Author: Willem

Before Germany started shutting down their nuclear reactors, they exported 1,400 GW-hrs per month, says Bloomberg Businessweek.   Now they have to import about 2,000 GW-hrs per month, much of that coming from France and the Czech Republic.   Aha!  I thought so, was my reaction when I saw the article.   So it remains to be seen if the Germans can replace their lost nuclear-power generating capacity with wind, solar and other renewable resources.

Here is the proof coin set I bought at the Japan Mint’s store in Tokyo.    The coins range from 1 yen (aluminum),  a 5 yen brass coin, a 10 yen bronze coin and a 50 yen cupronickel coin, to a 100 yen cupronickel coin and a 500 yen nickel-brass coin.    The ¥500 yen coin is worth big bucks, about US$6.50!   And what the little 1 yen coin has going for it, is that it can float on water- wow.   What a nice demonstration of surface tension in water.   (The picture is from the web.  I have some used 1 yen coins and I will try that when I get home to Seattle !).

I have a few days off from the project this coming week, and since it’s too short to go back home I decided to go to Tokyo.    My short stay-over there in May was just too short to see enough of the city!     This time of year the typhoons keep rolling in from the Pacific – another one hit the Phillipines just today – so that is something to keep an eye on.    The temperatures in Japan have gone down already from the summer highs.   The 27 27 25 at the bottom of NHK TV’s weather map is for 大阪 Osaka, 名古屋市Nagoya and 東京都 Tokyo respectively.   (25ºC is 77ºF).   

Saturday October 1 is the National Day of the People’s Republic of China.   The PRC was founded on October 1, 1949 with a ceremony at Tiananmen Square.    The flags are from lamp posts on the way to work, and the other picture is from Baidu’s home page.   Baidu is sometimes called the ‘Google of China’.   

‘Baidu’ is a quote from the last line of Xin Qiji’s classical poem Green Jade Table in The Lantern Festival  saying something like  ‘Having searched for her hundreds and thousands of times in the crowd, suddenly turning back by chance, I find her there in the dimmest candlelight’.

On Wednesday we went to the Aloha Beach Club, a place on the water close to work.   (They offer pizza for lunch, that was the draw).   There was a nice map of the area on the wall.   My cell phone picture is a little blurred, but the land mass on the south west corner of the map is Dapeng Peninsula, and the little bay right above it is Dapeng Bay.   It is shallow for the most part, making it ideal for windsurfing.    The cute little car with the surfboard is a BYD, from the Shenzhen-based car manufacturer with the same name.   Its 2010 sales of 519,800 units made it the sixth largest Chinese car-maker by units sold.

Some 20 project team members are staying in the hotel here in Dameisha and we were all invited to a ‘General Management Thank You’ party on Tuesday night.   The food was wonderful and there was live music.   A singer belted out Lady Gaga’s Bad Romance, some Creedence Clearwater Revival songs from way back then and even some country music.   Quite a range of genres!   But then I see Wikipedia says that CCR’s genres were  roots rock, country rock, blues rock, swamp rock and southern rock.    Not that I can tell the difference, but swamp rock sounds the best to me !

Photo from Wikipedia : Creedence Clearwater Revival, 1968. L-R: Tom Fogerty, Doug Clifford, Stu Cook, and John Fogerty

It’s still the Year of the Bunny (Rabbit) and the Little Bunny is doing our laundry.    Coupons are not nearly as prevalent in China (yet?) as they are in the USA, but this is a nice one – complete with hologram sticker and all.  (¥12 is about US$2).

Mount Fuji watchers report that the first snow came one day earlier than last year, about 7 days earlier than on average.  (Picture from the TV here).    Mt Fuji is a very symmetrical stratovolcano mountain.  Other such mountains are of course Washington State’s Mt Rainier, and Kilimandjaro in Africa.

Here’s how the numbers stack up for the three mountains.

And hey – I have a Mt Fuji in my wallet as well : the back of a ¥1,000 note (that’s about US$13).

After a long week I was happy to just kick back in the hotel and relax Friday night (instead of making my way to Hong Kong as I frequently do).    On the Japanese TV game show, I admired the colorful graphics but could not make out much more.   Check out the rotating cube with characters to arrange to make a phrase.   Of the solution I have no clue, but hey – I can be the team member that click that ‘OK’ button by the yellow arrow, how’s that? :  )

This carrier pigeon (I assume it’s one! looking at the rings on its feet) landed on my hotel balcony.   I suppose it’s taking a little break from its travel back to its home.    The homingpigeon.com website features a solar wind meter (indicating the strength of disruptions caused in the earth magnetic field by flare-ups on the surface of the sun) .. but there is evidence that the birds actually use freeways and man-made structures to navigate with.

In September 2009, a South African IT company based in Durban pitted an 11-month-old bird ‘Winston’ armed with a 4GB memory stick against the ADSL service from the country’s biggest internet service provider, Telkom.  The pigeon took 1 hr 8 mins to carry the data 80 km (50 miles).   That turned out to be vastly quicker than the ADSL connection could deliver the data !   (I believe the ADSL connection speed will beat the pigeon today).

This 3D map of Dameisha was put on bus stop billboards here recently.   It has a lot of detail on, right down to the fiberglass figures on Dameisha Beach (I took the beach figure picture some time ago).   That’s the Yantian Expressway curving around the beach town.