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Friday/ EPNS, not ESPN*

IMG_2569 sm*ESPN is a television sports network here in the USA.

I brought a set of silver spoons back 047 smfrom South Africa : a gift from my mom (that belonged to my grand-mother).  While checking them out a little closer today, I noticed the letters EPNS-AI stamped on the back. Turns out the EPNS stands for electroplated nickel-silver and the AI stands for superior quality (the thickest layer of silver).  So how to clean silverware (made of silver)?  One way is to simply use a glass bowl lined with kitchen-grade aluminum foil, filled with hot water and ordinary salt.   The electrochemical reaction (exchange of electrons between the aluminum and silver) will clean the tarnish.  I also recall ‘Silvo’ that we used on occasion in my parents’ house – a mild liquid metal polish that originated in Britain at the turn of the last century.

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The little silver spoons (tea, anyone?) with a dollar note to show their relative size.
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Thursday/ red-hot ride

We walked by this Chevrolet Corvette Stingray on the way to lunch today here in Denver. It’s brand new and has to be a 2014 model. It must have set its owner back some $60,000.

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We walked by this Chevrolet Corvette Stingray on the way to lunch. 
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Wednesday/ dinner took too long

Most of the time it’s nice to go and relax and go grab a bite with my colleagues .. but tonight was one of those where it took way too long.  We picked the Yard House, a popular place that offers 200 kinds of beers on tap.  Tonight it was bustling with people. (There’s probably a convention at the Colorado Convention Center going on again).  So what was supposed to be a 15 minute wait turned into a 40 minute wait, and then it took another 30 minutes before we finally had our food on the table.   But hey, I got to get a spectacular panorama picture as we left, and just as the sun was setting.

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Here’s a panorama view of Denvet’s downtown at the corner of 16th St and Court. From left to right there is Republic Plaza, Starbucks, the Sheraton Hotel where we stay sometimes, and the Yard House where I had dinner earlier tonight.
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Tuesday/ Mt Everest spotlight

I read a few pages of my TIME magazine this morning on the plane to Denver – about the recent tragedy on Mount Everest.  (Sixteen sherpas were killed in the single most deadliest incident on Mount Everest when giant pieces of ice broke loose higher up).  I remember when I first learned of Mount Everest as a schoolboy that I liked that the height expressed in either meters or feet has some pattern to it – 8,848 m (29,029 ft).   P.S. Check out the price tag for an individual undertaking an expedition on the second graphiic.

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Here’s a map and a graphical presentation of the numbers of people that Attempted to reach the summit, Reached the summit and Died trying to do so.
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In this picture, I think I prefer to be in the Boeing 747, cruising at 35,000 ft, and looking down on Mt Everest.

 

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Monday/ blue sky

Monday was a spectacular blue sky day in Seattle.  I postponed my usual Monday morning trip to Denver to Tuesday due to a bad cold.  I think I will be OK to travel tomorrow.  (I see they had snow there in Denver today .. it’s very late for snow!).

P.S.  Here’s a link to Seattle Art Museum’s Deco Japan exhibit to go with the picture below. There’s some pretty cool graphic design posters in there.

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I took this picture on Sunday.  Seattle Art Museum’s branch in Volunteer Park has started a ‘Deco Japan’ exhibit. Fittingly, the museum building itself is Art Deco.
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Mother’s Day wishes

A very happy Mother’s Day to all the moms in the whole wide world.
We love you! We salute you!

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This is South African-born artist Piet Grobler’s depiction of the miller’s daughter from the Rumpelstiltskin (Grimm’s fairy tale) that became a queen. She had to guess Rumpelstiltskin’s name correctly within three days – or give up her child to him.
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Saturday/ a piece of (mousse) cake

Paul, Thomas and I went for dinner at the Old Bamboo Vietnamese Restaurant in Seattle’s International District.  It’s the new incarnation of the Spring Garden Restaurant, but in our estimation not quite as good.  Afterwards we went to a bakery-cafe to pick up some dessert.  I picked the red bean mousse cake. It reminded me of the red bean-filled buns I used to buy at the 7-11 in Hong Kong.

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Here’s Thomas at the entrance of A Piece of Cake Bakery and Cafe in the International District.
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Ready for dessert?  We all shared in the bounty.  Clockwise from the left : a slice of blueberry and yogurt mousse cake, a date and walnut pastry, a coconut pastry, and pieces of mango pudding mousse cake and red bean mousse cake.
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Friday/ street hog

I ran some errands Friday morning, but then had I to go home and answer a dozen e-mails that came in from the Denver project.  Technology brings the work e-mails to my smart phone, but I cannot pull up full screen work sheets and applications on a tiny phone screen!

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This street ‘hog’ was parked on 5th Ave in downtown Seattle this morning .. I think it’s a food truck. It would also fit into a Mad Max movie – sort of.
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Here’s my view as I’m settling into my seat on Thursday night at the gate at Denver airport, ready to go home.
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Thursday/ the Western Cape is blue

Yesterday was Election Day in South Africa (the national elections is held every 5 years), so I had to check in on the results.   The election is the first one after Nelson Mandela’s death, and marks the 20th anniversary since he was elected South Africa’s first post-apartheid president.   As for the 2014 elections, seems to me there are no major surprises so far : the African National Congress (ANC) is on the way to win in all the provinces except the Western Cape. The Democratic Alliance holds sway there.  The support for any party after these two falls off precipitously, but hey – they keep trying.  There is the Economic Freedom Fighters with some support, and way, way down the list with 3,000 votes nationally, the Keep It Straight and Simple Party (KISS).  The KISS party’s logo is a kiss imprint of two lips. Yes.

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The 2014 election results as of Thursday, reported by the news24.co.za website.
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Wednesday/ 14th St early morning

My body clock is still shifted toward going to bed early and getting up early, so I went for a walk early in the morning.  (Normally I go to bed late and sleep until I have to get up!). Here are some pictures I took along 14th Street here in downtown Denver.

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This building used to house the Mountain States Telephone and Telegraph Company. Completed in 1929, it offered dialing telephone service for the first time in Denver. It is now occupied by communications company CenturyLink.
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A giant beer tap on the Euclid Bar and Kitchen Hall. Hmm. Do they discuss mathematics over a beer inside there? I hope so.
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The Ted in Ted’s Montana Grill is Ted Turner, CNN founder. I think Ted Turner owns half of the state of Montana (or something like that). He is credited with re-establishing large herds of bison there. From Wikipedia : As part of the restaurant’s unusual but aggressive approach to environmentalism, it “re-introduced the paper straw” , so as to not use plastic (paper straws have not been produced in the United States since 1970).
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And here is a panorama view across from Sam’s Diner on 15th Street. That’s the Denver clock tower lit up in pink on the left.
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Tuesday/ summery weather

For the first time this year while I had been in Denver, I left my jacket in the hotel.  The day-time temperatures reached into the 80s (26 °C+) here in Denver on Monday and Tuesday. I’m still a little bleary-eyed from jet lag, but today was already a lot better than Monday!

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The leaves on the trees along the 16th Street Mall are out, and people are walking their dogs .. and of course there are more people on the streets and sitting outside at restaurants than in the cold winter months.
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Monday/ Do Be Evil, Google?

It’s Monday and I was off to Denver early this morning.  No rest for the wicked, as the saying goes!

I read about ‘The Silicon Valley Conspiracy’ in Bloomberg Business Week on the airplane. Only thing is, it was for real.  Over the past several years, Google, Apple, Adobe and Intel conspired to use their vast wealth and warped sense of entitlement, says Businessweek, to suppress the salaries of their programmers and engineers. They basically agreed not to hire away each other’s employees.   The $324 million that the companies agreed to pay to settle a class-action law suit, amounts to 0.4% of their combined total revenue for the most recent quarter.   That ‘Don’t Be Evil’ slogan attributed to the Google of yore is starting to look awfully tarnished.

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Here’s a fictitious (or not?) conversation that Bloomberg Businessweek speculates about : the late Steve Jobs & Eric Schmidt of Apple and Sergey Brin of Google colluding to suppress the salaries of their programmers.  (P.S.  Google Wave, a fancy souped-up kind of e-mail,  was a failure).
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Sunday/ the tree is gone

I had the removal of one of the three big trees in my back yard scheduled for this past Friday, and it went ahead even though I was traveling.  The arborist that took the tree out stopped by today (just to say he planted a sign out on the sidewalk to advertise his business).   Seattle City Light had to take the power line coming into the house by the corner down for the day, and it took them until 12 noon on Friday to get here – but after that everything went well.   (Yes, I don’t like to take out trees, but this one has been making trouble for me for a number of years by giving squirrels access to the roof, dumping pine needles into the gutter, and it’s in the way of a new fence that has to go in right about where it stands).

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This is all that remains of the Douglas Fir tree (also called an Oregon Pine) at the northwest corner of my house. The wood will still be hauled away, of course.
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And here’s a hairy worm on the garage wall, now painted a chocolate brown color (previously green, same as the house) with white trim.
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Saturday night/ in Seattle

I made it in to my Seattle home at around 2 pm this afternoon.  The flight went well; Lufthansa took good care of us and I managed to sleep a little bit.   It’s just all those time zones we crossed to get here : my body clock has a lot of adjustment to do.

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I almost bought this Bavarian teddy bear in the duty-free shop. (It’s a little too big, I thought – but maybe I should have).
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‘Here it is all about the sausage’, says the tag line on Hermann’s sausage stand.

 

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I’m checking out the blue and gold tails of two Lufthansa’s fleet from my window seat on the bus that is taking us to our aircraft out on the tarmac.
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.. and we’re boarding. It’s an Airbus A330-300. This particular type of Airbus has been in service for about 10 years.

 

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Saturday/ connecting in Frankfurt

It’s 7 am here in Frankfurt.  We arrived an hour ago from Johannesburg, at 6 am.  The Germans run a sharp operation here (of course), with everyone at the airport at their posts  this early in the morning, and most of the duty-free stores and others open as well.

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This is still in Cape Town late Friday afternoon; I’m stepping onto the Boeing 737-800 twin-jet that took us to Johannesburg.   It’s unusual to have the airline’s URL painted right onto the fuselage, but South African Airways has done that :  the big red letters say www.flysaa.com
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This giant Lufthansa mobile is in Frankfurt airport’s Z concourse. Look for the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, the Statue of Liberty, the Brussels Atomium, the Burj Al Arab (Dubai Sail building) and even the Seattle Space Needle.
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All I had time for in Johannesburg was snap a few pictures of the African souvenirs for sale. A gaggle of Ndebele beaded dolls in the window at Johannesburg airport (saying good-bye?).

 

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These masks must be from West Africa; we don’t make them in South Africa.
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Friday/ at Cape Town airport

I’m at Cape Town airport.  I will go back the same way I came, with a stop in Johannesburg, then up north to Frankfurt, and then across the Atlantic to Seattle for an arrival on Saturday.

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The Star Alliance airplane viewed here from the 4th floor lounge at Cape Town airport, is impressive .. but could do with a little color, no? At the very far right of the picture is a green Kulula Air plane with a Europcar ad painted on its fuselage, and to its right an orange plane from Mango Airlines.  
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Thursday/ more errands

My time in Stellenbosch is running out, so here are some pictures I took as I ran errands with my brother and sister-in-law.

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Posing with outdoor art in Church Street in Stellenbosch. (The pigeon is not real, it’s bronze).
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A fine example of Cape Dutch architecture from the turn of the 20th century. Neethling House was built in 1908 and is in central Stellenbosch.
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A colorful and inquisitive chicken from an art store ..
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.. and a pensive, life-sized plush baboon.
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Wednesday/ Kerkstraat (Church Street)

Kerkstraat (Church Street) is a popular eating and shopping street in the center of Stellenbosch.  It also features some art galleries, and outdoor art.  I ran some errands in the area this afternoon, and could stop and take a picture here and there.

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This is the church of Kerkstraat (Church Street) in the center of Stellenbosch. The church was commissioned by commander Simon van der Stel and is 328 years old.
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I was just in time to catch this flat-bed truck as it pulled away with its rhinoceros artwork. (It’s a black rhinoceros, their conservation status in the wild classified as critically endangered). Kerkstraat has several art galleries.
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Tuesday/ furniture shopping

IMG_2218 smTuesday my sister-in-law and I checked out some furniture stores with my mom.  We need a new sleeper couch and a new driekwartbed (‘three quarter bed’, 74″ x 42″) for my mom’s new digs.  Yes, it’s still a long time before my mom will move, but we wanted to help since it will be a while (or quite a while) before we make it back out here.  We found a nice bed at the Tafelberg Furnishers store, but the sleeper couch offerings fell short.  All of them ugly and very uncomfortable to sit on!  We found a very nice one at a direct sales sleeper couch manufacturer in an industrial area on the way back to Stellenbosch.

 

Picture : Fabric from one of the furniture items (not one we plan to buy). The San hunter-gatherer peoples are the aboriginal people of South Africa who have lived here for millennia.  The San are one of fourteen known extant “ancestral population clusters” from which all known modern humans descend.

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Monday/ national holidays galore

We’re working our way through several closely-spaced national holidays here in South Africa : there was Good Friday and Easter Monday, and today (since Freedom Day fell on a Sunday). Then on Thursday May 1 it’s Workers Day .. and then on Wednesday May 7 it’s Election Day!  Whoah.    Because of the holiday my brother and I could not pursue the transitioning of a few more accounts into my mom’s name .. but we needed a break anyway, and took a little hike up the mountain here in the neighborhood.

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Here’s a nice view looking south, through the blue-gum trees.  These are not indigenous – nor are the pine trees we find here on our mountain slopes. 
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The proteas ARE indigenous, and beautiful. Here is one we found close to the trail. Sometimes also called sugarbushes, the Protea was named by Carl Linnaeus after the Greek god Proteus, who could change his form at will, because proteas have such different forms (there is about 100 species).
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And as I walked up to the house, the mountain was ablaze with the setting sun’s reflection from the rock faces.