The set of Chambers’s Encyclopædia was probably acquired by my great grandparents (printed in 1917).Check out the Encyclopedia’s entry about atoms – still very controversial in 1917! This was just a few short years after Ernest Rutherford proposed that matter is made of atoms.
All that remained at my mom’s house at the end of Monday were paintings on the walls, boxes with documents, and stuff in the back yard.
My brother and I stopped several times while we went through the stuff to check out documents. Some go back 30 years, and the set of Chambers’s Encyclopædia goes back – oh, about a hundred years!
I finally got a quote for shipping three pieces of artwork to Seattle : SAfr R 22,619 (which is US$ 2,310). What! Are they wrapping the items in gold foil? I said. Turned out that is for sending it by airplane, that’s why it’s so expensive.
So we had another appraiser come out and provide a quote based on volume. They fill up a shipping container with items that go to the same city, or at least to the same area, overseas. It will probably be a few hundred dollars for me.
From a pamphlet from General Motors South Africa, detailing the technical specifications of my dad’s beloved 1976 Chevrolet Truck.That’s me in the mirror .. the two queen size beds and bases, and their stands, have been bubble wrapped. The dining room table in the back was trouble. Two door frame openings on its exit route, with the door wide open against the wall, would still not let it through as is. So we took the two doors off their hinges, carried the table through in one piece, and put the doors back!Here’s a catalogue of the small tools factory that my dad worked at (he was managing director of it) for many years. He would bring home some of the items like the scissors, the metal saw, and the drills, and explain to us at the dinner table what made it a great product! .. part of the salesman that he was.
I like the leaf and flower motifs in this wrought iron gate by the Gardens.
The Company’s Garden (‘Kompanjiestuin’ in Dutch) at the top of Adderley Street in Cape Town, and adjacent to the South African Parliament, takes its name from the Dutch East India Company who first started the garden in 1652. Locals just refer to the area as ‘The Gardens’.
I have never really spent time there, and went there yesterday after dropping my friend Marlien at the airport. The Gardens area is abutted by numerous landmarks, including the lodge house for the slaves who built large parts of the historic city, the present day Houses of Parliament, the Iziko South African Museum and Planetarium, St George’s Cathedral (which is the seat of the Anglican church in South Africa), the National Library of South Africa, the South African National Gallery, the Great Synagogue and Holocaust Centre as well as Tuynhuys, which is used by the President for state events.
This stone-with-white plaster building is right next to the Cape Quarter building on Somerset Street. I couldn’t immediately find its name!There is still a number of Victorian era storefronts in the city, and it’s nice to see they still stand their ground, get renovated and a new colorful coat of paint.‘Restored 1991’ says this one.This is the main foyer of the Golden Acre shopping center which had its heyday in the 1970s. Those days are long gone with all the action now happening at the Waterfront. The tenants nowadays are cheap clothing stores and fast food places.This is at the Gardens, a pedestrian walkway lined with trees.This is adjacent to the Gardens .. part of the Parliament building.
Here is the chardonnay bottle’s label.Here is the Bloemendal wine estate’s restaurant. The food was good, the wine was great. The immediate surroundings is not quite a match for a number of other wine estates in the area though. (No gardens, old historic buildings, or foot paths).I had to pose for a picture at the V&A Waterfront with the sun setting across the ocean from Table Mountain. (I should have tucked in my shirt! Oh well).
It was a gorgeous late winter day here in the Cape Town area today with blue skies and mild temperatures. We did make it out to Bloemendal wine estate for our lunch. The restaurant is not up high enough to provide the panoramic views shown on their home page, though. The chardonnay that I had with my lunch was quite nice. My friend Marlien is visiting as well, and we made it out to the V&A (named for Queen and her son Prince Alfred) Waterfront by late afternoon.
The family plans to have lunch at a wine estate here in the Durbanville area tomorrow. The estate is called Bloemendal, loosely translated to mean ‘valley with flowers’. The estate produces Malbec, Merlot, Pinotage, Shiraz, Sauvignon Blanc, and Shiraz Rose wines. The hills in the area offer beautiful vistas of the surrounding landscapes, and on a clear day Table Mountain and Lion’s Head are visible in the distance.
That’s Table Mountain in the distance on the right of the picture, with Lion’s Head to its right.
The Dutch are not shy to voice their opinions, and certainly not about other countries, either. They were among South Africa’s harshest critics in the apartheid years, and while Nelson Mandela was still in prison. Here is a magazine I spotted in the stands (didn’t buy it, now think I will when I go through there on the way back home). It declares on the front page ‘America is a nasty bloody country* .. *for those who are not millionaires’. In the purple bubble, Mr Maarten opines : ‘Compared to the US, the Netherlands is a paradise’.
I suspect the death penalty in the USA informs this opinion, affordable healthcare that is still not available to all Americans, our expensive college education, the list goes on. I’m curious to see if the article acknowledges that the USA is a force for good in the world as well, though.
Since my mom’s house was sold a few weeks ago, we need to clear everything out of it before the end of the month. There are loose household items and decorations still remaining as well – the most important (read : sentimental) of which are my mom’s paintings on the walls. Some of the artwork date back to when my mom was in art school fifty years ago. So we just feel we have to keep as many of them as we can, in the family. (My mom’s new apartment home can only accommodate a few paintings).
I am going to an international mover tomorrow to have a few paintings shipped to Seattle in the States. They have to be packed carefully, and before shipping, the wood frames and canvases have to be inspected for beetles and insects as well, I’m told. Yikes, I had never thought of that !
This painting is one of several versions my mom have painted, of a fisherman’s village with the wooden boats in the front and the whitewashed cottages in the back.This painting is older than I am! I remember it well .. of African people hanging out in an urban environment.An arrangement of king proteas, indigenous to the Western Cape area here in South Africa.
(Apologies! This post is late! It was a challenge for me to find an internet connection after my arrival into Cape Town). I just wanted to report that I arrived safely into Cape Town on Monday night. The pictures are from Monday morning at Schiphol airport.
Here’s our Cape Town bound Boeing 777 in the blue and while colors of the Dutch carrier KLM waiting at the gate for us to board.Tulip seed stand at Schiphol airport. (Hmm .. I wondered if it’s OK to bring in tulip bulbs or seeds? And I like the giant tulip light).How about these giant blue Delft ‘porcelain’ tea cup chairs?.. or a wooden clog at this flower stand?I stopped and took a picture of this friendly guy on my way to the train station to go to the airport.
So here I am in Amsterdam : I made it in to the Central railway station at around 3 pm from Schiphol airport for my one night stay in the city. It was cloudy and rainy all afternoon, but for the most part not so rainy that one could not walk around. From what I saw, I believe Amsterdam still easily carries the title of the world’s most liberal city. There are pot shops (marijuana shops) everywhere, and one smells it while walking the streets. People smoke it in restaurants. And even in broad daylight, there were madams advertising themselves in shop front windows (Oh! Am I in the red light district? I guess I am, I thought. No ma’am, thank you ma’am). The city is dirty! It’s actually noted in the newspaper as well. The writer says maybe now that the Rijksmuseum has been renovated and reopened, it can motivate city officials to do a better job of sweeping the streets. (Unfortunately I did not have enough time to make it to the museum).
The Dutch love their cheese .. I did not poke these wheels of cheese outside of a shop on the sidewalk to determine if they were real !No entry .. except for bicycles and mopeds, scooters. Those are a menace! Watch out! There are bike lanes everywhere and THEY DO NOT STOP for crossing pedestrians.The Amsterdam Centraal railway station’s main hall is as gorgeous as ever. I arrived here from the airport, a 20 minute train ride for €8 (US$10.73). (First class train ticket).This is in Schiphol airport .. a nice lamp fixture showing some motifs of the famous (is it still famous? I hope so) blue Deflt porcelain.This is close to the hotel where I am staying. I made my way around entirely on foot. I did not make a note of the street.The sun is still setting late here, at 9.13 pm. This river canal boat is plying the waters in the Heerengracht canal.
These are ready to go into the suit case. Got to have my m&ms and Starbucks coffee (providing comfort for this traveler). Don’t freak out over the fuel bottle. It’s for a little camping stove that my friend ordered from Amazon, and it is EMPTY!Here’s how I am getting to Cape Town .. Delta Air Lines is getting me to Amsterdam, and then on to Cape Town on the Dutch airline KLM. I plan to stay over one night in Amsterdam one night to give my old bones a break from sitting in an air plane seat.
My bags are packed, almost. I’m leaving for Amsterdam in the late afternoon, to get me to Cape Town, South Africa. It’s winter down there, of course – with the climate somewhat similar to here in Seattle in winter time. (Think cool weather, clouds and drizzly rain). I think Cape Town does have more sunny days than Seattle even in winter, so I do expect to see some sunny weather.
My new door bell has a little built-in LED that lights up the outline of the button (for the hordes of nightly visitors I get? Hardly!).
My door bell button was on the fritz after doing duty for some ten years. So : time for a new one.
The choices at the home depot store were somewhat limited, but I settled for the one shown in the picture. ‘A little frilly and fussy on the sides of the little metal plate, not?’ I thought today while I took the picture. But on second thought I think it goes with my old house nice enough !
The musical ‘The Book of Mormon’ billboard features a door bell (for the Mormon ‘elders’ that come knock on one’s door and try to convert one to the Mormon faith). Anyway – that looks like my new door bell, I thought, when I saw it today. The Paramount theater is here in downtown Seattle.
I am getting an impromptu refresher/ education of the bridges around San Francisco Bay, because I have to. There is the famous Golden Gate bridge, of course, and the Bay Bridge – but until now I have not really paid attention to the other bridges that cross San Francisco Bay. I had to drive back our shared rental car to the airport. Those in the know recommended I take the San Mateo bridge route, and that’s what I did. Even though it’s a little farther, there would be less traffic to deal with.
The original bridge, known as the San Francisco Bay Toll-Bridge, opened in 1929 and was then the longest bridge in the world. It reopened in 1967 with a modernized span. So with Google Maps’s voice over directions I used many highways and byways and made it to the airport in good time. But after I had gone through the security check point, I discovered that I left my jacket in the rest room outside the secure area. So off I went, and I did find it – and again through the whole security rigmarole. Oy vey.
Here is our Alaska Airlines plane at the gate at Terminal 1 at San Francisco airport. The cool cloudiness-fogginess from the sea is never far away, even in summer. Check out the fancy new control tower in the background on the left. It will have a modern metal-clad spiral outside, and is slated for completion in late 2015.
Here is the route I drove up north to Walnut Creek today.Here’s a giant cut-out billboard in the Salinas area of a farmer presenting his Romaine salad (and check out the cute pooch in the front).
I checked in with the field crew again this morning for 3 hrs or so, and around lunch time started to drive back to Walnut Creek. (Walnut Creek is the name of the municipality on the east side of the Bay where our hotel and project office is).
It was a long drive up! .. partly because I couldn’t resist making a brief detour to Monterey, which made me run into rush hour traffic in the San Jose area. Man! California has a lot of traffic, I thought. (Of course, California is not alone in this in the world).
From Tuesday night : This is 12th Street in Paso Robles, across from the city park. ‘Paso’ as the locals refer to it, is 125 years old this year.
I spent the day out in the field at a natural gas pressure metering and regulating station. These metering stations are placed periodically along natural gas transmission pipelines. The stations allow gas utility companies to monitor, manage, and account for the gas in the pipes as it is transmitted over long distances. Compared to a gas compressor station (with big noisy gas turbines for pressuring the natural gas for transmission), the types equipment found at a metering station are simple and not too complicated.
Natural gas transmission and distribution pipelines are made of steel in diameters of 6 inches to up to 48 inches. Across the United States, there are more than 210 gas pipeline systems that total more than 305,000 miles of interstate and intrastate pipelines.
[From gedigitalenergy.com] This diagram shows the typical infrastructure for natural gas transmission and distribution. The text on the diagram is a little small; unfortunately I could not find a bigger picture on line.
Paso Robles is about a 3 hr-drive down from San Francisco on Highway 101.
It turned out to be quite a day of travel for me. After arriving at San Francisco airport, my colleague and I rented a car and drove out to Walnut Creek – on the east side of the Bay. So that allowed me to check in and meet the project’s team members. HOWEVER, there are annual maintenance activities scheduled for a facility in the Paso Robles area, and moi is going to represent the team there tomorrow to observe the work methods and gather information for suggestions as to which improvements could be made to the systems that support the scheduling and execution of the work. So we figured I’d better hit the road sooner rather than later to escape the traffic around San Francisco, and off I went around 2.30 pm. The drive went well, and I pulled into Paso Robles off of US-101 right at about 6.00 pm tonight.
Here’s our Alaska Airlines flying machine (Boeing 737-800) parked at the gate at San Francisco airport. Check out the gloomy fogginess in the air !Here we’re crossing the new eastern span of the Bay Bridge complex. The old truss bridge on the right is scheduled for demolition and will be gone by 2016.Alright, I have to confess I was driving while I took this picture of the blue sky and green signboards on Highway 101 .. but I had both hands on the steering wheel with the phone between them, and took one picture. And there were no cars directly in front of me or behind me.
Google’s home page doodle celebrates John Venn’s 180th birthday. A Venn diagram shows objects that share the same properties graphically in overlapping shapes (usually circles). ‘Transport Has Wings’ is what I will use Monday morning to get to San Francisco!
Here I go .. I’m off early in the morning to San Francisco to my new project at the gas utility company. I don’t know what the work place will look like; I have only worked with one of my firm’s team members before, and with none of our client team. So : brave new world for me.
Bryan, Gary and I went for a walk-about in the Pike & Pine streets on Saturday night as the sun was setting. Here are some pictures.
This is at Pike & Belmont Street. The clouds colored up in beautiful pinks and grays as the sun was setting. It’s still summer for sure, but the days are getting shorter.Vostok Dumpling House serves up Soviet inspired dumplings.Mural art celebrating Moe’s Mo’Roc’N Café’s 20the anniversary. They serve up grunge and rave music, and Middle- Eastern food.
I need some new shirts and pants for work, and went out to Nordstrom’s here in downtown Seattle the way I normally do. I like the Nordstrom brand clothes best : not cheap, but still good value for money. It’s not long before a friendly salesperson comes up and offers to help, which is fine .. but I get my guard up when he/ she brings $220 shirts to the fitting room. The classic ‘up sell’ strategy, it seems to me. The price is never mentioned, just the brand and the quality of the fabric. OK. But the few tailored shirts I had made in Hong Kong when I worked in China – of good Italian fabric – cost $150. The store should come in way below that for a shirt straight off the rack.
The Nordstrom shirt on the left was on sale for $42, a great value. The Hugo Boss shirt was $90, marked down from $150. Expensive even at the sale price – but I couldn’t resist it.
*one of the lines from the 1981 song ‘Here is the News’ by Electric Light Orchestra
I happened upon a group of stargazers at Volunteer Park tonight right after sunset. ‘I have found Mars!’ said one guy. (Should I have asked ‘Can I see, too?’ I didn’t). I read on earhsky.org that this is a good time of the year to watch for Perseid meteor showers as well : they come late July and early August. Watch for them now, is the recommendation. The moon is full on August 10, and its light will interfere with the 2014 Perseids’ peak.
The white spot in the picture is the wide waxing crescent moon. Mars is to its left, reddish, but I could not see it with the naked eye and certainly had no hope at all to catch it with my iPhone camera ! Follow the moon down to the horizon to see a silhouette of the Space Needle.
The trail head sign in the parking lot off of Mountain Loop Highway.Here’s a nice map of the topography of the area. The trail zig-zags across the water flowing down from Lake Twenty Two and the mountain slopes, and most of the trail is in a forest. The trail then lassos around the lake, after which the hikers take the same way down (the way they came up).On the way up, in an area where the forest is not very dense.Here is the view of the lake looking south. Part of the trail around it is a wooden board walk ! How nice after the tree roots and the rocks we had to negotiate on the way up!Lots of green – it is summer after all – and also some colorful flowers.We made it! The obligatory ‘Summit Picture’ (taken with Dave’s camera on timer mode) : Dave, Bill and Willem with Lucy and Ethel in front.
I took a day off from work to go on a hike with my friends Bill and Dave. We hiked a trail up to Lake Twenty Two. (I’m not sure why this lake has a number! Most other lakes in the Mt. Baker- Snoqualmie National Forest here in Washington State have names!).
The drive out there from the city is about two hours. The trail length is 5.4 mi (8.6 km) round-trip. Most of the hike is through forest, but some sections of the trail are out in the open. The lake is at the high point of the trail, with an elevation gain of 1,350 ft (411 m) to the lake’s surface. It’s a nice reward after some 90 minutes of trekking uphill !
Across from the lake is Mount Pilchuck’s sheer northern face. The peak is at 2,400 ft (731 m), so about 1,000 ft (320 m) above the lake surface. Even at this time of the year, thin white waterfalls cascade down on the rock face, and two melting snow packs are still visible on the slopes south of the lake.
The train ride from the airport to Walnut Creek is about an hour.
I got confirmation today that I will start to work on my next project assignment on Monday. It is at a utility company located in the Bay area.
San Francisco airport (SFO) is where I will fly to, but the location of our project office is in Walnut Creek to the north-east of the city of San Francisco. I could fly into Oakland airport as well, but the flights there are not as plentiful as the ones to SFO.
