a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
We arrived into Guernsey early Sunday morning. There is no way for the enormous cruise ship to dock at St.Peter’s Port on the east side of the island, so the ship stays outside the harbor at sea, and we are ‘tendered’ to shore and back with the ship’s tender boats. We had to be back early at the ship since it’s a long way up to Cork in Ireland, and it’s going to be full steam ahead to make it there in time.
Our Boeing 747-400 with the Union Jack on the tail was just a little late departing Seattle at 7 pm Saturday night. Some 8 1/2 hours later, we had to circle a few times around London Heathrow airport, since a plane ran off the runway, the pilot said. Princess Cruises met us at arrivals but made us wait a bit before they put us on the bus to Southampton. Ours was actually the last bus they put on for arriving passengers, and by the time we got to the cruise ship, there was no line of embarking passengers left at all. I think our party of 6 from the Seattle flight were the very last to board! So by now it was Saturday afternoon at 5 pm in Southampton, and it was a nice sunny summery day on the south coast of England. Promptly after 5 we set sail for the first stop, at Guernsey, officially the Bailiwick of Guernsey.
I am more or less packed for the flight to London for the British Isles cruise on the Princess Cruise line. Just a few more things and then close the suitcase. I have printed luggage tags for the ship, and these go on to the luggage checked in for the flight. That way they can handle it and put it on the bus that will take us to the Southampton port from London Heathrow airport. I even have some British pounds and Euro currency in case I need it for an emergency. Will we ever get to a cashless world? Not in a long time, at least.
I had quite an adventure getting to the hotel last night, but the Hertz rental car’s Neverlost navigation system got me there and back to the airport. A good thing it was, that I arrived early : Delta called me and said they have a better itinerary for me, through Cincinnati instead of Minneapolis. Besides, the storm system may delay the Pittsburgh flight again, so better to get out on the earlier flight to Cincinnati, said the agent. No problem! Make the change and thank you! I said.
Oy. Delta delayed my flight out of Pittsburgh to Minneapolis-St.Paul again by enough to make it impossible for me to get to Seattle. At least I found out about this before returning my rental car, and checking my bag. So I’m staying over and shipping out on Thu morning to Seattle. I have to go and pack for my trip out to London with to embark on the Princess cruise ship Friday night London time!
P.S. It is a momentous day for married gay couples in California, and those planning to marry in states that have marriage equality. The long-awaited US Supreme Court ruling of today declared Prop 8 as well as the ‘Defence Of Marriage Act’ unconstitutional (see my post Prop 8 and DOMA).
I had time to stop by the sports store after work tonight and spotted these ‘little team mates’ Pittsburgh Steelers. From left to right it is the quarterback (currently Ben Roethisberger in person), the referee, and the running back. The franchise has so far triumphed in six Super Bowl Championships : 1974, 1975, 1978, 1979, 2005, 2008.
I took Delta again to Pittsburgh with the stop in Minneapolis-St.Paul this morning. The Yellow Cab company always makes my house phone ring, announcing ‘Your cab has arrived’ .. and then it’s another 3-4 minutes before the cab shows up. And there is still no Yellow Cab Seattle iPhone app .. come on people, get with the program! : )
It was raining in Seattle, but clear and warmer out east. In fact, it is high summer in Pittsburgh with the temperatures in the 90s (low 30s C).
I only had time for a quick walk around the block today since I had work to complete and packing to do for another quick trip to Pittsburgh in the morning. The streets here were wet with a little sprinkling of rain now and again, but it was very pleasant outside. I ended up at the Canterbury Ale & Eats here on 15th Ave again .. which is of course a reference to the Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, written at the end of the 14th century; it is about story-telling by a group of pilgrims. By this time next Sunday I will be on my own pilgrimage by boat around the British Isles if all goes well !
Fremont is a neighborhood here in Seattle that was originally a separate city, but annexed to Seattle in 1891. Fremont bills itself as the ‘Center of the Universe’, and on the Saturday closest to the summer solstice each year, it hosts a ‘solstice parade’ that celebrates the sun. The parade is ‘notorious’ – said King5 TV news tonight – for its naked bicyclists (but it did not show any of them even on the late night news). Here are some of the pictures that I took today.
Today was the longest day of the year here in the north with the sun setting at 9.10pm. The Seattle Post Intelligencer newspaper reports that the beautiful sunsets this year are due to forest fires in Siberia. Check out this accelerated video clip of a sunset from the Seattle PI blog, and watch for the lights on the Space Needle to start flashing as the sun sets. Here is the link : http://blog.seattlepi.com/thebigblog/2012/07/11/thank-russia-for-seattles-gorgeous-sunsets/
Soo .. on this Thursday the Miami Heat
got their second straight NBA Championship, the Dow Jones takes a 2.3% hit and : the Farm Bill fails unexpectedly in the House of Representatives. The Farm Bill has been around since the Great Depression and the New Deal in various forms, and is not just about farms. It is the primary agricultural and food policy tool of the US Federal Government. It outlays spending of a trillion dollars over the next 10 years. Why did it fail? Oh so many reasons why. It’s worth noting the White House signaled it would veto it in its current form anyway, had it passed. The cuts in the allocated money for food stamps was too much. I will leave it up to the pros at the Washington Post to explain the rest of the politics. This was supposed to be a bill with broad partisan support, though. It now looks as if this Congress is not capable of passing any legislation whatsoever. That pending immigration reform bill? Best to forget about it. http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2013/06/20/8d04ba3a-d9de-11e2-a9f2-42ee3912ae0e_story.html
‘Would you happen to sell bicarbonate of sodium?’ I heard an elderly man ask the store clerk at the grocery store today. ‘Of course the store does’, I thought. It’s baking soda. Well, the clerk was nonplussed, did a search on the computer, went to the medicine aisle, searched for a minute then declared they don’t have any and that Walgreens might have some .. at which point I decided to go for it and intervene. I grabbed a little box of baking soda from the baking aisle, showed it to the customer, and explained to him ‘This is baking soda, and it really is bicarbonate of soda. Might this be what you are looking for?’ Yes, yes! he said. ‘Look, he found it!’ he yelled at the store clerk. So there : my good deed for the day. (What did he need it for? To clean his dentures with). The funny thing is that I bought a little packet of baking soda just for fun this Sunday at the Uwajimaya store. I couldn’t resist the packaging with the cute picture showing all the uses for baking soda, and I think the picture reminded me of my mom : ).
It’s summertime, and today was very pleasant and mild outside. There were rain showers in the forecast, but there were certainly none here where I live in the city. The sun sets after 9pm, which means I can have my dinner and still go out for a walk. (I am supposed to make it out to the gym, but what a production it is to get one’s kit together, get down there, work out, and all that. I will go tomorrow!).
Whoah! Check out the wasabi root – and how expensive it is! – I thought when I spotted it on offer in the vegetable section of the Uwaji-maya grocery store in Seattle’s International District on Sunday night. Wasabi root has an extremely strong flavor and in this form is finely grated BUT : it loses its flavor after just 15 minutes if left uncovered! The plant grows naturally along stream beds in mountain river valleys in Japan, and is also cultivated, but it is difficult to do so. Japan imports wasabi from China, Taiwan and even from New Zealand. Wasabi is sometimes called Japanese horseradish, but horseradish is a different plant.
Happy Father’s Day to all the dads – and especially to mine! The picture is from Google’s home screen. Looks like the dad is taking a coffee break while tinkering in his garage.
The long summer break for schools here in the USA have started. So for many parents the typical day of getting the kids up out of bed, into the car, to school, work until school gets out, taking care of everyone’s needs until bedtime, and then sneak in a few hours of work or personal time late at night, is upended. It’s three months of unstructured ‘chaos’ ahead. School calendars in the USA are on the low end of number of school days (180), compared to as many as 240 in Japan. The shorter number of days in the USA is compensated for somewhat by longer hours of instruction -but there are many other differences. In the USA each state determines its own curriculum while in Japan (and many other countries), the government decides what each school must teach, how to teach it, and even what books to teach it with. Less choice, but far fewer disparities in student education when the time comes for a student to compete nationally to qualify for higher education after school.
I was a little worried about my checked bag that I had to leave at Pittsburgh airport last night after changing my flights to Seattle at the last minute, but I discovered that Delta’s smartphone app lets one scan the bag tag (the sticker you get when you check the bag) to determine its location : pretty neat. So the bag was pulled last night from my original Pittsburgh-Minneapolis flight and put on the one this morning. The airport at Minneapolis was crowded, with lots of families traveling. The US airlines expect the most fliers in five years for 2013 – but not quite reaching the all-time high volume of some 217 million travelers that flew in 2007, the industry’s high point.
I thought I was home free since the very large storm system here in the Midwest was moving east and I was going to fly west .. but no : too many flights in Atlanta and Chicago have been canceled or delayed. I was going to make it from Pittsburgh into Minneapolis only by midnight, with no connecting flights left to take me to Seattle. So I decided to stay put in Pittsburgh, walked over to the Hyatt hotel that’s right here and I will make an early start out in the morning when the skies are clear and friendlier.
My firm’s Pittsburgh office is located in the US Steel Tower in downtown Pittsburgh, so off I went this morning to get my notebook fixed up. I found the building easily, but had to search for a parking garage close by. Then – miraculously- a spot on the street just big enough for a Toyota Corolla opened up. I was in luck : my rental car for the week happened to be one! So I squeezed it into the parking spot, walked just a block or so, and went up to the 52nd floor of the US Steel Tower. Jason the IT support guy snapped out the solid state hard drive out of my coffee-spilled machine, popped it into a new Lenovo T430 shell, and presto! I was back in business.
Alright, so the deepwater horizon oil spill it was not – just a major coffee spill all over my workhorse lenovo t430 notebook computer shortly after lunch. i jumped up, turned the machine sideways so that the coffee drained off the keyboard, mopped it up with a towel, and went to the washroom and tried to dry it out further with the powerful dryers our office building has in. one of the usb ports was wet inside, got that dried out, but i still don’t have a shift key. CAPS LOCK can get me uppercase characters, but i cannot get the symbols that i need to log onto my lotus notes e-mail. lotus notes does not allow me to cut and paste from Word into the password field either. other keys are sticky now. got to use the keyboard. so .. off i am tomorrow to the pittsburgh pwc office to get some help. they tell me they can do a shell swap – just install this machine’s hard drive into a new shell. that will make me very happy.