a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
My first stop of the day was at the fish market at Noryanjin station. Then I went back to Seoul station to go check out the exterior in daytime. After that I made a quick stop at the Naedamun street market and then went off to see if I could find the cable car boarding station for Seoul Tower. I did, eventually!
I read about the GT Tower East with its wavy exterior and had to go and take a look at it. It is by Gangnam station (use exit 9) between several other modern financial company buildings and Samsung buildings. Sunday night I went to check out Itaewon – the gritty expat area with bars and nightclubs, popular with US army personnel from the base nearby.
The two ancient royal palaces in Seoul are connected with Saemungil Museam Street and Sejong Main Street. I first went to Gyungbokgung Palace and then I walked down to Changdeokgung Palace, spending a lot of time in the underground museum with its entrance at the statue of a seated King Sejong The Great. I only made it to the entrance of the second palace, and plan to go inside tomorrow.
My trip from Hong Kong airport went very well. My plan to get from Incheon airport in Seoul to the Marriott Courtyard hotel at Seoul Times Square was not too bad, either. I did have a little trouble spotting the hotel in the dark and wet weather at my arrival at the closest metro stop. It was just a four block walk but the darn Marriott hotel sign was on the opposite side of the Times Square buildings (of course!).
The black muffin from the Muji-To-Go store at the airport is a new item, said the display. (Hmm, and what makes it black?). And this Qantas 747 was j- u- ust pulling up to the gate as I walked by .. most likely in from Down Under. My travel advisory says the US-Korea Free Trade Agreement that took effect on Thu Mar 15 and prompted some street protests in Seoul – but at this point everything seems under control. The accord will remove duties on almost two-thirds of American farm exports, and phase out tariffs on more than 95 percent of industrial and consumer exports within five years. Tariffs will also be lifted on Korean car parts to the U.S. — which should increase South Korean exports of the products.
I’m in the hotel at Hong Kong airport, on my way to Seoul, South Korea for a long weekend. It’s not warm there yet, but at least warm enough to walk around at about 7 °C (44 °F). There is rain in the forecast for Friday, but it should clear up by Saturday.
I was too late to snap a picture of the margerita pizzas* (玛格丽特 披萨 mǎgélìtè pīsà, we had on Wednesday here at work. (See the writing at the top of the box?). So one of the 24 pizza boxes is all I can show. The pizzas were quite good, with a thin crust. It is quite possible that the little Aloha Beach Club restaurant had to stretch the pizza dough it had on hand for our monster order.
*Legend has it that in 1889, during a visit to Naples, Queen Margherita of Italy was served a pizza resembling the colors of the Italian flag, red (tomato), white (mozzarella) and green (basil) .. and that is how Pizza Margherita got its name.
The green light has been given from the steering committee for our project’s ‘go-live’. (The last of the dragons have been slayed). So now the wheels are set in motion to move everything up from the Quality System into the Production System. That means all of our project’s extracted and converted data sets, additional system configuration table settings, program codes and user log-ins will be added into the live system. Our project will add three more nuclear power stations to the three already in the system, for a total of 6 stations altogether.
There’s happiness 喜 (xǐ), and then there is double happiness 囍(also xǐ) !
The ‘double happiness’ term is really used in writing and especially used in connotation with marriage, as shown on this candy gift that each of us got from a colleague that is getting married soon. The heart-shaped modification of the bottoms of the happiness characters is artistic interpretation, of course. And I cannot quite find out for sure how old the use of the heart ♥ symbol is. Its uses started in Europe.
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Sunday on Japan’s NHK World TV was dedicated to extensive coverage of the first anniversary of the earthquake and tsunami of March 11 last year. It made for a somber day to watch some of it. Isn’t the first anniversary is the most celebrated for happy events, and the most traumatic for disasters? (Yes). As for the nuclear industry there, the situation of running only 2 nuclear reactors out of 54 is unsustainable. It is costing utility companies billions of dollars to import gas, oil or coal to burn to make up the lost electricity, and they have not yet been allowed by the government to raise rates for consumers.
Here is the link for the interactive Fukushima radiation map (last picture). http://jciv.iidj.net/map/fukushima/, a compilation of readings done on 6 and 7 July 2011. I couldn’t immediately find a more recent update on-line.
Saturday was cold and rainy, so I felt better about having to knuckle down and work .. and drink my beverages that I got from the grocery store across the street. The sweetened Wanglaoji herbal tea (red can) rivals Coca- Cola in popularity in mainland China. I think the green Wanglaoji version is a new flavor since I had not seen it before. It’s certainly new to me : you go whoa! what are those flavors in there? Well – it’s lotus seed and mungo bean, buster ! And of course I had to look both up on Wikipedia to see that they look like.
We’re in the final testing phase of our SAP project, and some ‘dragons’ have emerged that have to be slayed. One can even find – as we are – that standard SAP transactions are not working as expected. It all depends on the volume and combination of data that had been converted and the system settings and resources that have been put into place. So it pays to be paranoid when testing software*.
Test it again even if it was tested before (in a previous phase of the project), even if it’s out-of-the-box functionality from a top-notch vendor and even if you ‘think’ it will work. Of course, no project has infinite resources, so you have to apply what time and personnel you do have, as best you can !
*I am thinking of the Andy Groves quote ‘only the paranoid survive’. Grove was CEO of Intel from 1987 to 1998 and a pioneering figure in transforming the company into a giant. He insisted that people (working together) be demanding on one another, and is said to have been an idol of the late Steve Jobs from Apple.
I like to check out the baijiu* packaging in the grocery stores here. Some are downright spectacular. And at 50% alcohol I am sure one soon starts to experience the fantasy worlds depicted on the boxes that the liquor is presented in.
*clear white liquor drink typically distilled from rice (southern China) or sorghum (northern China)
There is a wonderful fruit market here at the local shopping center at work. The oranges on the left are sweet and seedless. The little yellow fruit on the right are mangoes, but I’m not sure of the cultivar name. There are hundreds, says Wikipedia. The little ones have the same tough skin, and taste the same as the bigger, rounder ones that have a red ‘blush’ .. that wild tropical mango taste. I have never quite grown fond of the way mangoes taste, though. Maybe I just have not eaten enough of them to appreciate them!
Tuesday is long gone in here in China (it’s 1.00pm Wednesday) – and almost gone in the USA. But the politicos at politico.com are posting up-to-the-minute tallies of the precincts in the outcome of the Republican primaries in the ten states of ‘Super Tuesday’. Wikipedia says the phrase Super Tuesday goes back at least to 1976 in US presidential primary elections. Right now the state of Ohio is most closely watched, where it’s a neck-and-neck race between Mitt Romney and Rick Santorum. 
Cycle Irina is churning off the South African coast and likely to remain over open water between Maputo and Richards Bay for the next 24 hours, says a weather report. So it makes for very rough seas and a marine storm surge on the coast. Currently : Wind: 55 MPH — Location: -29.4S 34.5E — Movement: S
Check out the Google Earth tracking map with this link to www.wunderground.com. 
My colleague and I ordered fish for dinner at a restaurant here. A good bet is always one of the flat white fishes. They are quick to cook – you pick one from the fish tanks outside! And the bones stay in one piece. We are not sure if it’s a kind of flounder, or maybe a sole. The fish is very white inside when cooked, and it is served up with a sesame oil-soy sauce and a garnish of spring onion. Very tasty.
Tokyo is making a bid for the 2020 Olympics, and there was a section about it on NHK TV. They hosted in 1964 and will be able to use some of the facilities after upgrading it – such as increasing the capacity of the 54,000-seat National Stadium to 80,000 seats.
Which other cities are putting in a bid? Here are all of them. Baku and Doha are certainly not as well known as the other three! Rome withdrew its bid after the government dropped its support, citing the financial difficulties of Italy and that the money is needed elsewhere.
Three of us went to the Dameisha Sheraton for dinner, but this time in the Italian restaurant instead of in the lobby downstairs. And what wine did we have? A pinotage from the doorstep of my South African homestead Stellenbosch where I was a student, and lived for some time later on. Pinotage is probably South Africa’s signature red grape, around since 1925. Even so, some South African winemakers will not have it in their vineyards. Says Wikipedia : ‘A common complaint is the tendency to develop isoamyl acetate during winemaking which leads to a sweet pungency that often smells like paint’. Ouch.
This morning the air was foggy and the streets were soggy. I knew about the fog Thursday morning even before I rolled out of bed. A fog horn that must be close by on the coast sounded a few times in the night. Fog horns emit sounds at around 50 Hz, and humans can hear sounds between 20 Hz and at most 20 kHz. (Check out the cool animated picture of a sound wave that I found on line). And my research also found that blue whales can hear sounds as low as 5 Hz, while on the opposite end there is the Jamaican fruit bat, that can pick up ultrasound squeaks pitched at 130 kHz. Whoah Mr Bat! What fine ears you have!
