a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
The Bell Tower is touted as Perth’s top tourist attraction (think: Seattle’s Space Needle), and so I had to go check it out. The surrounding area is still a major construction zone though : the $400 million Perth waterfront redevelopment project has been three years in the making and is now at least two years behind schedule. (Mmm. Seems very similar to the Bertha tunnel boring machine & waterfront development project’s delays in Seattle!).
My brother and I made a jaunt into downtown Perth with the Transperth* train on Wednesday. Downtown is a mix of old and new buildings, with the tallest ones belonging to the giant multinational mining companies such as Rio Tinto Group and BHP Billiton. (Iron ore is the country’s largest export earner, and lost 43 per cent in market price this year as low-cost miners such as Rio Tinto and BHP Billiton pressed ahead with production to defend their market share).
*Part of the Perth public transportation network of trains, buses and ferries.
We visited a local beach called South Beach on Tuesday, and I went in for a dip in the Atlantic Ocean (the water temperature was very pleasant). The beach is south of the city of Perth, in Fremantle.
I traveled due south from Hong Kong for 7 hours to arrive in Perth late on Monday night. It is warm here : last night is was 27 °C (80 °F) at the late hour of 11 pm.
I made it into Hong Kong airport late on Sunday night. My layover is so long (16 hours!) that I could leave the airport to go to the Novotel Citygate hotel nearby for some sleep before the fourth and final segment of my travels to Perth, Australia.
Here are more pictures of my Tokyo experience from Friday and Saturday.
My Marriott Courtyard hotel is tucked into the 4th floor of a building just outside the upscale shopping area of Tokyo, the Ginza district. Here are some pictures of my walkabout there last night.
My flight to Tokyo went without incident, and the airline staff were super helpful and friendly. It was 7.30 pm Tokyo time when we had arrived, and commuters were still leaving the office, so the monorail train from Haneda airport got crowded a few stops down. But that got me to the nearest metro station, and I could get to Tokyo Station from there. (My Marriott Courtyard hotel is close to Tokyo Station). Of course, the station is very big, so I could not find the hotel immediately. Tired and with two bags in tow, I went for Plan B : got into a taxi to take me there. The cabby’s English was poor (and my Japanese non-existent), but I could tell he was taking me to the wrong Courtyard (there is one in Ginza as well) .. so I just called the right Courtyard Hotel and asked them to give him directions .. and hey! I have a bed to sleep in.
Alaska Airlines made me sweat a little by being 30 mins late with the short hop up to Vancouver. (Can we leave already? How about NOW?). Our Bombardier arrived late, and then there was a snafu with transmitting the load balancing numbers to the pilot. (It was printed and brought out to the plane). But the Canadian customs process and baggage claim was very efficient (they have scanning machines now for the customs declaration for US passport holders), and I even had a little time to spare to catch my flight out to Tokyo.
Today was my last workday
for 2015. I am heading out on my end-of-year trip in the morning : down south to the Land of Oz (Australia). It is going to start with a short hop up to Vancouver to catch a flight to Tokyo. I will spend two days there before continuing on to Perth with a stop in Hong Kong.
Here’s a little report from a Wall Street Journal newspaper from last week, about the residents in Johannesburg putting out food for the hadida ibis. I would see them on lawns in the neighborhood every morning as I bicycled to school. The drought in the Johannesburg area has made it hard for them to find their favorite food, though : earthworms.
P.S. The sound they make is Ha-Ha Ha Dee Da! (not ‘Daw’). Here’s a Youtube video of the bird. I just could not find a nice clip with their distinctive ha dee da sound.
I am not traveling to California on Monday morning, so I could afford to relax a little – and make an impromptu stop by the Space Needle to take a picture of it with the Christmas tree lights on top of it.
This November marked the 10th anniversary of Angela Merkel assuming the office of Chancellor of Germany. TIME magazine named her 2015 Person of the Year for her handling of the Greek debt crisis and the Syrian refugee crisis, and the leadership she has shown. Check out this skit of her on the TV show Saturday Night Live.
There is outrage in South Africa over President Jacob Zuma’s firing of finance minister Nhlanhla Nene – with no explanation offered – this week. Nene was well-respected and one of a few in the government untainted by corruption scandals. The nature of the disagreements between him and Zuma are not known, but speculation has it that it may have been over yet another bail-out needed for the beleaguered South African Airways, or even over the projected capital expenditures for building several nuclear reactors for the national electrical utility company Eskom.
Anyway : all of this had the South African Rand fall to a record low of R16.05 per dollar before improving to R15.76 by 7:04 p.m. in Johannesburg on Friday. I remember a time in 1990 upon my first visit to the USA, when the exchange rate was R2.50 to the dollar. My dad used to explain to us at the dinner table that a higher exchange rate would normally favor local (South African) manufacturers and exporters .. but at some point, imported items would become prohibitively expensive. The current exchange rate cannot possibly be good for the country.
I drove back to Sacramento airport on Thursday, taking Highway 99 (it runs through Chico). I would have loved to spend more time walking around Chico, or even to stop in Sacramento, but there just was no time for that. The airport is north of the city of Sacramento, so I did not get to see any of the California capital. Maybe next time!
We walked by the substation to the Substation to get a sandwich for lunch today. Inside they played ’80s music : Come On Eileen (Dexy’s Midnight Runners, 1983) and Tainted Love (Soft Cell, 1981). The guy behind the counter inquired ‘Which part of the Empire are you from?’ as soon as I placed my order. I should have said the Galactic Empire* but instead said ‘South Africa, but I now live in Seattle‘. Ah, and you speak Afrikaner (sic)?. Yes yes, I said, my native language is Afrikaans.
*A Star Wars reference
We had a very long day at work, but made time afterwards to stop by the Sierra Nevada Brewing Company here in Chico for some brewski and a bite to eat.
Here are some pictures of my arrival at Sacramento airport. The airport is not nearly as big as San Francisco International or the sprawling LAX (Los Angeles) airport, but I the Terminal B where I had arrived is practically brand-spanking new (it opened in 2011). The $1 billion terminal contains $6 million of public art. Its construction created some 2,400 jobs over 2 1/2 years during a recession that had left state and regional unemployment hovering around 12 percent.
The days are short here in the Northern Hemisphere – sunset is a little after 4 pm – so I feel I have to strike out and run my errands early on. I have done well : had my hair cut, cleaned my house, charged my car’s dead battery*, took some old pillows, wheeled suitcases and an oven toaster to Goodwill, a big box of used packing ‘peanuts’ to the UPS store for them to re-use, did my laundry, and packed my bags for one last trip for 2015 to California in the morning. It’s to Sacramento this trip, with a drive up north from the airport.
*I did not shut the driver’s door properly, and the dome light drew down the battery’s charge. Hmm. And I want to get an electrical car. I will have to do better, right?
Friday’s good US jobs report for November, makes a Federal Funds Rate increase in mid-December ‘all but a done deal’, say most economists. (The rate has been at zero for more than 6 years). US interest rates are going in the opposite direction of those in Europe, though. Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, dissatisfied with the performance of the eurozone economy, recently cut Central Bank interest rates from an already negative 0.2% to -0.3%. What does that even mean? Well, Europeans now pay the bank interest to hold their euros. So .. better to keep it in the freezer? Under the mattress? It can still get stolen from there, so I guess if I were them, I’d still go with putting my cash in the bank. Grrr.
Here are some financial graphs from the New York Times.
