a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
It was still raining steadily on Thursday and so the umbrellas were out. I am sitting on the bus on the way to lunch. It is nice of our driver to drive us to lunch when it rains since it is only two blocks or so to the cafeteria from the offices where we work. .
Typhoon Vicente had passed by Hong Kong by the time I arrived late Tue night, but left a lot of turmoil in its wake. We left Tokyo an hour late, circled before landing at Hong Kong for an hour, then waited on the tarmac for almost an hour. So by the time I cleared customs and had my luggage it was 1.30 am. The van scheduled for my pick-up several hours earlier had left. The airport hotels were all full .. I got a hotel room downtown, but the line at the taxi stand had 200 people, and the airport train was no longer running. One option remained : the airport’s night buses running every 30 mins. That got me to the hotel at 4 am. Quite an adventure.
We arrived at Narita airport in the Tokyo area. The layover is 4 hours, which is totally fine given that the more time I spend here the better the weather in Hong Kong will be at our arrival. The typhoon has actually made landfall and is now moving westwards, away from Hong Kong.
I am Hong Kong bound again, this time on United Airlines to Tokyo (9 hrs) and then on All Nippon Airlines to Hong Kong (4 hrs). There is trouble brewing in the form of tropical storm Vicente in the Hong Kong area, though. I might have to wait at Tokyo’s Narita airport for a few hours – or even stay over for a night.
It’s Rainier cherry season and I got some even though they are pretty darn expensive. The cherries were cultivated back in 1952 in Washington State. They are very sensitive to temperature, wind, and rain. About a third of a Rainier cherry orchard’s crop is eaten by birds.
I guess that’s like saying glass half empty, or glass half full? The USA today says the terms are synonymous, weather wise. But Seattle is right up there with the most cloudy days per year in the country : 226.
For my readers that are not in the USA, there was a massacre in a movie theater in the Denver (Colorado) area at midnight on Thursday at the opening of the new Batman movie there. A heavily armed 24-yr old guy shot 70 people, killing 12. So it is ironic 1. that I had mentioned ‘bullet’ in my post for Thursday, and 2. that USA Today newspaper’s Friday issue notes that $2.9 billion dollars’ firearms and hunting equipment was sold in the USA in 2011. I see Amazon has 2 of the RAP4 MilSimX M4 Assault Rifle left in stock. Only $795. Should I jump at it and put one in my Amazon shopping cart? (No – I should not.) Why do I see assault weapons for sale on your website, Amazon? Why is there no law against it, lawmakers of the US Congress? What a disgrace. 
Here is a current picture of the Bullitt Center*, Seattle’s ultra-green building. Denis Hayes, the center’s owner, says it’s like the first Prius that was built, so it’s appropriate that a Prius scampered by just as I took the picture. Note that there is no parking in the building for cars, though. Yikes. Not even for Priuses; only for bicycles. *There is another blog post about it on June 28, 2012.
Check these out! I bought this set of used coins on the Minsk aircraft carrier museum (see my post of Sunday July 1) for ¥120 (about US$20). The collection contains the smallest coins from some 50 countries. Notably absent, though : the venerable one penny from the United States, and the one cent from South Africa! Hmm. The set DOES contain coins from some very unusual countries : North Korea and Myanmar, for example.
Let it be noted that there is not much to look at in my poor neglected front yard ! ..but I do have this brilliant scarlet-red rose (actually a few of them) in bloom to show off.
The roses now make me think of the preamble to the classic 1977 song You Took The Words Right Out of My Mouth, written by Jim Steinman, and sung by Meatloaf:
Boy: On a hot summer night,
would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?
Girl: Will he offer me his mouth?
Boy: Yes.
Girl: Will he offer me his teeth?
Boy: Yes.
Girl: Will he offer me his jaws?
Boy: Yes.
Girl: Will he offer me his hunger?
Boy: Yes.
Girl: Again, will he offer me his hunger?
Boy: Yes!
Girl: And will he starve without me?
Boy: Yes!
Girl: And does he love me?
Boy: Yes.
Girl: Yes.
Boy: On a hot summer night,
would you offer your throat to the wolf with the red roses?
Girl: Yes.
Boy: I bet you say that to all the boys !
I open all my junk mail – and there was a lot piled up this time – to make sure there are no personal information printed inside by the overzealous marketers that get one’s address from .. where? Facebook? Google? Amazon? Some shared address list? Most of the offers are completely off the mark. So forgive my ranting that is about to follow.
How about a new Mickey Mouse credit card ‘for my family’ from JP Morgan Chase? – a bank with $2.3 trillion in assets that wants to lend me money at credit card rates. Money it gets from the US Government almost at 0%. Or should I fill out the 2012 Presidential Platform Survey from the Republican National Committee? I am very sure they will flinch and quickly crumple up the form I send them. Maybe I can attend the Seattle rally for 2012 independent Presidential Candidate Dick McCormick? To tell him : it’s just not going to happen for you, man. The Democrats and Republicans are collectively spending $1 billion dollars – that’s with a B – on campaigning in this most-moneyed-EVER election. How much money do you have, to spend? Finally, got to love the environmental non-profits (‘Environmental Defense Fund’) that send whole brochures, or almanacs for 2013 printed on glossy paper. How many trees were used for that?
It’s less than two weeks away, the opening of the 2012 Olympics. Here is a very nice map of the venues in London and also outside that USA Today published in a special edition this weekend. And the gold medal has shockingly little gold in! It’s basically a silver medal.
It is turning into a long day : the 3 hrs to Seoul and 9 hours to Seattle disappeared into thin air. I arrived in Seattle on Saturday 15 minutes ‘earlier’ than my Saturday departure time in Hong Kong.
This limerick in honor of Einsten’s Theory of Relativity has been around a long time, but it still makes me smile : There once was a girl named Bright/ Whose speed was much faster than light./ She set out one day/ In a relative way/And returned on the previous night.
I am at Hong Kong airport. I like to check out the offerings at the little Muji store (it’s Japanese) – especially the exotic snack food items.
My flight on Asiana Airlines to Seattle with my usual connection in Seoul, is on Saturday. Check out the Friday night sunset view from the 15th floor of the Marriott Skycity hotel at Hong Kong airport. (See the plane that is about to land?).
That’s what we told our audience after today’s presentation (a proposal for a new project). We’re up against three firms with proposals. From what we could tell, it went well. (The presentation was in Chinese, as were the questions from the audience, but they were translated for us). It has been a hectic three days since Tuesday : three nights and in and out of three hotels.
We sequestered ourselves in the Beijing office today to prepare for a big presentation tomorrow (Thursday). It is for a new project. The pictures are all from in and around the Beijing office.
Here are my pictures from today’s trip to Beijing. The flight from Shenzhen to Beijing is almost three hours to the north, but that did not make much difference in the weather : Beijing seems to be as warm as Shenzhen is this time of the year.
It’s Monday and the hotel shows its appreciation for the long-term guests (me) on Mondays by leaving some treats in the room. Alas, I have to check out in the morning since I will go up to Beijing for a day or two to attend a presentation.
It is very warm here. We’re at the bottom of the lower red blob; just outside of it right on the coast. So we’re not quite up to (35°C/ 95°F), but almost.