Category: General

Here’s another example of the little gift candy boxes that one’s coworker might hand out to you when he or she gets married.     The words on the box remind me of Queen’s raucous song ‘Sweet Lady’ from their album A Night at the Opera (lyrics below, not for the faint of heart!).   At the time of its release it was the most expensive album ever recorded.

Sweet Lady from A Night At The Opera (1975), words by Brian May

You call me up and treat me like a dog
You call me up and tear me up inside
You’ve got me on a lead
Ooh you bring me down you shout around
You don’t believe that I’m alone
Ooh you don’t believe me

Sweet lady sweet lady
Sweet lady stay sweet you say

You call me up and feed me all the lines
You call me sweet like I’m some kind of cheese
Waiting on the shelf
You eat me up you hold me down
I’m just a fool to make you a home
Ooh you really do and you say

Sweet lady sweet lady
Sweet lady ooh c’mon stay sweet

My sweet lady
Though it seems like we wait for ever
Stay sweet baby
Believe and we’ve got everything we need
Sweet lady sweet lady
Sweet lady stay sweet
Stay sweet sweet lady

Oh runaway come on
Yeah yeah
Yeah yeah
Sweet lady

Isn’t the pattern on the lid of someone’s teacup here at work just beautiful?  I think it is.

 

 

Before Germany started shutting down their nuclear reactors, they exported 1,400 GW-hrs per month, says Bloomberg Businessweek.   Now they have to import about 2,000 GW-hrs per month, much of that coming from France and the Czech Republic.   Aha!  I thought so, was my reaction when I saw the article.   So it remains to be seen if the Germans can replace their lost nuclear-power generating capacity with wind, solar and other renewable resources.

Here is the proof coin set I bought at the Japan Mint’s store in Tokyo.    The coins range from 1 yen (aluminum),  a 5 yen brass coin, a 10 yen bronze coin and a 50 yen cupronickel coin, to a 100 yen cupronickel coin and a 500 yen nickel-brass coin.    The ¥500 yen coin is worth big bucks, about US$6.50!   And what the little 1 yen coin has going for it, is that it can float on water- wow.   What a nice demonstration of surface tension in water.   (The picture is from the web.  I have some used 1 yen coins and I will try that when I get home to Seattle !).

I have a few days off from the project this coming week, and since it’s too short to go back home I decided to go to Tokyo.    My short stay-over there in May was just too short to see enough of the city!     This time of year the typhoons keep rolling in from the Pacific – another one hit the Phillipines just today – so that is something to keep an eye on.    The temperatures in Japan have gone down already from the summer highs.   The 27 27 25 at the bottom of NHK TV’s weather map is for 大阪 Osaka, 名古屋市Nagoya and 東京都 Tokyo respectively.   (25ºC is 77ºF).   

Saturday October 1 is the National Day of the People’s Republic of China.   The PRC was founded on October 1, 1949 with a ceremony at Tiananmen Square.    The flags are from lamp posts on the way to work, and the other picture is from Baidu’s home page.   Baidu is sometimes called the ‘Google of China’.   

‘Baidu’ is a quote from the last line of Xin Qiji’s classical poem Green Jade Table in The Lantern Festival  saying something like  ‘Having searched for her hundreds and thousands of times in the crowd, suddenly turning back by chance, I find her there in the dimmest candlelight’.

On Wednesday we went to the Aloha Beach Club, a place on the water close to work.   (They offer pizza for lunch, that was the draw).   There was a nice map of the area on the wall.   My cell phone picture is a little blurred, but the land mass on the south west corner of the map is Dapeng Peninsula, and the little bay right above it is Dapeng Bay.   It is shallow for the most part, making it ideal for windsurfing.    The cute little car with the surfboard is a BYD, from the Shenzhen-based car manufacturer with the same name.   Its 2010 sales of 519,800 units made it the sixth largest Chinese car-maker by units sold.

Some 20 project team members are staying in the hotel here in Dameisha and we were all invited to a ‘General Management Thank You’ party on Tuesday night.   The food was wonderful and there was live music.   A singer belted out Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance, some Creedence Clearwater Revival songs from way back then and even some country music.   Quite a range of genres!   But then I see Wikipedia says that CCR’s genres were  roots rock, country rock, blues rock, swamp rock and southern rock.    Not that I can tell the difference, but swamp rock sounds the best to me !

Photo from Wikipedia : Creedence Clearwater Revival, 1968. L-R: Tom Fogerty, Doug Clifford, Stu Cook, and John Fogerty

 

It’s still the Year of the Bunny (Rabbit) and the Little Bunny is doing our laundry.    Coupons are not nearly as prevalent in China (yet?) as they are in the USA, but this is a nice one – complete with hologram sticker and all.  (¥12 is about US$2).

Mount Fuji watchers report that the first snow came one day earlier than last year, about 7 days earlier than on average.  (Picture from the TV here).    Mt Fuji is a very symmetrical stratovolcano mountain.  Other such mountains are of course Washington State’s Mt Rainier, and Kilimandjaro in Africa.

Here’s how the numbers stack up for the three mountains.

Mt Fuji	3,776 m	12,388 ft	last eruption 1707
Mt Rainier	4,392 m	14,411 ft	last eruption 1894
Mt Kilimandjaro	5,895 m	19,341 ft	none in recorded history

And hey – I have a Mt Fuji in my wallet as well : the back of a ¥1,000 note (that’s about US$13).

After a long week I was happy to just kick back in the hotel and relax Friday night (instead of making my way to Hong Kong as I frequently do).    On the Japanese TV game show, I admired the colorful graphics but could not make out much more.   Check out the rotating cube with characters to arrange to make a phrase.   Of the solution I have no clue, but hey – I can be the team member that click that ‘OK’ button by the yellow arrow, how’s that? :  )

This carrier pigeon (I assume it’s one! looking at the rings on its feet) landed on my hotel balcony.   I suppose it’s taking a little break from its travel back to its home.    The homingpigeon.com website features a solar wind meter (indicating the strength of disruptions caused in the earth magnetic field by flare-ups on the surface of the sun) .. but there is evidence that the birds actually use freeways and man-made structures to navigate with.

In September 2009, a South African IT company based in Durban pitted an 11-month-old bird ‘Winston’ armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country’s biggest internet service provider, Telkom.  The pigeon took 1 hr 8 mins to carry the data 80 km (50 miles).   That turned out to be vastly quicker than the ADSL connection could deliver the data !   (I believe the ADSL connection speed will beat the pigeon today).

This 3D map of Dameisha was put on bus stop billboards here recently.   It has a lot of detail on, right down to the fiberglass figures on Dameisha Beach (I took the beach figure picture some time ago).   That’s the Yantian Expressway curving around the beach town.

This ‘water painting’ picture from Monday night’s ride home from work as seen through the bus window– it was pouring.   I felt sorry for people on the street !   It’s still warm here, but despite the rain last night the humidity was much lower than normal today.

Weather for Shenzhen, Guangdong, China

81°F | 27°C

Tue

Wed

Thu

Fri

Scattered Clouds

Wind: NE at 13 mph

Humidity: 61%

88°

70°

91°

72°

91°

73°

88°

73°

This cool map (click to enlarge) comes from the All Nippon Airlines in-flight magazine.   Tokyo was put at the top of the globe and every other point projected around it, radially along the longitudinal lines.   So distances measured from the center of the map along the longitudinal lines are accurate, but all other measured distances are not.   And the farther away a continent or a country is, the more distorted its shape comes out!    (There is actually a map with this projection on the United Nations flag, with the North Pole at the center).

The Rugby World Cup of 2011 started last Friday and is the seventh Rugby World Cup, a quadrennial International Rugby Union competition.  This year it is played in New Zealand, the country’s largest sporting event ever with some 90,000 visitors expected.    20 teams are competing, and the USA and Russia have teams as well.   Live TV coverage in the USA is only available as special sports packages from NBC’s Universal Sports channel.  Some matches are shown in full after a day or two, though.  Says the official website (http://www.rugbyworldcup.com) of Thu Sep 15’s match-up in Pool C between the Cold War foes : ‘USA and Russia are prepared for an intense battle in what might be their only chance to record a victory at Rugby World Cup 2011’.  Oh boy. Better go for it, then.   Go USA!  

Of course, I root for South Africa as well; the Springboks are the defending champions and eked out a 1 point win over Wales on Sunday in a Pool D match.  Go Bokke !

The map of New Zealand showing the stadiums is from Wikipedia.   Where is Christchurch located, site of the 6.5 earthquake in Feb?  It sits on the nub sticking out from the south eastern part of the South island (so no stadiums there).

Yes, I am an early bird and got my flu shot today.   I also checked the Centers for Disease Control website to make sure I’m up to date with my recommended vaccinations for China.    Of course, there are some nasty viruses and bugs out there for which there is no vaccine.   Dengue fever is one of them, with no specific medicine that can cure it ! (map for the Eastern Hemisphere dengue fever areas from the CDC website).   I travel to the green strip around Hong Kong.   Seems the best one can do is to pack a thermometer and check in for medical care right away in case of fever.

The pictures are from Sunday.  My friends and I went to the 9th Annual Concours d’Elegance*event in Kirkland here in the Seattle area.  The antique Mercedes hails from 1904.  The in-line 4 cylinder engine produced 32hp and a top speed of 40mph, the fastest at the time.   The star of the show was the James Bond’s Aston Martin DB5, one of the most famous cars in the world, and it sold at an auction last year for some US$ 4 million.   The local Mercedes dealer sponsored part of the event and ‘only’ $131,000 will get you this 2011 Mercedes Benz S63 Amg V8 Biturbo – now we’re talking!  For the brand-new Lamborghini Aventador LP700-4, one would have to cough up some US$380,000.  (The black one was at the show, the other picture is from Lamborghini’s website).   Some specs : the LP700-4 has a curb weight of just 1575 kg (3,472 pounds) due to its carbon fiber-reinforced polymer monocoque structure. The 6.5 liter V12 puts out 690 bhp / 515 kW.  The gearbox is a 7-speed independent shift rod transmission (with dual synchronizers) supplied by Graziano Trasmissioni Group with 50 millisecond shift times.

*from French meaning a competition of elegance, lit. “concourse of elegance”, referring to the gathering of prestigious cars, dating back to 17th Century French aristocracy, who paraded horse-drawn carriages in the parks of Paris during Summer weekends and holidays.

The football field-size flag was unfurled before the singing of the national anthem for the New York Jets-Dallas Cowboys NFL match in the stadium on the New Jersey side.  The 9/11 Memorial was open to families that lost loved ones 10 years ago today and opens to the general public tomorrow. (Pictures from NBC’s Sunday Night Football broadcast).

We celebrated the end of the week with some beers in the hotel bar.   Heineken for me.  I tried to look up where the red star on the logo came from, but without success.   Maybe I shouldn’t read too much into it, but then again the 3 e’s were tilted back slightly to make them ‘smile’, according to one description of the logo.  So little details matter.

My bags are packed.   A driver is picking me up early Saturday morning here at the hotel to take me to Hong Kong.   There is usually an extra bag search before boarding a flight for the USA; I am sure it will be even stricter tomorrow.