a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
There was lots of water at the 2012 French Open Mens Final between Nadal and Djokovic : not Perrier mineral water, but rain. So when the match was suspended (again) for the day, Nadal was up two sets to one, and Djokovic up 2-1 in the 4th set. Play is to resume at 1pm local time on Monday.
Poland and the Ukraine are co-hosting the Euro Cup 2012 soccer event that started Friday night
. CCTV1 transmitted the Netherlands-Denmark match live last night. I watched until the Danes got the first goal in the 24th minute and then went to sleep .. turned out that was the only goal. ‘Slordig Oranje hard onderuit’ (Sloppy Orange team fell down hard’) says Dutch paper Volkskrant on-line. But they point out that the Orange team lost their first-round match in 1988 against Russia and then went on the win the Cup. So all is not lost for the Dutch?
Friday night found us in the Damiesha Sheraton’s lobby again for a beer and a burger (and other food). One of us ordered the burger without mayonnaise. ‘Mei you mayo’ I chimed in, and we all laughed at the instant double entendre (of sorts). Méi yǒu (没有) means have not / has not / does not exist / to not have / to not be. Here is another example. Some time ago I called the front desk after I had settled in my room. There was no internet connection cable in the wall (there usually is). Up to my room comes a guy, takes a look under the desk, looks up at me – somewhat surprised – and says ‘méi yǒu’. Yes, yes, ‘méi yǒu cable’ I said, grinning. (The cable was actually tucked away in another place in the desk). And what is mayonnaise in Chinese? Dàn huáng jiàng, literally ‘yellow egg jam’.
The National Higher Education Entrance Examination here in China, or commonly known as Gaokao, is an academic examination held annually for two to three days across the country. There is a lot of pressure : almost 9.15 million students will take the exam to vie for 6.85 million vacancies in the country’s universities and colleges. There are about 310,000 exam rooms at 7,300 venues nationwide. All of this sounds very similar to my situation in high school in South Africa with the Matriculation Exam I did ! (Once upon a time, a long time ago).
In the USA taking the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude Test) is an important part of the admissions process – but just one of many criteria used by colleges and universities to make admissions decisions. The SAT test consists of three parts- Critical Reading, Mathematics and Writing. The scores from each section can range from 200 to 800, so the best possible total score is 2400. The average score is about 1500, though.
I love the beautiful design on this dinner plate. It’s from a grocery store right here in Dameisha.
NHK World TV had a documentary on Sunday night, reporting that the world’s fastest supercomputer in the city of Kobe is nearing completion. It is called the K computer. The water-cooled beast has more than 80,000 nodes and consumes 13 MW of electricity. That’s enough power for 10,000 homes. It is the first machine to break 10 petaflops : 10 15 or 10 quadrillion calculations per second. It used mostly for research – molecular modeling and finding matching molecules or genes for cancer treatments and the like.
The Telegraph has compiled a cool interactive timeline of the 60 years since Queen Elizabeth ascended the throne, here http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/the_queens_diamond_jubilee/9305109/Queens-Diamond-Jubilee-timeline-60-years-of-history-in-the-UK-the-world-and-the-Royal-Family.html
The decade when I made my entrance into the world shows a Pan Am 747. I see decimalization of the currency in the UK occurred in 1971. The penny farthing (¼ penny) bit the dust in this conversion, and the Pound became the Pound Sterling. In South Africa a decimal currency was actually introduced 10 years earlier almost to the day, on 14 February 1961. TWO South African Rand replaced one South African pound.
I had to get out of the hotel room for a bit on Saturday, and off to the Mix-C Mall in Shenzhen I went late afternoon, a 20 minute taxi ride. I would have walked around more but it was raining when I emerged from the mall, and I decided to come back instead of waiting to see if it would clear up.
Here’s Friday night’s dinner menu from the newly remodeled Wild Seafood Restaurant across from the Sheraton Hotel. We ordered all the items shown here except the chao fan (fried rice). And we did have seafood – a big grey, flat fish from the restaurant’s fish tanks as usual – a little bit like a sole, which is cooked and served up with a soy-sesame oil-green onion sauce.
Our bus is approaching the toll booth for the Yanba Expressway on the way back to Dameisha from the offices at Daya Bay. 收费 ‘Pay toll’ says the big yellow lettering on the road surface. (As far as I can tell the car is a Ford Focus ‘Classic’ .. an older model of the Ford Focus that is sold new in China. Ford announced in April that it would build a $760 million assembly plant in Hangzhou, two weeks after announcing another $600 million plan to expand an assembly plant in Chongqing, and less than six weeks after completing a third assembly plant in Chongqing. 
But they are a little late to the party enjoyed by General Motors, since car sales in China increased only by about 2.5% last year after a decade of 10%+ growth every year.)
So! These are the biscuits that came out of the Especially Thick Biscuit box. The biscuits are in the mold of ‘rich tea’ or Marie biscuits. They are good and ‘super big’, but not thick in dimension. It turns out the thickness refers to the consistency of the biscuit.
This cardboard box with the cute translation is from the grocery store at work. I will see if I can find some of the ‘especially thick biscuit’ on the shelf tomorrow !
Monday morning was very wet.
This is the Dapeng Fortress billboard at the entrance of Da Peng, the town where we work, seen through the bus window.
The rain showers from Saturday gave way to nicer weather here today. It was still cloudy but in the mid-80s. So there were plenty of visitors to the Dameisha beach, and the sellers of swimwear and swim floaties were out in full force as well. This sea turtle was one of my favorites.
I found this picture on a side door of a restaurant I walked by here in Dameisha on Saturday night on the way to dinner. The warriors are from the Three Kingdoms period, the period 220 A.D. to 280 A.D. immediately following the loss of the Han Dynasty rulers. The red in the picture may well symbolize blood, as the Three Kingdoms period was one of the bloodiest in Chinese history. Still : books, television dramas, films, cartoons, anime, games, and music on the topic are still regularly produced in China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Korea, Vietnam and Japan. [Information from Wikipedia].
These are Chinese bayberries (yáng méi 杨梅) from the fruit market close to where we work. They are about the size of a US quarter coin, sweet, tart, and have a round seed in the middle of the fruit.
We flew across Japan and approached Seoul from the south this time. The connection time there was just right : stretched my legs, brushed my teeth and then boarded Asiana’s Boeing 747 that took us to Hong Kong.
It was only three hours to Hong Kong, and we arrived there at 10.30pm Thu night. That made for my usual midnight border crossing into mainland China.
I made it to the airport with two hours to spare before the flight to Seoul departs. I usually try for three for an international flight. I had e-mails to send off and I almost left my electric toothbrush in the bathroom – not a calamity to leave it behind, but still. And as always : don’t forget the charger. Below is my flight from Flight Aware .. the usual trek across the Pacific to Seoul, and then down to Hong Kong for a late Thursday night arrival.
I am getting ready to go out on Wednesday for my next trip to China. It’s a new project. So last chance for anything that needs to go with to make the cut and jump into my suitcases. (If only it were possible to snap my fingers and the suitcases just assemble themselves! ).
The limited catch of wild salmon from the Copper River in Alaska arrived in Seattle on Friday. ‘Copper River’ salmon is not a species .. the salmon from there could be King, Sockeye or Coho, as explained on the web site http://copperriversalmon.org/facts/species
And check out this picture (from Associated Press) with the Alaska Airlines crew showing off a big old salmon that has just been flown in. Makes me wonder if they had it on board inside the plane. And better watch out! those uniforms may need to be sent to the cleaners immediately!