and humans can hear sounds between 20 Hz and at most 20 kHz.  (Check out the cool animated picture of a sound wave that I found on line).  And my research also found that blue whales can hear sounds as low as 5 Hz, while on the opposite end there is the Jamaican fruit bat, that can pick up ultrasound squeaks pitched at 130 kHz.  Whoah Mr Bat! What fine ears you have!

So what’s (really) old in film is new again with the 2011 silent French romantic comedy drama film The Artist, directed by Michel Hazanavicius, that took the Best Film award at this year’s Oscars.  (The film already has a Golden Globe award and a French César Award).   I read on-line that 80% of silent movies were destroyed when modern sound film (the ‘talkies’) started to take over in 1929.

I got some 2012 Lunar New Year stamps for my collection.  The US Postal Service issued them as ‘forever’ stamps. Forever means there is no explicit price on (so the price can go up forever?). First Class postage might soon go from 45c to 50c .. so in theory, investors can make 11% overnight by buying a ton of stamps at 45c before the price goes up.  (A little difficult to quickly dispose of the little paper investments).

On Thursday the USPS announced that it plans to shut 223 of its 461 mail-processing plants by February 2013. Maybe I should have mailed that property tax check after all ! The agency has gotten rid of about 140,000 jobs in the last five years, mainly through attrition, but still had about 650,000 workers at the end of 2011.

The Singha beer is from the Jamjuree  restaurant where my friends and I had some wonderful Thai food Thu night.  The the ‘panda burgers’ are from Wednesday night’s Jay Leno Show. The prankster offered the product to people on the street (supposedly from a small area in China where it was legal to hunt them!). The first two passers-by just said ‘Sure! I’ll take a bite‘ and ‘Pretty good!’ . Finally a young woman said ‘Are these really panda burgers?’. But she was a sport and tasted the burger as well. Aww. Leave the panda bears alone.  See how cute they are on the card from the World Wildlife Fund?

The Electric Light Orchestra sings that a cure’s been found for good old rocket lag (in 2095) in their song ‘Here is the News’.  But hey – it’s only 2012. So travelers jetting across the world and I still have to make do with sleep remedies that are no silver bullet. Melatonin does not work for me – at least not the recommended 5 mg.  I now use prescription zolpidem (generic ‘Ambien’) which is definitely effective to putting one to sleep, but for no more than 4 hours. I take it only for two or three nights, get up when I can no longer sleep, and then take a 2 hour nap later in those first few days.  After that my body is up to its own devices to get fully adjusted! And how does the stuff work, anyway? Well, it’s a short-acting hypnotic that inhibits neurotransmission – brain activity – by binding at the same site as the brain’s natural inhibitor called GABA.

The stuff works quickly : in 15 mins! So not long before you start to drag and  g  o   t o   s  l   e   e  e  p ..

I thought this picture below of a neuron was very cool (picture from Wikipedia’s entry for ‘neuron’). A neuron is an electrically excitable nerve cell that transmits signals. The connections between nerve cells are called synapses.

Greece’s latest bailout has been approved by the European Union members : some €123bn. (Japan’s NHK TV put President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, and Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, in the outfits of the classic Nintendo video game Super Mario brothers*).  The target is to reduce Greece’s debt to 120% of GDP by 2020. (Yikes).  Count among the skeptics Germany, the Netherlands and Finland – given that derailments in Greece’s adherence to austerity measures have happened several times now.

So Greece’s finances are in terrible shape, but the whole of Eastern Europe, and the I’s : Italy, Ireland and Iceland, have have debt ratings of ‘speculative’ according to Standard & Poor’s.

*Pop quiz : what is Mario’s younger brother’s name? Answer – Luigi.

As a footnote, public debt in the USA at the end of 2011 was some $15 trillion, close to 100% of GDP.  The Congressional Budget Office is worried about it, and during June 2011, called for  ‘large and rapid policy changes to put the nation on a sustainable fiscal course’.

The third Monday of February is celebrated in honor of George Washington, the first President of the United States.  (Yes, the official name for Presidents’ Day is Washington’s Birthday .. and his actual birth date was February 22, 1732). The Republican party’s candidates were out campaigning and I havesay most reasonable people will be taken aback by some arguments being made. Rick Santorum actually compares President Obama to Adolf Hitler, saying that Americans at that time waited 18 months before acting against Hitler thinking ‘he’s not that bad’. And this is a guy now leading/ on a par with Mitt Romney among Republicans in Michigan for the state’s upcoming Feb 28 Republican primary.  Romney’s father George was chairman and president of American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962, and the 43rd Governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969.

I am about to go downstairs to check out and hop on the shuttle that takes passengers to the airport a stone’s throw away. The South China Morning Post reports on an on-going story of a local Shenzhen company that is sueing Apple over the iPad trademark.  So far a Hong Kong court has ruled in Apple’s favor and a mainland court against them.  I suppose in the worst case Apple can call its pad an ‘iTab’ and continue selling it in China.  It is not known how many iPads have been sold in China so far. Another report tells of Kim Jong-il’s eldest son that was kicked out of a Macau hotel after running up a bill of US$15,000. 

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.