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 !
Wedensday/ lady finger bananas
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.
Tuesday/ the outlook : still gloomy
.. 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.
Monday/ Shenzhen shopping
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.
Sunday/ controlling the crowd
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.
Saturday/ more fireworks
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.
Friday/ the Korean mind
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.
Thursday/ United-Continental ‘marriage’ update
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.
Wednesday/ dragon fruit ‘huǒ lóng guǒ’
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.
Tuesday/ the Big Freeze
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.
Monday/ Incheon airport
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.
Sunday night/ arrived
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 !
Saturday/ carry on those Fragiles!
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’.
Friday/ packing up
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.
Thursday/ full steam ahead for China nuclear power
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.
Wednesday/ truths, half-truths and ‘your pants are on fire’
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.
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.
Tuesday/ unpacking all my souvenirs
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.
.. 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).
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!
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?
One more card bought in Shenzhen .. I cannot have enough dragons, especially not if they are cut out like this.
This little guy with his dragon was not cheap (about US$50), but it’s real porcelain and hand-made and hand painted.
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.
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.
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’.
Monday/ the Dragon is here!
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.
Sunday afternoon/ across the Pacific
My fellow trans-Pacific voyagers and I made it into Seattle late this morning. We started out in Hong Kong and arrived at a wet Narita airport (Tokyo).
The Asian airlines all serve terrific meals – these red pimentos stuffed with cream cheese were delicious.
At Narita airport I checked out the offerings at the airport stores as usual – a Newsweek in Japanese for you? (Pages are from back to front). Dried baby octopus? No? Then surely the hand-rolled Hermès silk scarf with the animal playing-card motifs will do. (Be prepared to pony up about US$385, though).
From Tokyo we were on a Boeing 777 to Seattle where it also rained, and there is still snow on the ground. I jumped in and cleared the walkway to my front door, and some snow and ice off the sidewalk. Cannot have the mail-man break a leg! (even though all he brings me is junk mail).
Sunday morning/ Kung Hei Fat Choi
Alright, it’s the last day of the old Lunar Year, and the first day of three holidays in many Asian countries, to usher in the new Lunar New Year. Kung Hei Fat Choi (May Prosperity Be With You) says the South China Morning Post. I am at Hong Kong airport and about to depart for Narita airport in Tokyo and then on to Seattle.
