Check out this children’s book from a book store in Somerset West with my name on : Speurhond (Sleuth Hound) Willem in New York.
I drove out to Somerset West today to meet up with old friends there. I had some time to spare beforehand, and stopped at the beach at Strand. (Check out the pink area in the map from Saturday’s post to see where these are). A few dozen people were out for a walk on the beach, and two hardy souls even braved the cold water. (The Strand’s water is rarely on the warmer side, since the cold sea current from the West Coast usually prevails. But once in a while the water temperature would be very pleasant).
The surf shop is closed ! .. but I like the artwork.The beach at Strand, and some of the many holiday apartments that line Beach Road on the beach front. (The guy in the picture is flying a tiny drone with his iPhone. Look for the black spec just to the left of the sand-colored building).
Stellenbosch is South Africa’s second oldest European settlement (after Cape Town), founded in 1679 by then-Governor of the Cape, Simon van der Stel. Stellenbosch means ‘(Van der) Stel’s Forest. Stellenbosch University was founded in 1866. Its logo has a little oak leaf in it, a nod to the nickname for Stellenbosch, ‘City of Oaks’.
The main building of the Faculty of Engineering (with some construction going on downstairs). Freshman engineering students attend lectures in the main building and then graduate to the buildings dedicated to Civil Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering and Electrical Engineering behind the main building.The JH Neethling Building houses the Faculty of Agrisciences.This Jewish synagogue is on Van Rynveveld Street, and is almost 100 years old.This building used to be a girls’ school, but is now a museum (containing exhibits of earlier days and peoples from Africa). It is also on Van Ryneveld Street.These giant ficus trees are at the back of the main administration building on Victoria Street.A building in Plein Street displaying the typical Cape Dutch architecture that prevailed in the 17th and 18th century in the Cape Province.
My friend Marlien and I drove out to the Victoria & Alfred Waterfront today. The enormous V&A Waterfront shopping mall has too many shops to even count – clothing stores, book stores, home and kitchen gadgets, music, African artwork – anything under the sun. Outside one can take a helicopter ‘flip’ (short ride of 10-15 mins, about US$300 per person), take a harbor tour, or go out to a Robben Island excursion. We just took it easy and took in the sights, and bought a little souvenir here and there.
Here are the main areas around the Cape Peninsula. I stay out in the Northern Suburbs (Durbanville). The Waterfront is in the City Centre (where it says Green Point, actually). Robben Island is where Nelson Mandela was held prisoner.The Clock Tower at the V&A Waterfront was completed in 1882, and restored in 1997. I’m happy to see it painted red once more (it was painted yellow in 2013 as part of an advertising campaign).‘Each Man To Do His Duty’ says the inscription on the ribbon of this sailor mast head.I suppose I should have cropped the yellow picture frame from the photo, but then the longitude and latitude information would be lost.This is the train station building at Muizenberg. It opened in 1913 and is another one of the Cape Town area’s national historic buildings.
The sign at the security check point in Frankfurt.
I made the long journey south (10 hours) from Frankfurt to Johannesburg on Sunday night in a big A380-800*, and then took a 2-hour flight on South African Airways to Cape Town from Johannesburg. At our arrival in Jo’burg we were all heat scanned by a camera, for fever/ Ebola symptoms, said the sign.
*I sat all the way back in row 96G, in a little coach section tucked upstairs into the tail of the A380. It made us forget we were flying in an enormous airplane, but the seats were not particularly comfortable, nor spacious, of course. The other problem was that my luggage took a long long time to come out in Johannesburg (the fault of the big airplane or slow baggage service? both?) : some 45 minutes. So I had to make a run for my connection to Cape Town.
I liked the set of cut-outs of German band members in their lederhosen in the duty-free store at Frankfurt, but they did not persuade me to buy any booze or chocolate. (I had too much to carry already).Here’s the nose of the A380 at the gate in Johannesburg.
Friday brought cooler temperatures and a little rain late in the afternoon as well. The Altstadt (old city) in the historic heart of Frankfurt is undergoing a lot of new construction here. At least the Römerberg square is now nicely cleaned up (it was not when I checked it out a few years ago).
Here’s a 1950s vintage engineering handbook that was for sale by a vintage art and bookstore. I love the crisp graphics (showing a lot of very ‘engineered’ ways to measure temperature, in this case).Here are some of the buildings around the Römerberg square. I suppose there are people that live upstairs from the cafes and restaurants .. why wouldn’t there be?Here is the Kaiserdom St. Bartholomäus cathedral, holding its own in the middle of all the construction. And why would it not? The current church was built from 1250-1514, the third building in the same place, and it survived World War II .. at a time when most of Frankfurt was destroyed.This paving, lighting and wall tiles at the Domplatz (Cathedral Square) U-bahn station is new and very nicely done. (I waited for the silly humans in front of me to disappear so that they would not spoil the clean lines in picture!).
‘I am a king’ .. why would anyone want to shoot me? asks the lion on the cover of Stern news magazine at the airport.
(Thursday night USA time, Friday morning Frankfurt time). Well, I made it in. I had fantasies of open seats remaining open next to mine as I checked in on-line and selected my seat for the flight, but none of those came true : the flight to Frankfurt was packed. Mostly German and Dutch peeps returning home, from what I could tell. A Flemish-speaking family near me (I inadvertently eavesdropped on them) was going home to Brussels. It was was warm today here in Frankfurt and I was sweating as I walked the short distance for the Festhalle/ Messe U-bahn stop to the Marriott hotel !
Here is a view of a row of Lufthansa tails from Frankfurt’s Terminal Z shortly after I stepped off the plane at 8.30 am.Here is the main train station, Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof. We had just arrived from the Flughafen (airport). I stepped over from the S-bahn to the U-bahn here at Hauptbahnhof.Here is a view of the ‘Messe Frankfurt’ from high up in the Marriott hotel. The ‘Messe’ is one of the world’s largest trade fair centers : anything from industrial tools, cars, household items, even books, are exhibited for buyers in these halls. The building top left with the colored roof sections is a large shopping mall.
My bags are packed. I am leaving for Frankfurt in the morning. This is part of my trip to South Africa. I have checked in on-line; I have my Frankfurt Metro app on my iPhone, and I have some left-over Euros from previous trips. (Yes, I have my passport. Without Mr Passport in one’s pocket, the journey will not even start !). It’s a 747 we will be flying in, and the flight time is about 9 hrs.
Here’s a little graphic outline of the route, and below the technical flight details from flightaware.com.
The underside of my paddle board had a Kraken tentacle on. The Kraken is a legendary sea monster of large proportions that is said to dwell off the coasts of Norway and Greenland.
We spent some time today at Tide Park beach – part of the larger Solana Beach area to the north of the San Diego metro area. I even dipped my toes into the California surfer culture by going out on a standing-up paddle board for a bit, with some coaching from my brother. The surfing area by the beach is called ‘Table Tops’ because of a reef right there. Absolute beginners such as me were wise to steer completely clear of the surfers, of course.
My nephew is ready to hit the surf down below with his surf board (and for good measure has a boogie board as well). It was a beautiful day, with the marine layer (visible in the distance) staying offshore.Here’s the Tide Park beach, part of the larger beach area called Solana Beach. The lifeguard station is on the left. A guy came hobbling up from the beach with a stingray wound to his foot, that they treated and bandaged up for him.
I traveled to San Diego on Friday afternoon for a weekend visit to my brother and his family. We went to dinner in the Little Italy neighborhood in San Diego downtown. Afterwards we strolled around the waterfront on North San Diego Bay.
Here’s our approach into San Diego International airport. The airport has only ONE runway (making it very busy), but for now proposals and plans to build a bigger airport outside the city have been shelved.With brother Piet. Piet, Krista and I had dinner in Little Italy, a neighborhood in downtown San Diego. In the early days of the city this was an Italian fishing neighborhood but now it is filled with Italian restaurants, Italian retail shops, home design stores, art galleries, and residential units.
[From Wikipedia] The Star of India was built in 1863 in the Isle of Man, a full-rigged iron windjammer ship. After a full career sailing from Great Britain to India and New Zealand, she became a salmon hauler on the Alaska to California route. Retired in 1926, she was not restored until 1962–63 and is now a seaworthy museum ship home-ported at the Maritime Museum of San Diego. She is the oldest ship still sailing regularly and also the oldest iron-hulled merchant ship still floating. The ship is both a California Historical Landmark and United States National Historic Landmark.This is the San Diego County Administration Center, a historic Beaux-Arts/Spanish Revival-style building in San Diego, California. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt dedicated the building on July 16, 1938.
A road runner at our little office building came by to say hello (the real one of the namesake cartoon character in Wile E. Coyote and The Roadrunner). Now I want to watch some of those cartoons again, just to hear The Roadrunner say ‘Beep! Beep!’.
It was a long haul back from Kettleman City to LAX International Airport. I dropped off the rental car without refueling it since I was cutting it close for making my flight. Then our Hertz rental car shuttle bus was packed, and the Alaska Airlines stop was the last one (of six stops! Man! Are the contractors done yet with that LAX Train/ Automated People Mover System as it is called?). I see the now-infamous LaGuardia airport in New York City (it opened in 1939) is finally going to get a $4 billion make-over with a high-speed ferry and train connections. Construction of the project’s first half is expected to start in 2016, with completion scheduled for 2021.
The San Diego Freeway or 405 South was full of traffic but at least we kept moving.
It was a scorcher .. the temperature in the outskirts of Kettleman City here in the sun-scorched Central Valley in California went up al the way to 110°F/ 43°C today. Here are pictures of the old-fashioned ‘Wild West’ storefronts along the main plaza in Kettleman.
The Bravo Farms Restaurant and other storefronts in Kettleman City’s main plaza.More structures in the Wild West style, at the end of the storefronts in the main plaza in Kettleman.
I had to get up early on Monday morning to go out and help with the training of our system’s new users, located in Kettleman City in the Central Valley in California. (There is a big gas pipeline compressor station there). Kettleman City is a small town just off of I-5. I took a flight out to Los Angeles airport and did the three-hour drive up north from there. It is hot out here – of course. At 7 o’clock this evening, it was still 96°F/ 36°C.
The clouds were still lying low over Seattle-Tacoma airport as we waited to get pushed back from the gate at 6.30 am. This was the view from my seat 16D on the wing.We’re at the gate in LAX. The old space age-y control tower is just visible in the middle of the picture. LAX is still sprawling and seems to forever under construction. ‘The next great world airport’ proclaims the signs on the construction fences.This is a stop I made at the Tejon Pass Rest Area. Everything seemed to shimmer in the afternoon heat, and the sky was a vivid blue.
The week took its toll on me and I was very happy to pull into the rental car garage at SFO. The airport was full of summer travelers that milled around, not seeming to know where to go or what to do. In a way I envy them : they’re not frequent fliers, and probably on their way to exotic islands or getting ready to fly across the Pacific to Asia !
Both South Korean airlines represented at SFO’s International Terminal. That’s Asiana Airlines in front with Korean Air in the turquoise livery.
We arrived an hour late into San Francisco on Monday morning again (yes, it the fog). As we were leaving the airplane, I noticed a big hand-written note held by the woman in front of me. It said she speaks no English and to ‘Please help me find my connecting flight to Singapore’, her final stop on her way to Kathmandu in Nepal.
The view from the AirTrain on the way to the rental car facility on a Monday morning usually features 747s from the United Airlines fleet.
A poster at SFO airport advertising the new direct flight to Guangzhou.
Southern China Air is the world’s third largest airline, and will soon offer direct flights from San Francisco to Guangzhou .. in southern China, of course. Guangzhou is about an hour’s train ride from Hong Kong. Check out the Guangzhou blog entry I made back in 2011 of a quick trip there. The new SFO> Guangzhou flight will operate 4 times a week non-stop using a Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
I was finally well enough to travel to my project in San Francisco on Monday morning, and off I went. It was already bright and sunny at 5.30 am when my taxi picked me up, and the airport was crowded with summer travelers. It was a very warm 99 °F (38 °C) here in Walnut Creek today. At the end of the day when I got to the hotel room and opened my roller bag that had been in the rental car’s trunk all day, my clothes were warm to the touch – as if it had come out of my tumble dryer !
Seattle airport’s D terminal early this morning with Alaska Airlines Boeing 737s at the gates.
This week at the project site went by quickly .. must have been because we were very busy. I made a dash for the airport as usual, ran into a little traffic southbound after crossing the Bay with the Bay Bridge .. but nothing too serious. (The serious traffic jams start just a little later!).
Here’s the United Air Lines hangar at San Francisco International airport. (United Air Lines? Should it not say United Airlines? Hmm.)
These days, it is broad daylight as I step out of my house and into the cab at 5.30 am. The airport was busy this morning. I suppose we’re on the upswing toward the peak summer travel season. (Not that it matters too much : the airplane is filled to capacity every time I travel on it).
Here is Virgin America’s check in counters at Seattle-Tacoma airport .. glitzy with the pink neon and all. Pretty quiet, so I guess they don’t have a lot of early morning flights out, though.
I made it in from San Francisco, and I’m following the reporting of the Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia (8 fatalities; some 200 others injured) with special interest, since my trip to Portland on the train is so recent.
Check out the diagrams from the New York Times here. Not yet known : why was the train barreling around a sharp curve in the track at twice the speed limit?
I made it in to foggy SFO a little later than scheduled – as usual these last few weeks – and headed for our client’s Beale St building for meetings all day.
I had a nice view from the 23rd floor of the ambitious construction going on around First and Mission St in the Embarcadero district. The Transbay Tower is going to be the tallest building in the city in 2017, with the futuristic aluminum-skinned Transbay Transit Center right next to it. Here is a link to the TransBay Center Interactive Map.
San Francisco city center’s new buildings. [Source : The San Francisco Chronicle]Here’s a 23rd floor view from Beale St and looking southwest to the on-going construction around Mission St and First St. Look at the top left of the frame between two tall buildings for a little bit of the incoming Bay Bridge.Entering the Embarcadero train station to take the train across the Bay to Walnut Creek.Cool picture on board the BART train with lots of 3D geometry figures, and – the real mathematical formulas for calculating their volumes or surface areas!
