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.
Friday night found nine gringos (foreigners) upstairs at the Tequila Coyote Cantina., a Mexican restaurant in the Futian district in Shenzhen. There was even a page with Tex-Mex items on the menu. After some translation difficulty for our request for a pitcher* of margarita cocktail mix, the restaurant improvised and brought the good stuff out in a Carlsberg beer pitcher.
*the Chinese word for pitcher is ping瓶
This picture was on the wall : the main square of Mexico City’s historic center. That is a really large flag !
Sign for Moutai next to the restaurant. Moutai is top-of-the-shelf Chinese baijiu (liquor), produced in the town of Maotai (茅台镇), Guizhou province, Southwest China.Lots of bumper stickers on this car. This is on the way in to the city of Shenzhen from Dameisha.Night scene outside the restaurant as we waited for a taxi to take us back to Dameisha. This is in the central Futian district in Shenzhen.
Every year on Feb 9, the Fisherman’s Cooperative in Tokyo offers fine torafugu (Japanese puffer fish) to the Imperial Palace. The picture is from NHK TV. Fugu has become one of the most celebrated and notorious dishes in Japanese cuisine. It must be meticulously prepared to remove toxic parts and to avoid contaminating the meat with the lethal poison tetrodotoxin found in the little fish’s organs. There is no antidote, and the poison is not affected by cooking. It attacks the nervous system and leaves its victims unable to breathe. The best the emergency room can do for you is to pump you full of active carbon (to absorb the poison from your stomach) and put you on life support to see if you make it !
I got these ‘lady finger’ bananas from a colleague. She got them from a seller at a gas station a few hours away. The little bananas are sweet, and are grown in Australia as well.
.. 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.
These pictures are all from Shenzhen’s Futian district, from the Central Walk mall and the mix-C mall. There is still evidence of the start of the 2012 Year of the Dragon everywhere.
These buildings are in the Futian district .. not sure which businesses own them, but I like the upside-down taper of the one on the left.
A sign at the entrance of the Central Walk mall.
This Coke-can dragon display is at the entrance of the Central Walk shopping mall.The Supermans and Batmans are inside a coin-operated try-to-snag-it grab machine.This stuffed 'Sping Dragon' from the Carrefour dept store is about 6 feet long and costs ¥660 ($US 110).This from Carrefour's food department. I loved the bags in which this Chinese rice came. The price was ¥64 (about $US10) for 10 kg (22 lbs).The rice from Thailand was much more expensive at ¥153 (about $US 25) for 10 kg (22 lbs).More Thai rice.This is a display at the Mix-C mall. The fish is a sign for prosperity for the new year.An origami alphabet book from the Japanese Muji store has an American political animal in (soon to become extinct?).Lamp post sign outside Mix-C mall while I am waiting for a taxi to Dameisha .... and some red lanterns still on, on other lamp posts, this while the taxi takes me back to Dameisha.
On Sundays NHK World TV shows the work of artists and graphic designers, and I liked the crisp look of these pictures of that illustrated how good layouts and some forethought can make it easier for everyone in the crowd. Of course, everyone has to play by the rules ! The website is www.mizuhiro.com.
It is difficult for a new arrival to get to the buffet service with this layout ..Better to line up the tables with a starting point (trays and plates first).. and then everything else is easyNo controls makes it difficult for passengers getting caught in a group moving in the opposite direction.
The handrail is a safety measure, and the designated directional lanes keep the predestrian traffic flowing.
Those of us ‘left behind’ by our colleagues – they go home to Shanghai and Beijing – did our usual beer-and-a-bite at the Sheraton hotel on Friday night. On Saturday night another fireworks ruckus erupted here in Dameisha, this time from behind the Sheraton. I noticed that the right section of the hotel is dark .. it is winter after all, and the weather not nice enough to go to the beach.
Fireworks at the Damiesha Sheraton viewed from my hotel balcony.
The cover of the book. There is one for the USA in the series as well and I will have to get it next the next time I stop over at Seoul airport.I did not know this .. and now I know it's OK to eat my rice on Asiana Airlines (Korean airline) with the spoon !Here is a plausable explanation as to why Japanese people avoid internal conflict almost at all costs.Lots of signs! I spot a Kodak film seller (for how much longer?) and a Dunkin' Donuts sign among the Korean ones.Getting married in Korea? Better brush up those family titles! Getting it wrong creates a bad impression with the in-laws, says the book.The largest chaebols (family-owned business conglomerates) in Korea are Samsung Group, LG Group and Hyundai Kia Automotive Group.Korean presidents have all ran into misfortuneCIA World Factbook (Google it, it has all kinds of interesting stuff) reports GDP per capita numbers for 2011 as follows: USA $48,100 (2011 est.), South Africa $11,000 (2011 est.), South Korea $31,700 (2011 est.), North Korea $1,800 (2011 est.), China $8,400 (2011 est.) and Japan $34,300 (2011 est.). Of course direct comparison of the numbers is complicated by different costs of living - and several other factors - in different countries.The Korean peninsula has been invaded many, many times in previous centuries!Wikipedia reports Posco had an output of 35.4 million tonnes of crude steel in 2010, making it the world's third-largest steelmaker by that measure (after ArcelorMittal and Baosteel).There is spicy food all over the world, but the author puts Korea is at the top of the list.The red pepper paste comes with my bibimbap meal on Asiana Airlines. I put just a little bit of it in my food.So there is keeping up with the Joneses in Korea as well !I am sure many people over the world are hoping for the Koreans to make this happen : reunify the North and the South.
I am still looking for an opportunity to stop over long enough in Seoul to stay in the city for a day or two. This picture book I bought at Incheon airport provides very interesting insights into the Korean history and the Korean mind (a map of the Korean consciousness, says the cover of the book by Won-bok Rhie).
Formatting note : iPads may not display all the pictures in the correct orientation .. not sure why.
Bloomberg Businessweek gives a very interesting update about the merger between United and Continental Airlines in their latest issue. The picture is from my iPad .. I’m still getting used to reading my magazines this way!
The new merged airline sent enough coffee into the sky last year to brew 62 million cups. (And Starbucks that was served on the old United has lost the contract for the new merged airline). Continental people in Houston have had to move to Chicago where the new headquarters is. But one of the biggest and most frightening challenges so far has been merging the flight information systems. If data were corrupted in the switch-over from two systems into one, the airline could find itself without vital information about its flights : destination and arrival times, flight numbers, or locations. For the final test last October, they flew an empty 737 Continental jet from Houston to El Paso, made believe it ran into a mechanical problem and made it turn around. At Houston they changed the flight number and sent it to Austin. Everything worked and the information was updated in the United system. Then on Nov 2 just after midnight, they took the United system off-line. For the next hour the United flights were tracked manually while the Continental system information was flowed into the United system. Plans were in place for mass cancellations of flights the next morning if there were problems with the cut-over. At 1.23 am the entire Ops Center was looking at the the tracking screens as the United system came back on-line, and burst into applause. The Continental flights showed up. The only small glitch was that flights that had crossed the international dateline during the outage had 24 hours added to their arrival time.
Dragon fruit from a seller here in Da Peng : called huǒ lóng guǒ (火龍果/火龙果) 'fire dragon fruit' in Chinese
We still go to lunch every day at 12.00 noon to the cafeteria : a welcome break from the slog at work. These dragon fruit are from a fruit seller close by. I didn’t buy any today but will get some next time and report back how much they cost.
Extremely cold air from Siberia moves in this time of year ..
We are at the point of ‘freezing’ our test system, the same way the little water fall in the pictures from NHK World TV’s weather report has been frozen. At this point in an SAP project, all the moving parts of the Quality Assurance System come to a stop. No more tweaks to the custom code we added, no more changes to the extracted data which will be converted, and even on-going little defect fixes have now been put on hold. It’s not that the system is a house of cards that will collapse, but before you go to Production, you need to draw a line in the sand and say ‘This is it. This is the car, the Magnificent Flying Machine, the solution – we built’. We will go live (switch it on), and then after that any change to it is called Production Support.
.. and has resulted in accumulated snowfalls of almost 3m (9 ft).. frozen water falls (I don't know where in Japan this is).. snow, snow everywhere and nowhere to go with it !
Here are more pictures from Saturday and Sunday’s trip and stop-over at Incheon airport in Seoul. I looked for a cool new Hermès scarf on display in one of the windows – like the ones I posted before – but couldn’t find any.
The signature Korean dish Bibimbab served on Asiana Airlines is always more fun than the Western meal ! Throw the rice in with some red pepper paste and sesame oil, mix it up - and enjoy.Weather map of Korea for Saturday Jan 28 from the Korean Times .. COLD all overThere are no panda bears in Korea! but this look-alike at an Incheon airport store was nice enough to poseBuy some stationary for that 'slow letter' says this store signWorld map with the local time at the Incheon airport concourse on the way to my gate for departure to Hong KongI'm making my way down from the gate to the 747 that took us to Hong Kong.
I’m in the hotel in Dameisha. It is very late here so I will upload more pictures from the flights out here tomorrow. This one shows us approaching Seoul for the stop-over before continuing to Hong Kong. Looks like the pilot is giving Pyeongyang in North Korea a wide berth !
Carry on your ‘Valuables and Fragiles’, says this instruction at Asisan Airlines’ check-in counter. Yes, and I have a lot of those, all stuffed into my computer backpack. And hey, I made it through airport security without pulling a Rand Paul* and without dropping my iPad. Careful, don’t drop it, I always tell myself.
It’s a12 hr flight to Seoul, and then another 4 to Hong Kong .. and it will be 11 pm Sunday night when I arrive at the other side of the world.
*Staunchly libertarian senator from Kentucky that had a run-in with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) at Nashville International airport on Monday. Paul was directed to a cubicle after refusing a full-body pat down and says he was ‘barked at’ by TSA officials. Says his father and presidential candidate Ron Paul : ‘The police state in this country is growing out of control’.
I’m heading out to Hong Kong via Seoul on Saturday morning. Our project is in the final stretch. The business card holder is from a previous stop at Incheon airport in Seoul. Not much has been in the news about North Korea, but with reports that those caught using a cell phone* during the 100-day mourning period for Kim Jong Il will be treated as ‘war criminals’, I’m sure it’s even quieter than usual.
*of course one has to have one to get caught with using one.
After the earthquake-tsunami in Japan in March 2011 and the damage sustained by the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear reactor, China officially halted the approval of new nuclear projects. However, the China Daily news reported recently that a revised plan for the long-term future of nuclear power in China is ready .. and that the State Council may approve it in the second quarter of this year. China can take advantage of newer and safer designs. Contrast that with Japan where many nuclear power stations are now 40 years old, and two-thirds of Japanese oppose atomic power. Once the world’s third largest nuclear power consumer, there is now a real possibility that all nuclear power stations in Japan will be shut down or idle by the end of this year (see picture).
As recently as a few years ago, Japan got 27% of its power from coal, 26% from gas, 24% from nuclear, 13% from oil, and 8% from hydro. The remaining 2% is occupied by renewables such as geothermal power stations, solar and wind. So the 24% is a lot of power generation capacity that will have to be replaced ! .. but it’s a number almost the same as the 23% nuclear power made up of Germany’s national electricity consumption, before the permanent shutdown of 8 plants there in March 2011.
So what’s going on in Germany? Well, a lot of things now have to come together for what is called ‘The Third Industrial Revolution’. Check out the Wikipedia entry for the term.
Most of Japan's nuclear reactors are idle or shut down
Those are some of the shades of truth that website Politifact assigns to statements (full list in the picture below). Who knows what their contributors’ persuasions are, right? .. supposedly neutral.
They rated President Obama’s statement from Tue night’s State of the Union speech ‘In the last 22 months, businesses have created more than 3 million jobs. Last year, they created the most jobs since 2005‘ only as Half-True, interpreting the President to be claiming all the credit for it. Then after an outcry it was changed to Mostly True.
What about Indiana governor Mitch Daniels’s statement in his rebuttal to the SOTU speech ‘Nearly half of all persons under 30 did not go to work today’? That rates as a Pants-on-Fire statement, making a ridiculous claim.
One of Mitch Daniels's statements in his response to the 2012 State of the Union speech
Governor Daniels also said Contrary to the President’s constant disparagement of people in business, it’s one of the noblest of human pursuits. The late Steve Jobs – what a fitting name he had – created more of them than all those stimulus dollars the President borrowed and blew. Out here in Indiana, when a businessperson asks me what he can do for our state, I say ‘First, make money. Be successful. If you make a profit, you’ll have something left to hire someone else, and some to donate to the good causes we love ..’
to which my responses are -The President does NOT constantly disparage people in business.
-Yes, but those jobs that Apple/ Steve Jobs created are almost all in Shenzhen, China or in Asia. And people work in those jobs under brutal conditions. (A report in yesterday’s New York Times article says buyers of iPhones and iPads could care less. Apple CEO Tim Cook has insisted that conditions are getting better.)
-Of course business is about making money. But don’t screw up the environment, and treat workers fairly.
Alright, here are most of the little souvenirs I collected along the way in the last trip. It’s always fun to open one’s suitcase and go Yes! Now, where to put it? (Or maybe it is ‘Why the heck did I buy it?’)
I posted the 2012 Year of the Dragon bear previously; here are the three I now have posing for a group picture.
The three barista bears with their suits for : The Year of the Tiger (2010), The Rabbit(2011) and The Dragon(2012)
.. and this Tintin book was still missing for my collection so I got it from a Hong Kong book store (could have just ordered it on Amazon, I know).
Tintin : The Secret of the Unicorn
The paper craft items are from Narita airport in Tokyo. This cute cut-out-and-fold kit is called ‘Maternal Dilemma’. Check out the worm – item 37!
Paper cut-out-and-fold kit called 'Maternal Dilemma'
And this mini paper model of Matsumoto Castle one boggles the mind. From Wikipedia : Matsumoto Castle, also known as the ‘Crow Castle’ because of its black exterior, is one of Japan’s premier historic castles. It is located in the city of Matsumoto, in Nagano Prefecture and is within easy reach of Tokyo by road or rail. Got to love the ‘For Your Friend Abroad For a Present’. Yes, but will I still have a friend after this present drove him or her bananas?
Mini paper model of Matsumoto Castle ('Crow Castle') outside Tokyo'For Your Friend Abroad For a Present'
One more card bought in Shenzhen .. I cannot have enough dragons, especially not if they are cut out like this.
Intricate cut-out on 2012 Year of the Dragon Card
This little guy with his dragon was not cheap (about US$50), but it’s real porcelain and hand-made and hand painted.
Miniature porcelain boy with baby dragon
Some Yubari melon Kit Kat for you? Kit Kat is Japan’s most popular candy bar. The name sounds similar to the Japanese phrase ‘Kitto Katsu’ or ‘Sure to win!’ Children bring them into exams for good luck.
Yubari Melon Kit-Kat
I have no idea what the characters on this New Year’s tassle says but I will try to find out. I just liked the colors.
Chinese New Year's tassle detail
Finally, this little book that is really intended for Japanese visitors to Germany but hey, it had English in as well, and I couldn’t resist it after taking a look inside. Check out the kleine Dampflokomitive at the bottom right of the second picture. The literal translation is ‘little vapor locomotive’ which of course is really ‘little steam locomotive’.
German culture primer in three languagesGerman culture primer inside look
Monday marked the first day of the 2012 Year of the Dragon across Asia. This year it is a water dragon. Previous dragons were wood (1965), fire (1977), earth (1989) and metal (2000).
I bought this cool new year’s card in Shenzhen two weeks ago.
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.
