Willem's Planet

It’s the second Monday in October and therefore Columbus Day in the USA.   Columbus ‘discovered’ the Americas around this time in 1492 (the indigenous people had been here LONG before that, of course).  And he didn’t really discover what is today the USA. Wikipedia put it like this : Christopher Columbus (c. 31 October 1451 – 20 May 1506) was a navigator, colonizer, and explorer from the Republic of Genoa, in northwestern Italy, whose voyages across the Atlantic Ocean led to general European awareness of the American continents in the Western Hemisphere. Spain and the other Americas celebrate Columbus Day as well – but not Canada.

The voyages of Columbus [Source: Wikipedia].

That’s a date reference (yes, I’m cheating a little since the year is 2010 but oh well).  It is also the birthday of Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger (10 October 1825 – 14 July 1904), better known as Paul Kruger and affectionately known as Uncle Paul (Dutch: “Oom Paul”).   He was State President of the erstwhile South African Republic (Transvaal).   He gained international renown as the face of Boer resistance against the British during the South African or Second Boer War (1899–1902).

The Krugerrand is a South African gold coin, first minted in 1967 to help market South African gold.  It is produced by the South African Mint Company.   It is minted from gold alloy that is 91.67% pure (22 karats), so the coin contains one troy ounce (31.1035 g) of gold.    The second picture shows the rise of the gold price since 2000.   Friday it closed at US$1,318.95  on the New York Stock Exchange.  Is it headed even higher?

Google honored John Lennon’s 70th birthday today with a ‘doodle’ video .. the picture is from the video.   I love the words from ‘Imagine’.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world

You may say that I’m a dreamer
But I’m not the only one
I hope someday you’ll join us
And the world will live as one

I got my flu shot today.   The flu shots here in the USA this year protects against 3 strains of flu virus :

• A/California/7/2009 (H1N1)-like virus (the same strain as was used for 2009 H1N1 monovalent vaccines);
• A/Perth/16/2009 (H3N2)-like virus;
• B/Brisbane 60/2008-like antigens.

I will also try to stay away from people that try to cough and sneeze on me! : )  – remember that the latest cough and sneeze ‘etiquette’ says to crook your arm and sneeze into your arm and shoulder, NOT into your hands !

Here’s my current weapon to fight the jet lag : melatonin*.  On a previous trip I tried 3 mg which seemed to help very little, but the 5mg capsule seems to help a lot.  It’s a ‘natural’ drug – supposedly much the same as the hormone by the same name, secreted by the pineal gland in the brain, into the blood.   Some of my colleagues at work say the prescription drug Ambien is their knock-out drug of choice; it belongs to a class of medications called sedative-hypnotics and works by slowing activity in the brain to allow sleep.  Hmm.   Think I’ll stick to my melatonin for two more days and then I’ll be good to go.

*also known as N-acetyl-5-methoxytryptamine.  Got that? : )

My gym took a minute today to take three scans of each of my thumbs so that I can check in with a fingerprint instead of my gym card in future.  They store the print as some mathematical formula and not the print itself, they assured me.  (Hmm).   In the same vein in this weekend’s Wall Street Journal, there is an article about India launching a massive project to record fingerprints and retina scans of all its citizens.   The project aims to assign a unique 12-digit number to each of its 1.2 billion people and store them in a massive central database.   The identities will help the government to reduce corruption and waste in the distribution of food stamps and other payments.

The PRC’s National Day People’s Republic of China (simplified Chinese: 国庆节; traditional Chinese: 國慶節; pronounced guóqìng jié) was declared at three o’clock on October 1, 1949, in front of 300,000 people during a ceremony in Tian’anmen Square.  Chairman Mao declared the founding of the People’s Republic and waved the first five-star PRC flag.

In past times, the day was marked by large political gatherings and speeches, military parades, state banquets and the like.  But since 2000, as China’s economy developed, the national holiday lasts seven days and most workers are given time off to visit relatives and take time for traveling.    Indeed, all the China team members on our project have taken the 7 days off. And in the big cities there are 4th-of-July type fireworks displays as well !

(This is a late post).   Boy.  Working Saturday and Sunday makes the real Monday feel like it’s the third one in a row.  I posted a similar ATM screen shot a few months ago, and this one is too cute to pass up.  PLEASE DO NOT USE THE ATM IF SOMEONE PEEP OR DISTURB, SUCH AS INQUIRY, PAT ON YOUR SHOULDER, COLLIDE, ETC.    In the vein of ATM bank cards : one of us here had his card swallowed by an ATM.   So the bank sent a replacement card to the address here which goes something like this :  Building 01 North of Nuclear Avenue, Room 201, Daya Bay, Guangdong Province, China.    As one can do these days my co-worker could track the card’s journey across the continents on Fedex’s website.  Finally it arrives in Shenzhen, and Fedex was scheduled to show up.  Turns out the delivery guy did, was in the building, could not find room 210 (the wrong room number was recorded), and left.   The next day the recipient went out with a car and MET him to make sure he got his hands on the card.  You will not believe what happened next.   When he tried to activate the card, he found that the bank issued one with a number identical to the cancelled number of the one swallowed by the ATM.  There was nothing they could do from across the water to remedy the situation.   They are now sending a second card.    Incompetence which maak jou slange vang (Afrikaans for ‘makes you so angry you feel like catching snakes’).