Willem's Planet

The Electric Light Orchestra sings that a cure’s been found for good old rocket lag (in 2095) in their song ‘Here is the News’.  But hey – it’s only 2012. So travelers jetting across the world and I still have to make do with sleep remedies that are no silver bullet. Melatonin does not work for me – at least not the recommended 5 mg.  I now use prescription zolpidem (generic ‘Ambien’) which is definitely effective to putting one to sleep, but for no more than 4 hours. I take it only for two or three nights, get up when I can no longer sleep, and then take a 2 hour nap later in those first few days.  After that my body is up to its own devices to get fully adjusted! And how does the stuff work, anyway? Well, it’s a short-acting hypnotic that inhibits neurotransmission – brain activity – by binding at the same site as the brain’s natural inhibitor called GABA.

The stuff works quickly : in 15 mins! So not long before you start to drag and  g  o   t o   s  l   e   e  e  p ..

I thought this picture below of a neuron was very cool (picture from Wikipedia’s entry for ‘neuron’). A neuron is an electrically excitable nerve cell that transmits signals. The connections between nerve cells are called synapses.

Greece’s latest bailout has been approved by the European Union members : some €123bn. (Japan’s NHK TV put President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, and Italian prime minister, Mario Monti, in the outfits of the classic Nintendo video game Super Mario brothers*).  The target is to reduce Greece’s debt to 120% of GDP by 2020. (Yikes).  Count among the skeptics Germany, the Netherlands and Finland – given that derailments in Greece’s adherence to austerity measures have happened several times now.

So Greece’s finances are in terrible shape, but the whole of Eastern Europe, and the I’s : Italy, Ireland and Iceland, have have debt ratings of ‘speculative’ according to Standard & Poor’s.

*Pop quiz : what is Mario’s younger brother’s name? Answer – Luigi.

As a footnote, public debt in the USA at the end of 2011 was some $15 trillion, close to 100% of GDP.  The Congressional Budget Office is worried about it, and during June 2011, called for  ‘large and rapid policy changes to put the nation on a sustainable fiscal course’.

The third Monday of February is celebrated in honor of George Washington, the first President of the United States.  (Yes, the official name for Presidents’ Day is Washington’s Birthday .. and his actual birth date was February 22, 1732). The Republican party’s candidates were out campaigning and I havesay most reasonable people will be taken aback by some arguments being made. Rick Santorum actually compares President Obama to Adolf Hitler, saying that Americans at that time waited 18 months before acting against Hitler thinking ‘he’s not that bad’. And this is a guy now leading/ on a par with Mitt Romney among Republicans in Michigan for the state’s upcoming Feb 28 Republican primary.  Romney’s father George was chairman and president of American Motors Corporation from 1954 to 1962, and the 43rd Governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969.

I am about to go downstairs to check out and hop on the shuttle that takes passengers to the airport a stone’s throw away. The South China Morning Post reports on an on-going story of a local Shenzhen company that is sueing Apple over the iPad trademark.  So far a Hong Kong court has ruled in Apple’s favor and a mainland court against them.  I suppose in the worst case Apple can call its pad an ‘iTab’ and continue selling it in China.  It is not known how many iPads have been sold in China so far. Another report tells of Kim Jong-il’s eldest son that was kicked out of a Macau hotel after running up a bill of US$15,000. 

I will leave it to my savvy readers to identify the Party leaders on this very red iPhone cover from one of my colleagues here at work.

But what’s with the red cups?  Well. Those are red Solo cups. Around since the seventies, and manufactured in the state of Illinois, the plastic cup has since arrived as a pop culture icon in the USA. It is the informal beer, wine or soda pop goblet of parties everywhere. The cup’s merits are even praised in a (somewhat silly) song released last year by country singer Toby Keith. Warning : semi-explicit lyrics ahead !

Red Solo Cup from Toby Keith’s 2011 ‘Clancy’s Tavern’ album (songwriters: Beavers, Jim / Warren, Brett/ Warren, Brad/ Beavers, Brett) –
Now a red Solo cup is the best receptacle / For barbeques, tailgates, fairs and festivals / And you, sir, do not have a pair of testicles / If you prefer drinking from glass / A red Solo cup is cheap and disposable / In 14 years they are decomposable / And unlike my home they are not foreclosable / Freddie Mac can kiss my a— 

I only know Garfield* the cat from newspaper cartoon strips even though I’m sure there is a lot to be seen of him on the Cartoon Network in the USA.   Here on the hotel’s TV channel he speaks Mandarin, but his antics are easy to follow.   He is his old self with regards to laziness and eating obsessively! The name of the pooch is Odie.  That’s him with ears and tongue flapping while leaning out the car window.

*created by Jim Davis and published since 1978. Garfield is named after Jim’s grandfather.

‘Just Marry’ says the English on the hood of this Porsche wagon parked in front of the hotel where we stay. Even though Chinese weddings have been influenced by the way it is done in the West, some key differences remain.  The couple registers the wedding first, and then one or more wedding banquets (xǐ-jǐu 喜酒 or ‘joyful wine’) will follow – and those are far more important than the actual wedding itself. The bride and groom also have their pictures taken days or weeks before their wedding day with glamor shots from historic sites and picturesque spots.

The Year of the Dragon is an auspicious year for marriage in China, and so the number of marriages in 2012 is expected to be up 10% or more compared with recent years.

If you were king for a day in your sport, what big change would you make? asked CNN in a segment today of four sports champions. Tennis (Boris Becker*): Abolish deuce-advantage scoring – to make matches shorter.  Golf (Gary Player) : Push back the tee by 50 yards for professionals – to accommodate newer club and golf ball technology. Athletics (Sergei Bubka) : Use radio transmitters to report time differences between runners. Soccer : Use goal-line technology – to indicate if a goal was scored or not.

*On 7 July 1985, Becker became the first unseeded player and the first German to win the Wimbledon singles title, defeating Kevin Curren in four sets.  At the time he was the youngest ever male Grand Slam singles champion at 17.  Four years later in 1989 Michael Chang would win the French Open at an even younger 17 years of age.

.. and not only for weather, as I look out from the back of the hotel on the 8th floor over Dameisha at 7am in the morning. The Wall Street Journal reported on Feb 1 from Shanghai that the average housing price in 100 major Chinese cities fell for a fifth consecutive month in January as China’s property market continued to slow.  But look at the graph : the declines are fractions of a percentage, and seem to decline at a steady pace.  So not a sharp plunge in the Chinese real estate market for now.

Turning to the US real estate market, check out the S&P/Case-Shiller 10 city Index, a graph I found at http://www.housingviews.com.   Home prices are down some 30% from the peak in late 2005.  And there is no bottom in home values yet .. even with 30-year mortgage rates at a record low.