Willem's Planet

The US team kept working through the Spring Festival (Lunar New Year) holiday and so off to work we went today.  Tomorrow everyone will be back in full force, though.    The first picture is of the Dameisha street corner seen from my apartment building.   The rabbit is from the electronic advertisement bill board in the elevator lobby and the tree with the red envelopes is from the lobby of the Pattaya Hotel next door.    Traditionally employers give their workers a little bonus in an envelope during this time.   So hanging the envelopes on trees indicates expectations of money and good fortune for the new year.

The Year of the Rabbit is officially here (its first day is Thu 3 Feb, 2011).    I culled the rabbit pictures from my visits to Shenzhen and Hong Kong in January, and it makes me wonder if I will find any in Seattle’s International District.    I will run out there tomorrow and report back.

People born in the year of the rabbit – 1915, 1927, 1939, 1951, 1963, 1975, 1987, 1999, 2011 – are said  make ideal diplomats or politicians.   A rabbit person has grace, culture and beautiful manners.   Although rabbit people get on well with everyone, at heart they are basically reserved creatures, and are only really happy when they are engrossed in some sort of scholarly or intellectual activity.   There you have it.

A friend from Chicago sent me these pictures.   As the wind blows, the snow ‘drifts’ up against walls, roofs and cars the way sand would in a sand storm.   The first picture of the black car was taken around 9 am, and the second one later in the afternoon.   There were reports of some drivers that got caught in the snow storm and trapped in their cars until 4 am Wed morning.    It’s a good thing Chicago has great public transport, because many many cars on the side streets are not going to move any time soon !

Here is my first iPhone picture .. a picture of me.  Why not of me? 🙂   The phone can take pictures from the front or from the back, and the shutter is really snappy, which is great.  I think it takes 5 Mp pictures.   The quality is OK .. in this picture where the lighting was so-so one can already see some graininess in the background.   So far also I managed to set up my e-mail accounts on the phone, upload my favorite iTune songs, a few photos from my PC and I bought a copy of Scrabble from the Apps store (yes, I know I should get Angry Birds* but I love Scrabble).

*the juggernaut game from Finland; the player lops angry birds with a catapult to structures with little piggies in in order to get to them.  The banner is from the Rovio website.

The taxi from the airport dropped me off at home at 2pm yesterday and I immediately prepared the documents for renewing my visa to China and dashed off to Fedex to send overnight to New York City.  Sure enough, the Fedex website reported it was delivered this morning, wow! – keep in mind most of New York City is buried under a foot or two of snow !

I picked up 4 weeks of mail (95% junk mail, grrr) at the post office and when I spotted the Chinese New Year stamps I couldn’t resist buying a sheet.  Count the wily wabbits on the sheet .. see all 14?  The little orange kumquats shown on the stamps are given as gifts around New Year and are delicious.  We got some in the cafeteria at lunch time at work.

Also, my new iPhone 4 handset arrived.  It is replacing my Blackberry Bold (aww .. after some should I or should I NOT? thinking on my part) since I could have chosen an upgraded Blackberry as well.  I will miss the push button keyboard, but the old BB’s screen is just too small and the new one did not get great reviews.   I’m just getting started on the iPhone, but I have already discovered the ‘compass’, here showing true north (it can switch to magnetic north*) as well as my location on a satellite image from Google Earth.   So much technology shoehorned into such a small package!

*True north is the direction along the earth’s surface towards the geographic North pole, while magnetic north is the point on the surface of the Northern Hemisphere at which the earth’s magnetic field point vertically downwards

That’s the translation of my Monday post’s front-page headline :   伙伴  huǒ​bàn​  partner / companion / comrade.   (Sounds good to me even though I am aware that ‘comrade’ has all kinds of political overtones and undercurrents for Westerners).

In China red is the color of prosperity and happiness, so :  New Year’s Tree in the lobby of the Pattaya Hotel, red lanterns in the hallways at my apartment, red New Years’ rabbit on my desk (designed to be hung somewhere with its tassle)  makes me smile and keeps me from going crazy at work.