We had just under an inch of snow on the ground here in Capitol Hill today. There might be more snow tomorrow.
Snowy Sunday ❄️
Saturday/ freezing rain 🧊
There was a little bit of thunder at noon today, followed by a spell of freezing rain.
An hour or two later, there was blue sky. Today’s high was 40°F (4°C).
There might be a dusting of snow on the ground tomorrow here in the city, say the meteorologists.
Friday/ rain ☔
There was rain last night and today, a welcome break in the dry weather of the last few weeks.
The snowpacks across Washington State are lagging from their normal levels, but there is still time to make up the deficit. The snowpacks on the mountains peak at around April 1.
Snowpacks (that melt during spring and summer) are a significant source of water for reservoirs around the state, for agriculture, and for hydroelectric power generation.
Thurday/ a snake on a stamp ✉️
There was mail today, with a new Year Of The Snake forever stamp on, issued by the US Postal Service.
Issued Jan. 14, 2025
Perf. 11 Serpentine Die-cut | Self-adhesive | Design: Camille Chew | Engraving: Banknote Corporation of America | Issued in sheets of 20
6376 FOREVER (73c) Multicolored | Lunar New Year – Year Of The Snake
[Sources: stampworld.com, USPS]
Wednesday/ Happy Lunar New Year 🐍
Happy Lunar New Year— the Year of the Snake.
It sounds a little ominous, but I guess every year cannot be the Year of the Dragon.
Tuesday/ lost in translation 😮
TROEF = to trump
VREET = to eat (used for animals), or to eat like an animal
How strange, I thought this morning, after completing my Afrikaans Wordle, that there really is no English word for VREET.
In Afrikaans, humans ‘eet’ (eat) and animals ‘vreet’ (eat).
Example:
Ek eet die appel. (I eat the apple).
Die vark vreet die appel. (The pig eats the apple).
If someone eats voraciously or sloppily, you might use the ‘animal’ word for eat to ask the person:
‘Wat vreet jy?’ (What are you pigging out on?),
meaning the person eats like an animal/ a pig.
Monday/ a rough day for Nvidia 📉
Advances in artificial intelligence by Chinese upstarts rattled U.S. markets on Monday, with the threat of greater competition prompting a slide in shares of the biggest technology companies.
The Chinese A.I. company DeepSeek has said it can match the abilities of cutting-edge chatbots while using a fraction of the specialized computer chips that leading A.I. companies rely on. That’s prompted investors to rethink the heady valuations of companies like Nvidia, whose equipment powers the most advanced A.I. systems, as well as the enormous investments that companies like Alphabet, Meta and OpenAI are making to build their businesses.
On Monday, the S&P 500 index fell 1.5 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 3.1 percent. Nvidia was hit hard, plunging 16.9 percent and losing roughly $600 billion in market value. Falling tech stocks also dented market indexes in Europe and Japan.
-Jason Karaian and Joe Rennison writing for the New York Times
Nvidia (NVDA) stock dropped nearly 17% Monday, leading a sell-off across chip stocks and the broader market after a new AI model from China’s DeepSeek raised questions about AI investment and the rise of more cost-efficient artificial intelligence agents. Nvidia’s decline shaved $589 billion off the AI chipmaker’s market cap, the largest single-day loss in stock market history.
My comments: It is an eye-popping decline in market cap for the day, but this stock has rocketed up twentyfold (that would be 2,000 %) over the last five years— and then some.
It was at $6 in Jan. 2020 and at $149.43 (let’s say $150) Jan 6, 2025.
Sunday/ postmarks from S.W.A. ✉️
I sifted through a shoebox of envelope clippings to put together this set of postmarks from South West Africa*.
Windhoek is the capital, and the postmarks also show Keetmanshoop, Outjo, Koes, Maltahöhe, Okahandja, Oranjemund, Walvis Bay, Okaukuejo, Tsumeb, Kalkrand, Mariental, Swakopmund, Grootfontein, Karibib, Leonardville, Lüderitz, Omaruru, Otjiwarongo, Usakos, Aus and Stampriet.
*South West Africa became Namibia after its independence from South Africa in March 1990.
Saturday/ underwatermelon 🍉
Uh-oh.
I started playing one of the games that Neflix offers: Underwatermelon.
I like it. (It reminds me a little bit of Tetris from wayy-back when I first started working).
I hope I don’t get too addicted to it .. but what if I do?
The levels of the game are indicated by Gate numbers. This is Gate 4 and I still have to earn 35 points (by combining fruit), before the gate will open up, and the fruit float up to a new gate. The nice thing about going to a new gate (a new level), is that the biggest fruit floats to the top quickly, collide and combine into one bigger fruit, and leave a little more space to work withe in the new gate.
Friday/ a dry January 🏜️
Happy Friday.
We will have our first 5 pm sunset for the year here in Seattle tomorrow.
It’s been frosty in the mornings and cold by day every day since I’ve been back. And no rain.
Thursday/ the camera has landed 📷
I left my camera behind in my hotel room in Cape Town on Monday of last week. I had it picked up at the hotel, and shipped back to me.
(Thanks for the help, Chris!)
I think this was the last straw: this camera stays home next time I go on an overseas trip.
I need a light, compact travel camera that can go into my backpack.
I checked the route that the camera took to get to me from Cape Town, and it looks like this:
Picked up in Cape Town, South Africa.
Arrived at DHL Sort Facility in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Arrived at DHL Sort Facility in Leipzig, Germany.
Arrived at DHL Facility East Midlands, UK.
Arrived at DHL Facility, London-Heathrow, UK.
Arrived at DHL Sort Facility, Los Angeles Gateway, CA.
Arrived at DHL Sort Facility, Seattle, WA.
Landed on Willem’s porch. (Landed in my hands, that is. I had to sign for it).
Wednesday/ additions to my album 📖
Is a stamp collection— any collection— ever complete?
One can always add objects that are ever-so-slightly different than the ones already in there.
Check out these additions to my South African stamp album, which is already a complete collection of all the issues by the South African post office*.
*The years 1910 to 2020, when the last postage stamps were issued.
Iceland stopped producing postage stamps in 2020 as well, and Finland has indicated it may soon follow suit.
“Post your letters during the lunch hour” instructs the booklet on the back. Cute— but in 2025 we don’t really have lunch hours and definitely no letters to put in the mail anymore; a time now long gone😔
Are they really different stamps? Of course they are.
The 30c stamp in this series was printed on phosphorescent as well as non-phosphorescent paper, and therefore the two versions are also different stamps!
(I only had a pair of these stamps— no singles— and I don’t break up pairs, so the pair goes into the album as-is).
All other stamps in the series were printed on phosphorescent paper only.
One needs a UV-light to see the difference.
Tueday/ go Ben! 🎾
It was a disappointing day for Carlos Alcaraz fans (me): he lost his quarterfinal match against Novak Djokovic.
Ben Shelton (22, 🇺🇸 ) is playing against Lorenzo Sonego (29, 🇮🇹 ) tonight— Wednesday in Australia— in another quarterfinal match. He is up by one set to none, and should win. Go, Ben!
Monday/ watching tennis 🎾
It was Martin Luther King Day here in the United States.
Also, I heard that a new— old— president of the United States was inaugurated today.
My TV remained switched off though .. and I will only turn it on for Netflix and Australian Open tennis the rest of the week.
*Paul’s outfit makes me think of a GI Joe action figure!
Sunday ☀️
I made it to Volunteer Park today, all bundled up.
It felt colder than the 42 °F (5 °C) reported on my phone’s weather app.
Saturday/ from South Africa to Seattle ✉
The mailman delivered all my mail that they had held while I was gone, today.
There were the usual pieces of junk mail, and a few items I had purchased on Ebay just before I left.
Check out this envelope that was sent from South Africa to Seattle in 1929.
As a rule, I don’t collect envelopes— just stamps— but this one was too interesting to pass up.
Upon its arrival on U.S. shores in New York City, US Postal Services levied 4c of additional postage on the piece of mail (the two red stamps on the left).
I imagine that Mrs. Nightingale received her mail in Seattle some time later, after paying the 4c postage that was due.
P.S. As of today, the cost of a standard “First-Class Mail” letter (up to 1 ounce) is $0.73 with a Forever stamp. The 73c is almost exactly what 4c from 1929 would came to, with inflation figured into it.
This neo-classical building was completed in 1912. Wells Fargo used to occupy the building, but closed its branch there in 2018.
The building was sold to Hunters Capital in fall of 2020.
The main space inside the building has since been turned into a gym dedicated to indoor climbing (a so-called bouldering gym).
[Photo from seattle.gov, and taken around 1925]
Friday afternoon/ east, west, home best 🏡
The world traveler is home.
We were bused out to the Airbus 350-900 sitting on the tarmac, so that we could clamber aboard with the stairs. Let me just stipulate that the guys wearing t-shirts may create the impression that we had summer weather out there. We did not— it was freezing!
We were international arrivals, and so we walked across the skybridge to the baggage claim and passport control, which is where I stopped to take this picture.
Our flight waited a little bit for our luggage, and then found it on the baggage claim carousel next to ours, for the flight from Frankfurt that arrived about the same time as ours. Then it was on to the Global Entry kiosk for me. There the was no line, and it took literally a few seconds for the face-recognition system to greenlight my entry into the United States. This way out, said an official, and that was it. So no passport stamp needed, no passport, no nothing. (Registering for Global Entry does cost $120 for a five-year membership.)
Friday morning/ at the flughafen 🛫
I am at Munich International Airport, and will be heading home in just an hour or so.
I could have taken a taxi or an Uber (for €100), but the train is more fun. Our train was split in two at Neufarn station and the front part went to Freising and the back part to the airport (I was in the right part of the train!). There is a split in the train track.
Thursday/ beautiful inside 🇺
It was my last day in Munich, and I ran out to Marienplatz one more time with the streetcar.
It was just about noon, and the glockenspiel* on the townhall’s clock tower played to a smattering of on-lookers that risked getting frostbite on their fingertips as they held up their phones to record a video of it. (I was one of them).
From Marienplatz I went to a few beautiful U-bahn stations on the U1 line to take pictures.
*The Rathaus-Glockenspiel is a large mechanical clock located in Marienplatz square, in old town Munich. Famous for its life-size characters, the clock twice daily re-enacts scenes from Munich’s history.
Wednesday/ snow on the ground 🌨️
It started snowing at around 8 am this morning here in Munich, but it could not have been more than an inch an or so, from what I could tell.
I used the Line 19 streetcar again to get Hauptbahnhof (the main train station), and from there, ran out to Odeonsplatz and a comic book store on Fraunhoferstrasse.
(The sidewalk surfaces were treacherous with the snow and ice, and there were no pedestrian crossings to speak of. Then I realized that is the other use of any U-bahn station: it’s an under passage for pedestrians to get from one side of an intersection to the other).
I bought used three comic books for all of Є8.40. More books to weigh down my luggage but hey, I was still 10+ pounds under the weight limit with both my suitcases when I checked them in at Cape Town.
