Category: Travel

We have beautiful calm and mild weather here in Stellenbosch.    This oak tree found itself in the wrong spot when the road was built a long time ago, but was left in place (kudos to the road builders).     Just be sure to pass it on the left !   We drive on the left side of the road, the same way the British do.

 

 

Cape Town International Airport was fogged in as we approached it at 9 am local time, but we landed nonetheless.   The pilot announced afterwards that the smooth landing was thanks to Boeing’s automatic landing system on the aircraft.       Of course, the pilot has to be certified and the airport’s ground systems have to support the whole process as well !  I think we did a Cat II  landing since the visibility was about 300m (1,500 ft).  The sequence of cockpit shots are from a video clip I found on-line.

Here is a rundown of the Instrument Landing System (ILS) Categories  :
Cat I :  200 feet Decision Height* (DH);  2,400 feet (or 1,800 ft) Runway Visual Range (RVR)
*The height at which point a decision must be made to either continue the approach or to execute a missed approach (abort the landing).
Cat II Restricted :  150 feet DH;  1,600 feet Runway Visual Range (RVR)
Cat II :  100 feet DH;  1,200 feet RVR
Cat III A :   No DH (alert height generally 50 feet);  700 feet RVR
Cat III B :  No DH (alert height generally 35 feet);   600 feet RVR
Cat III C :  No DH,  zero visibility – a “blind” landing.    This one is almost never done, since the pilot will not be able to find the gate after landing !

The first picture is of Lagos coming in from Frankfurt (6 hr flight).    In the next one we’re at the arrival gate.   Murtala Muhammed is a former military head of state that the airport is named after.     So .. how did it go in Lagos airport?  Well,  was quite an adventure!    The passport check point is as basic as it gets : 2 uniformed officials behind a bare counter top inspecting our passports and the blue arrival cards that we filled out.    NO passport scanner, NO camera, NO computer.   Not even a pad and a rubber stamp !   And where’s my visa?  the official asked.   My heart jumped – ‘Uh – I’m just connecting, on my way to South Africa’, I replied.    Ok, said the customs official, we will hold your passport.   Go and collect your luggage and come back here.      The two baggage claims are not marked, there is no air conditioning and it is crowded.   But lo and behold, my luggage did show up, and now I clamber back up the stairs man-handling my bags.    The person that took my passport is no longer at the desk – turned out it got handed over to a person in another room.    The guy with our passports tells 4 of us to follow him.    We go outside onto the tar road in front of the terminal, dodging the taxi drivers soliciting rides, then back into the terminal, up another flight of stairs.    By now I’m sweating the way I do after eating mildly spiced Mexican or Thai food (a lot!) .    Inside there is another crowd of people clamoring at the South African Airways check-in counter.  No problem : our escort yells at the officials in charge of the check-in line,  and gets us right in front.     Finally he hands our passports back to us and shows is to the security check point for the boarding gates.

So the ‘passport separation anxiety’ we felt was not warranted – the official was very helpful.   We would have been totally at a loss as to where to go next, after going through the passport check.   Should we have tipped him?  I don’t know – I didn’t.   I didn’t have any local currency anyway.   But if the airport had been modeled on Schiphol airport from what I read on-line, there was none of that efficiency visible.    The airport suffers from badly designed passenger traffic flow; it needs to install electronic systems, and it needs some serious sign posting to be installed as well.

The cool African mask is from inside the lounge at the airport.

Another 6 hrs got us in at 6.00 am at Johannesburg airport.   I had to hustle to make my 7.00 am connection to Cape Town (another long passport control line + re-check bagagge + run to the gate).    But hey, I made it, and so did my baggage : 3 international connections and 36 hrs of travel time!

I’m at Frankfurt airport.  They had us step off the plane onto a bus that took us to the terminal.   The Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper reported the upset of the German women’s soccer team against Japan in the Women’s World Cup .. quite a feat by the Japanese given that the German women’s team won the last two tournaments.

There is also an interview with writer Gary Shteyngart, about his new novel ‘Super Sad True Love Story ‘ – a darkly comic science-fiction story about the decline of the United States.    From the interview : The problem is that Obama can not act. He is very weak. He can do nothing against the opposition. The Republicans paralyze him, they are a very aggressive party.

 

Feeling frantic and flying on Korean Air?  Check into the Morning Calm section (it’s between Economy and Business, maybe it offers more legroom;  I’m not sure).     And the Seattle Times front page today reports that arriving passengers frequently face a bottleneck at the international arrivals point.    I have to say I have not experienced long waiting times the few times when I came in directly from Seoul, but I guess I have been lucky not to arrive at the same time as other international flights.

I am packing my bags for my trip to Cape Town, South Africa.   The itinerary breaks down as follows : 10 hrs on Lufthanza to Frankfurt, 6 hrs (Lufthanza) to Lagos, 6 hrs (South African Airways) to Johannesburg, 2 hrs (South African Airways) to Cape Town.   There were no seats left on the direct flight from Frankfurt to Cape Town and so the stop in Lagos, Nigeria (picture from the web) which is a first for me, is a little intimidating.   Even though the international terminal is modeled after Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, there were serious security problems at the airport until 2001.    For example, travelers arriving being harassed inside and outside the airport terminal by criminals, immigration officers requiring bribes before stamping passports and customs agents demanding payment for nonexistent fees.

I will travel to South Africa this Monday to visit my family.  I will travel on ‘Continental Airlines’ : really a combination of Lufthanza and South African Airways codeshare flights.   I read the report about the efforts to complete the merger of Continental Airlines and United Airlines in a recent issue of Bloomberg Businessweek with interest (picture from this week’s issue).   In a way it’s the work that I do on some of my projects : phase some systems out and implement new ones in their place.    To create the world’s largest airline, the two carriers have to merge about 1,400 separate systems, programs and protocols.    In the end United Continental will provide service to 373 airports in 63 countries.  Its frequent flyer program will have more members than France has citizens (62 million).

My 1996 Toyota Camry finally needed an oil change and I took it to the Toyota dealership on Monday.   It has 109,500 miles on the clock.   The first picture below is from 1999, somewhere in Denver.  The next one is from 2003, a little trip I made down to Oregon.    But back to the oil change :  I authorized several little repairs as well – replace brake pads, brake fluid, accessory drive belt.    All in, the bill was well over $500.     That’s the price one pays for convenience and independence from public transport, right?   I really should replace the car at some point, but  1.  where I live, I am surrounded by public transport options,  2. I travel a lot for work, and 3.  the choice of what model and type of car to pick has gotten even more difficult with the new electric car technologies coming into play.  So I guess I will wait a little longer and see what happens.

The Seattle Street Car runs by the Toyota dealership between Seattle downtown and the South Lake Union area and of course I had to take a picture of it.

I ran down to King County International Airport* today for an interview for my Global Entry access.   The Global Entry program provides expedited clearance for pre-approved, low-risk travelers upon arrival at twenty-some designated airports in the USA.   (For frequent USA-Canada travelers there is a separate program called Nexus). There is no minimum number of trips needed to apply for the program but it does cost $100 and is good for 5 years before one has to renew.   But now I can swipe my passport at a kiosk, put my grubby four right hand fingers on the fingerprint reader and then I should be good to go.   I think the kiosk snaps a face picture as well.

*It is actually the official name of what we in Seattle know as Boeing Field, a two run-way airport to the immediate south of the city used mostly for general aviation and for cargo.   I love the front entrance.   I believe it dates from 1928 when the airport opened.    The picture of Tsu Wong is from the waiting room.  He was a 1916 graduate from MIT and was Boeing’s first engineer !

I made it in at Seattle airport at 1.30pm.  The United Airlines tail is from San Francisco International airport, same as the one we were in.    Coming in from there to Seattle, we made a turn over downtown and headed south again.   The black structure in the middle of the picture is Columbia Tower, the city’s tallest building.   Everything in the foreground is ‘West Seattle’, connected to the city with the West Seattle bridge.

Here are the temperatures that will prevail tomorrow in North America.   Seattle is cool compared to say, Houston !   .. and here I am, checking out my tailored shirt with the fancy insides of the collar and the cuff.    It fits perfectly.     Now I have to bail out and go to the airport ! 

The driver that picked me up got me to the Marriott Skycity (love that name, sounds so futuristic) hotel in just two hours, which allowed me to take the Airport Express train to the city to pick up my shirts from the tailor.  

Pictures :  view over Victoria harbor on the way in toward Lantau Island (where the airport is); a Qantas Airways 747 coming in for a landing;  this mall is at the Tsing Yi station (should not have a shortage of shoppers with all those apartments on top of it! AND easy access with the train);  oncoming Airpot Express train.   The last picture is my farewell picture of Hong Kong (for now! who knows when I will be back?).  This is outside Central Station.  The poetry of time, says the billboard.      

From my walk last night : these restaurants are all in the street one block back from the Dameisha beach, behind the Air Land Hotel and the LA Waterfront Hotel.   I cannot read their names, except of course the last one :  The Famous Roasted Squab Sin Sui Wah Seafood restaurant.  What is a squab?  It’s a nestling pigeon, fully grown but still unfledged.

The luxurious fabric for suits or jackets is cashmere from Inner Mongolia*.   I snapped a picture of it in its display case at a high-end tailor in Central District where I went with a colleague.    Since I bought suits and jackets before starting on the project I felt I didn’t want to spend more money on those and ordered a few shirts instead.    I will show them off when I get them back !

Then we took a ferry to Lamma Island.  The fare was only HKD14.5, not even US$2 .. and what a relief the air-conditioned cabin was from the heat and humidity!   On my previous outing there (blog entry of Mar 28, 2010) we stopped at Yung Shue Wan pier and walked across the narrow north-end of the island to Luk Chau Wan.   This time we were lazy and just stayed put and checked in at a seafood restaurant.   The fish they served us was very fresh and very good.    The little structure is also in Yung Shue Wan village and looks like a temple inside with incense, but I don’t know its name.     The hand-drawn posters advertising ice cream is from a shop on the main street.

*There are reports of protests by ethnic Mongolians in the Hong Kong newspapers.   (China has 55 ethnic minorities and they account for only 8% of the population).   A shepherd was recently killed by a coal truck driver (I think it was an accident).   The Han Chinese in the area still outnumber the Mongolians by 5 to 1 in spite of a long standing exemption from the central government’s one-child-per-family policy.

It’s my last weekend before I get to go home on Thursday.    This time a colleague and I took a black taxi to the Sha Tou Jiao border and then got onto a big bus that runs to the Kowloon Tong train station.  The bus ticket was only US$ 7.  The pictures are all from my vantage point in the front of the big bus, the first ones on the outskirts of the city and then the Lion Rock tunnel which is close to the Kowloon Tong train station which also serves as a bus terminal.

 

 

 

Sunday was a bright sunny day in Hong Kong .. a little too warm to be outside so I escaped into the shopping malls to get out of the heat.    The first tram picture is close to the Marriott Courtyard Hotel.     The Taiwan tram makes one want to go visit but hey! – they will have to get themselves out of the news with the current food additive scandal.     Taiwan authorities found on May 23 that a chemical company in New Taipei City had sought to cut production costs by adding DEHP, a common plasticizer identified as a toxic and cancer-causing chemical, as a substitute for the more expensive palm oil to produce clouding agents used in food.   The scandal involves 206 food producers in Taiwan, including almost all the major names, and hundreds of food products.  

The fertility goddess (I think – I should have looked at the plaque and I didn’t!) is in the plaza at Heritage 1881 on Canton Rd in Kowloon.   Then I took the Star Ferry back to Hong Kong island.   The tall building on the right with the claws (scraping at the sky?) is the International Finance Center.    The citizens wearing oxygen tank and breathing apparatus is from a billboard at the ferry terminal promoting clean air in the city.     And there is an onslaught of advertising in the subway, on billboards and on buses :  another Transformer movie is coming.   

The weekend in Hong Kong was warm and sunny.    The first picture (from late Saturday afternoon) was taken outside the Japanese department store SOGO at the Causeway Bay station.   There was a store sale on, and a crush of people inside that made me say ‘let’s get out of here!’ after just a short time inside.      The Times Square plaza is just two blocks away, and I wanted to see what was on display there.     Well : a dragon made from oil barrels.    Would you have guessed that’s what it was?  Hmm.  I should have made you guess before I gave the answer away!

P.S.  Speaking of Japan, it’s raining – with typhoon Songda now a tropical storm, and moving along the south coast.

I hopped on the 16-seater bus from work to go to Hong Kong as I have done several times before.   We go across the Sha Tou Jiao border crossing (A on the map) and then I hop off at Kowloon Tong train station (B).      I did it the hard way last night – taking the metro trains with two step-overs to other train lines and then a final run on the tram to the hotel (picture taken from tram).    The trains were very full and at two stations I had to wait for the second train to be able to squeeze in.  So next time it will be a taxi even though I might get stuck in traffic.

There is very big art fair in the Hong Kong Exhibition Center this weekend which I hope to get into – Art HK 11.

Akihabara/  Electric Town   First more Saturday pictures.   The Shosen book tower is right by the Akihabara train station and has an enormous collection of anime books.  There is only a small section with English books, from which I bought a charming ‘Life in Japan’ book with English annotations and will put up some pictures out of it.    The detailed steam locomotive model at the Yodobashi electronics and toy store goes for ¥14,000 (US$175).    I now regret not buying the cute wooden block game with the pictures on.   I thought it would be too heavy.     I think it’s a picture version of dominoes.    

No Devil in the Details  I’m a detail kind of guy and to me all the little things about visiting a foreign country together makes for a neat experience.   So even if people think I’m crazy I take pictures  : of the raccoons that say ‘Keep your grubby fingers out of the train car’s door pocket’ ; of the straight iced tea (wink) from the ubiquitous vending machines (delicious); of instruction stickers in the clean subway wash rooms; and of  the packaging of snacks in the 24 hr marts that are scattered everywhere throughout the city.

Tokyo Tower Sunday’s mission – with the little time I had – was to chase down Tokyo Tower (東京タワー) :   an icon of the city and a communications and observation tower located in Shiba Park.    Its claim to fame is that, at 332.5 metres (1,091 ft), it betters the Eiffel Tower by 10m (30 ft) to be the world’s tallest self-supporting steel tower.    It is painted white and international orange to comply with air safety regulations and has an antenna at the top.     I lost my way a little there, but found back alleys and man-hole plates that could pass as works of art.    And I saw nary a piece of trash or a cigarette butt or anything lying on any street or sidewalk.     

This is a view of Tokyo Bay (its old name was Edo Bay) with the Rainbow Bridge in the distance.    Some land has been reclaimed from the sea along the bay.     This view is from the 150m observation deck on the Tower.    The line up to the 250m observation deck was too long and I had to abandon it.

The Narita Express back to the Airport   Now it was time to check out of the hotel and make for the metro to take me to Tokyo station to catch the Narita Express back to the airport.    The Express was scheduled to leave at 2.03pm, and it arrived a few minutes early at Tokyo station to allow more cars from another track to be hooked up to it (picture shows the back end of the front cars).    At 2.03 pm exactly we slid out of the station and accelerated.   It’s a little like sitting in an airplane, only it rides on rails, and buildings, bridges and rice paddies flash by the window.   I think that’s another glimpse of the Rainbow Bridge I saw at the end of the water channel.  I kept snapping at the new under-construction Tokyo Skytree in the distance and finally caught it between two buildings.   It is scheduled to open in 2012.   Japan’s planned switch from analog to digital for all television broadcasting by July 2011 from Tokyo Tower is problematic – the current height is not high enough to adequately support complete terrestrial digital broadcasting to the area.   So the Skytree will become the digital broadcasting tower.

(Very late Sunday night in Hong Kong as I write).   Just a few pictures from Saturday – I will post more tomorrow.     First picture is a sign from a restaurant in Ginza.   I assume it talks about help needed for the earthquake victims.      The subway is super efficient and super easy to use and I love the station names.   The trains were generally not very crowded, possibly because it was in the middle of a weekend day.     This is inside a giant electronics + toy store in the Akihabara district with 7 floors that sells electronics, computers, anime, model trains, planes, automobiles and toys of every stripe.    I was overwhelmed – even though all the kids with their parents seemed to handle the visual onslaught of all the merchandise on display better than I did.

The traditional gate is near the Asakusa station and in a very nice area with small streets and malls of stores and eateries.   There were several people collecting money for the earthquake victims.

Then early evening Saturday I met friends of my Seattle friends at Shinjuku station – it is the busiest train station in the world.    Outside there was a buzz outside with many of Tokyo’s young people just hanging out and socializing.    The two night time picture is from there as well.     The little tickle-me- Elmos(?) are inside a coin-operated machine, hoping to be picked up with a dangling hook by a lucky Saturday night player.