Author: Willem

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Saturday/ 2011年 02月 26日

Since February is almost behind us, I’d better post my desk calendar picture for the month.   (I’m not sure which one of the 6 reactor core buildings on site here is the one in the middle of the picture).    The 2 月 on the calendar would be part of  2011年 02月 26日 if today’s date would be written out.    The Year Month Day symbols serve as separators the way we use slashes or dashes.   

The second picture shows the final turn we make on the way to work every day (not sure of the purpose of the building).   The third picture is of the swank China Nuclear Power Engineering Company building nearby,  under construction but nearing completion.

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Friday/ Bing in China

No, not Bing Crosby, Bing the Microsoft search engine.   The picture is from http://cn.bing.com and is of the Langshan Mountains (Wolf Mountains) in Hunan province.    I noticed one of my Chinese colleagues pasting an e-mail into the Bing language translator.    (Of course there is Google Translator as well).

Just for fun I pasted something I would fire off in an e-mail into the Translator.  I suspect the English comes out translated in Chinese in a similar way it does in Afrikaans : the translator struggles with nailing the right technical terms but brings across the key points of the statement.

English Business area should be a required field on the Functional Location record so that the financial functions on the work order can work properly.

Chinese (Simplified) 营业面积应在功能定位记录，以便对工作秩序的金融功能可以正常工作所需的字段。
商务区
功能定位
工作单

Afrikaans Besigheid gebied moet ‘n vereiste veld op die Funksionele Plek rekord so dat die finansiële funksies op die werk om goed te kan werk.

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Thursday/ tennis court 网球场 and more tea

It’s been too long since I did a little Mandarin lesson, so here goes!  The sign is from the East Coast apartments in Dameisha where I played tennis last night.

Tennis court is wǎng qiú ​chǎng and here is the analysis of the symbols :

网 net  +  球ball  +  场open space  =  网球场 tennis court

And if I tire of my jasmine tea from Monday or the Gatorade I drank last night, I can always try blueberry green tea (which looks like it’s orange, hmm).   It’s a new print ad from the apartment building’s elevator.

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Wednesday/ stand by your .. winter moments?

Thought the post was ‘Stand by your Man’, did you? .. after the 1968 song recorded by Tammy Wynette?

Sometimes its hard to be a woman
Giving all your love to just one man
You’ll have bad times
And he’ll have good times
Doing things that you don’t understand
But if you love him you’ll forgive him
Even though he’s hard to understand
And if you love him
Oh be proud of him
‘Cause after all he’s just a man
Stand by your man
Give him two arms to cling to
And something warm to come to
When nights are cold and lonely
Stand by your man
And tell the world you love him
Keep giving all the love you can
Stand by your man
Stand by your man
And show the world you love him
Keep giving all the love you can
Stand by your man

Almost, but no : it’s Stand by your Winter Moments.   The little carton is from VitaSoy company and has soy milk in.  So help me figure it out.   The tall red bottle says Vitasoy, then there’s a bowl of cereal next to it.  But what does knitting have to do with the soymilk product? And is that a hot bath in winter time with the three characters are sitting in it?

Finally : don’t .. what? freeze? : )  Very complicated.

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Which day of the week is it?

The week of the day floor mats are back in the elevators here at work.   It’s like the ‘TUESDAY’ on a Rolex day-date watch*.    When I was oh, 10 years old I recall that I wondered  how is it possible that one needs to check to see which day of the week it is? Now I know : some weeks the days blurrr together, and then it’s nice to be able to glance at it and be sure !

*should I get one? at around $23,000 one would be nice but I think not ! Picture from Rolex’s website.

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Monday/ some jasmine blooming tea for you?

We bought this tea at Muji some weeks ago (a Japanese department store in Hong Kong).    Pop it your cup and you have a visual spectacle unfolding.    The flavor of the tea is very subtle.    I still like black tea with sugar best, but I have learned to like Oolong tea and green tea as well.

 

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Sunday/ Canton Tower

Here are the Canton Tower pictures !

From top to bottom : View from outside/ inside the elevator; the Tower tops out at 107 floors/ in a city of 12 million you build apartment buildings by the dozens/ last night’s bridge looks tiny/ the view toward the Asian Games Stadium built on an island in the Pearl River with the plaza behind it; the very tall building is International Finance Center Guangzhou/ doing the don’t-look-down picture in the glass floor booth/ the Spider Staircase connects 10 floors at a time by stairs/ view upwards from the ground floor lobby/ double-click the picture to see how the Canton Tower compares with the other towers in the world/ artwork at the base of the IFC Guangzhou/ PwC building close by in the financial district/ sidewalk art for the Games/ new film bill-board (I forgot the name of the film)/ new apartment buildings/ more skyscrapers in the city center on the way back to Guangzhou train station

 

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Saturday/ overnight stay in Guangzhou 广州

We worked a half-day and got our freedom at 12 noon.   Since my coworker Will decided to meet his cousin in Shenzhen and go check out Guangzhou, and jumped at the chance to go with.    Always a little easier if you have travel companions  to help you figure out the logistics in a foreign country.

Guangzhou is a 1 hour train ride up into the Pearl River delta from Shenzhen (see my Google Latitude picture) and is also known as Canton or Kwangchow.  It is the capital of the Guangdong province and one of five National Central Cities and a key transportation hub and trading port.    It is the third largest city in China and the official estimate of the city’s population at the end of 2009 was 10.5 million.

We splashed out and are staying in the posh Ritz-Carlton on the Pearl River (it’s one night only, and we found a special rate of $150).

Pictures .. first one is of all the train riders making for the train at Shenzhen station.  The train is very nice and we had numbered seat assignments – so no need to push and shove!   Next one is of our arrival at Guangzhou station where we got a taxi to the hotel.    Wow! I said as I looked out my hotel room window.  The plaza below was constructed along with the stadium for the 201o 16th Asian Games, held in November last year.  The stadium is built on an island in the Pearl River, and the picture of the bridge is also close by, across the Pearl river.  All of the following pictures were taken in and around the plaza.   The spectacular tower is the Canton Tower, more pictures to follow since we plan to go up in it on Sunday.    The tower is the tallest TV tower in the world, and the tallest structure in China at 610m (almost 2,000 ft).   It opened in September 2010 after 6 years of design and construction.

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Friday/ fireworks finale

This firecracker exploding on its own might not seem like much, but it’s one of 40 or 50 that was fired off here last night.      It lights up the surrounding apartments, sets off car alarms, makes pets cower under furniture – and it makes me run outside to see what the ruckus is about !   Today marks 15 days since the start of the Lunar New Year and mercifully – is the end of the festivities.

The second picture is of a new furniture store that opened close by .. makes sense with all the new apartments (albeit empty, most of them) that are being built here.

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Thursday/ Scrabble anyone?

Scrabble is one of the few games I loaded so far on my iPhone.  I play it on the bus that takes us to work and back, and I play against the phone’s little brains.    I would say the phone cheats sometimes, with words such as REEARNED and QWERTYS,  but then I instruct it to help me : ).     FLAMINGO and CANISTER are my 7-letter words .. two in one game is very nice to get.   The phone is very tactful : you never lose (loo-ser!), the phone finishes ‘first’ and you ‘finish second’.      I haven’t tried to find a player over the internet, or even someone to play on the phone.  (Two persons with two phones can also play with a shared board on each of the phones).   Very nice.

Here is a short list explaining some if the unusual words on the board.

PEPLA- pl. of peplum, a flounce or short, flared flap attached at the waist of a dress, blouse, coat
URANIAS – pl. of urania, uranium dioxide
BUNCO – a game played with dice
QWERTYS  – pertaining to a keyboard having the keys in traditional typewriter arrangement

 

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Wednesday/ dinner

The little spare ribs are from tonight’s dinner at a nice restaurant with my colleagues.  (Mouth-watering and tasted as good as it looks, but the flower is really what made me take the picture).    The fog and a light drizzle has moved in the way it sometimes does here, the picture is from the walk back to my apartment.    It made me think  ‘the subways are sizzling and the skin of the streets is gleaming with sweat’.   That’s from American songwriter Jim Steinman’s  song Out of the Frying Pan (and into the Fire), from the album called Bad for Good (1981).

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Tuesday/ Coca-Cola’s secret recipe

The most famous of the cola carbonated beverages that was originally flavored by kola nut, and citric acids (now commonly flavored artificially) is of course Coca-Cola.   Invented in Atlanta by druggist John Pemberton in 1886, his original recipe contained alcohol and coca leaves laced with cocaine.    So are the recent reports of the secret recipe (further down)  such a big deal?  Maybe not, since any would-be imitator is up against the international brand which is such a presence,  it is often seen as a symbol of the United States !

I bought these Coca-Colas in Hong Kong last month.  They are from Japan.  So : are these little containers bottles, or are they cans?

The recipe ..

Fluid extract of Coca: 3 drams USP
Citric acid: 3 oz
Caffeine: 1 oz
Sugar: 30 (unclear quantity)
Water: 2.5 gal
Lime juice: 2 pints, 1 quart
Vanilla: 1 oz
Caramel: 1.5 oz or more for color

The secret 7X flavor (use 2 oz of flavor to 5 gals syrup) :
Alcohol: 8 oz
Orange oil: 20 drops
Lemon oil: 30 drops
Nutmeg oil: 10 drops
Coriander: 5 drops
Neroli: 10 drops  .. a plant oil produced from the blossom of the bitter orange tree
Cinnamon: 10 drops

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Monday/ Pandaland biscuits

I bought the cute Pandaland biscuits just for fun.  They are made by one of Japan’s major candy and & snack companies.   (Japan also had an emperor called Meiji from 1868 to 1912).

Since the crossword puzzle is too easy, I will throw in one more question.   Where in China does one go to see pandas in the wild?  (Answer below).

Answer :  The city of Chengdu in Sichuan province.

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Sunday/ a soggy Shenzhen

On our one day off from work it rained in Shenzhen today.  Ah well, better luck next weekend, right?  Two colleagues and I went to the Shenzhen Electronics Market, a really big ten-story building in the city center.   The first picture is just of the street nearby, the second from inside the building.  There are thousands of sellers in the building, most with one booth and one display case to sell anything  electronic.   The giraffe on the escalator says mind your head (especially if you are a giraffe?).   How about a panda web cam, or a Hello Kitty one?

Next we went to have some lunch as always at McCauly’s Irish Pub, and then to the shopping mall for a few  grocery items.  The mall is called Mix-C for some reason.    Valentine’s Day is tomorrow, and people were lining up for pictures with the romantic hearts backdrop.      I am sure I do not have to explain why the 2011 on the sign has bunny ears and carrot 1’s !

And finally – one of the newest tall apartment buildings on the way back to Dameisha .. this one is called the Spring and Sea.

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Saturday/ red and yellow

Thursday was a stressful day at work, and so was today.    Never mind that it was Saturday :  sparks were flying in the early morning meeting with a heated discussion – and I was facilitating the meeting.   Later in the morning there was another difficult two-hour workshop.

We did get to bail out at 4pm, leaving me time to go hit some tennis balls with two colleagues at the East Coast apartments here in Dameisha.  The red and yellow lanterns are from there.

How to forget about work?  Lie back on your comfortable red leather sofa and eat your favorite chocolate candy.  For me it is m&m’s.  They are sold in a nifty yellow canister here that you can shake to gauge from the rattle inside how many you have left  :  ).

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Friday/ dragon fruit

This supermarket is right next to my apartment building and sports new signage made of little LED lights.  (I think I said before that I like the old-fashioned neon signs much better).    I came away with a nice dragon fruit*, guavas and apples.

*Dragon fruit is called huǒ lóng guǒ 火龍果/火龙果 “fire dragon fruit” in Chinese and is also called pithaya or pitahaya.  It is the fruit of several cactus species, most importantly of the genus Hylocereus (sweet pitayas).   The cross-section picture is from Wikipedia.

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Thursday/ ‘I have no illusions’

I have no illusions.  I lost them on my travels. – John Malkovich’s character the Vicomte de Valmont in Dangerous Liaisons (1988).

Well.   I think those of us that work on a very big system implementation- or worked on Microsoft Vista – or ever built a house- or have ever done something really hard!- could have said at some point  I have no illusions.  I lost them on my projects.


This picture is of the classic system implementation phases for an SAP project.   We are at the end of what we call the Realization Phase and entering the Final Preparation phase.   So we have to take stock of what we have done, and what remains to be done.   No room for illusions of building more, or taking on extra work discovered too late.  Fix the defects we found in testing.   Meet the deadline.   

Speaking of illusions – here is a building I found in Hong Kong last month (I don’t know the name).    Is the middle section bulging out or bending in?


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Wednesday/ Hóng Bāo

I got my red envelope at work today from the project manager (known as Hóng Bāo).   It is a small monetary gift for the New Year and the red color of the envelope symbolizes good luck and is meant to ward off evil spirits.    The amount of money usually ends with an even digit,  as odd-numbered money gifts are traditionally associated with funerals.  HOWEVER – a widespread tradition holds that money should not be given in fours, or the number four should not appear in the amount, such as 40, 44 and 400.   The pronunciation of the word four resembles that of the word death, and it signifies bad luck for many Chinese.

The spicy pork was part of dinner tonight with my two colleagues at the local ‘Spicy Restaurant’ (our name for it).   Believe me, you will need that ice-cold Tsingtao to wash it down with – and even then your lips glow with a numb fire for a while!

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Tuesday

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.

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Monday night/ 9.56pm in Dameisha

The first picture is from the Cathay Pacific automatic flight tracker, and shows us making a bee-line for Hong Kong with Shanghai to the north and Kaohsiung (Taiwan) and Baguio (The Philippines) to the south.    Next up is the familiar-by -now border crossing into mainland China flashing by while we are in the mini-van taking us in by road.    And hey! the Google Latitude mapping application on my iPhone works even here and shows exactly where I am right now : in Dameisha/ Shenzhen (Dameisha is in the far eastern outskirts of Shenzhen).   Neat!