Author: Willem

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Tuesday/ all those Teslas in Seattle ⚡

Tesla is famously owned by billionaire Elon Musk, who was once admired by liberals for helping to popularize the electric vehicle. But in the last few years — in particular since he purchased the social media platform Twitter (now X) in October 2022 — Musk has become something of a villain among the left. He’s often expressed conservative views and backed Donald Trump’s successful presidential bid last year.

And that’s put some Tesla owners in the Seattle area, where most people tend to vote Democrat, in an awkward position, especially since the car is so closely associated with Musk himself.

Even so, it doesn’t seem to have hurt Tesla ownership rates here — or if it has, it’s too soon to be reflected in the data. And there’s been a significant increase in Tesla households in the Seattle market over the past few years. For example, in Nielsen surveys conducted from December 2020 to April 2022, only around 22,400 Seattle-area households owned a Tesla.
(My note: by the end of 2024 that number had increased threefold, to 66,700).
– Seattle Times columnist Gene Balk

‘You can tell South Africa they can have Elon Musk back‘, quipped my neighbor, after I had told him of my recent trip to South Africa.’
Yeah, I know. Some days I think he can have my car back’, said I.
(.. but thinking afterwards:  I really did not buy my Tesla because I was an Elon Musk fan. It’s an electric vehicle— with zero emissions, as a reminder— and a lot of fun to drive. So why should I not drive it?)

What is meant by overrepresented?
From the report in the Seattle Times:
In the Seattle market area, a projected 311,000 households had at least one Subaru. That pencils out to 16.8% of the 1.86 million households that had at least one vehicle. The nationwide Subaru ownership rate was just 7.8% of households.
A projected 66,700 Seattle-area households had at least one Tesla, which represented 3.6% of local households. The national average was only 1.6%.
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Monday/ perfins 📌

A perfin is a stamp that has a name or initials perforated into it.
The word “perfin” is short for “perforated initials” or “perforated insignia”.
Perfins are used to prevent theft and control how the stamp is used for mail.
How are perfins created?
Individuals, organizations, or government agencies add perfins to stamps after the production process.
The holes are punched into the stamp’s design to create a pattern.
Source: Google Search Labs/ AI Overview

These are the only perfins I have found so far (among the thousands of stamps I have amassed for my collection and for my philatelic ‘research’ 🤗 ).
The U.S. stamp bottom left is also pre-cancelled. Pre-cancelled stamps were used for mass-mailings, making it unnecessary for the post office to cancel them, and expediting their processing.

1961 First Definitive Issue (New Design), South Africa
Issued Jan. 20, 1969
Perf. 13½x14 |Phosphor frame |Wmk. RSA tête-bêche
SACC282 |1c |Rose-red & sepia |Coral Tree Flowers (Erythina lysistemon)
Perfin initials “D.C.”

1982 Fourth Definitive Issue (Architecture), South Africa
Issued Jul. 15, 1982
Perf. 14 |Design: A.H. Barrett |Engraving: Arthur Howard Barrett |Litho. |Phosphorized paper |No Wmk
SACC524 |10c |Carmine brown |Pietermaritzburg Town Hall
Perfin insignia “C C C” (or possibly “V V V”)

1923 United States of America (U.S. Presidents and prominent Americans)
Issued Jan. 15, 1923
Perf. 11×10½ |No Wmk
Scott 562 A165|10c |Orange |James Monroe (5th U.S. President)
Perfin insignia “WFH”
Pre-cancelled “Chicago IL” 
[Sources: stampworld, South African Colour Catalogue 2023-25, Scott 2003 Standard Postage Stamp Catalogue Vol. 1]

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Snowy Sunday ❄️

We had just under an inch of snow on the ground here in Capitol Hill today. There might be more snow tomorrow.

The flakes are coming down nicely, this is at 9.53 am.
I measured 20 mm (0.8 in) after the first round of snow. A little more fell later, bringing the day’s total to an inch or so.
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Saturday/ freezing rain 🧊

There was a little bit of thunder at noon today, followed by a spell of freezing rain.
An hour or two later, there was blue sky. Today’s high was 40°F (4°C).
There might be a dusting of snow on the ground tomorrow here in the city, say the meteorologists.

The view from my window at 12.19 pm today.
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Friday/ rain ☔

There was rain last night and today, a welcome break in the dry weather of the last few weeks.
The snowpacks across Washington State are lagging from their normal levels, but there is still time to make up the deficit. The snowpacks on the mountains peak at around April 1.

Snowpacks (that melt during spring and summer) are a significant source of water for reservoirs around the state, for agriculture, and for hydroelectric power generation.

The map at top left shows the latest snowpack numbers. Worse than where we were in December, and on Jan. 1, but somewhat better than a year ago in Jan. 2024.
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Thurday/ a snake on a stamp ✉️

There was mail today, with a new Year Of The Snake forever stamp on, issued by the US Postal Service.

2025 Lunar New Year—Year of the Snake
Issued Jan. 14, 2025
Perf. 11 Serpentine Die-cut | Self-adhesive | Design: Camille Chew | Engraving: Banknote Corporation of America | Issued in sheets of 20
6376 FOREVER (73c) Multicolored | Lunar New Year – Year Of The Snake
[Sources: stampworld.com, USPS]
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Wednesday/ Happy Lunar New Year 🐍

Happy Lunar New Year— the Year of the Snake.
It sounds a little ominous, but I guess every year cannot be the Year of the Dragon.

The public art installation at the corner of Madison Street and 14th Avenue here on Capitol Hill is complete. (The installation is not specifically related to the Lunar New Year. The artist is Seattle resident Ben Zamora.)
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Tuesday/ lost in translation 😮

ASTER = aster, the flower
TROEF = to trump
VREET = to eat (used for animals), or to eat like an animal

How strange, I thought this morning, after completing my Afrikaans Wordle, that there really is no English word for VREET. 

In Afrikaans, humans ‘eet’ (eat) and animals ‘vreet’ (eat).
Example:
Ek eet die appel. (I eat the apple).
Die vark vreet die appel. (The pig eats the apple).

If someone eats voraciously or sloppily, you might use the ‘animal’ word for eat to ask the person:
‘Wat vreet jy?’ (What are you pigging out on?),
meaning the person eats like an animal/ a pig.

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Monday/ a rough day for Nvidia 📉

Advances in artificial intelligence by Chinese upstarts rattled U.S. markets on Monday, with the threat of greater competition prompting a slide in shares of the biggest technology companies.

The Chinese A.I. company DeepSeek has said it can match the abilities of cutting-edge chatbots while using a fraction of the specialized computer chips that leading A.I. companies rely on. That’s prompted investors to rethink the heady valuations of companies like Nvidia, whose equipment powers the most advanced A.I. systems, as well as the enormous investments that companies like Alphabet, Meta and OpenAI are making to build their businesses.

On Monday, the S&P 500 index fell 1.5 percent, and the tech-heavy Nasdaq dropped 3.1 percent. Nvidia was hit hard, plunging 16.9 percent and losing roughly $600 billion in market value. Falling tech stocks also dented market indexes in Europe and Japan.
-Jason Karaian and Joe Rennison writing for the New York Times

Laura Bratton writes for Yahoo Finance:
Nvidia (NVDA) stock dropped nearly 17% Monday, leading a sell-off across chip stocks and the broader market after a new AI model from China’s DeepSeek raised questions about AI investment and the rise of more cost-efficient artificial intelligence agents. Nvidia’s decline shaved $589 billion off the AI chipmaker’s market cap, the largest single-day loss in stock market history.
My comments: It is an eye-popping decline in market cap for the day, but this stock has rocketed up twentyfold (that would be 2,000 %) over the last five years— and then some.
It was at $6 in Jan. 2020 and at $149.43 (let’s say $150) Jan 6, 2025.
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Sunday/ postmarks from S.W.A. ✉️

I sifted through a shoebox of envelope clippings to put together this set of postmarks from South West Africa*.

Windhoek is the capital, and the postmarks also show Keetmanshoop, Outjo, Koes, Maltahöhe, Okahandja, Oranjemund, Walvis Bay, Okaukuejo, Tsumeb, Kalkrand, Mariental, Swakopmund, Grootfontein, Karibib, Leonardville, Lüderitz, Omaruru, Otjiwarongo, Usakos, Aus and Stampriet.

*South West Africa became Namibia after its independence from South Africa in March 1990.

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Saturday/ underwatermelon 🍉

Uh-oh.
I started playing one of the games that Neflix offers: Underwatermelon.
I like it. (It reminds me a little bit of Tetris from wayy-back when I first started working).
I hope I don’t get too addicted to it .. but what if I do?

A random sequence of little fruit (strawberry, plum, lemon, apple or orange) appears below, and you can move it from left to right before you let go. Two of the same fruit combine and make the bigger fruit, up to a watermelon (see the sequence on the left in the C-shaped line). The space will fill up if you don’t let the fruit combine, and if any fruit floats below the red line, it is GAME OVER.
The levels of the game are indicated by Gate numbers. This is Gate 4 and I still have to earn 35 points (by combining fruit), before the gate will open up, and the fruit float up to a new gate. The nice thing about going to a new gate (a new level), is that the biggest fruit floats to the top quickly, collide and combine into one bigger fruit, and leave a little more space to work withe in the new gate.
I did get a watermelon .. the watermelon is big and takes up a lot of space, but still less than two pineapples or four melons. I read online if you do get two watermelons, and you can make them collide, they will cancel each other out and disappear, leaving you with a lot of new space to work with.
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Friday/ a dry January 🏜️

Happy Friday.
We will have our first 5 pm sunset for the year here in Seattle tomorrow.
It’s been frosty in the mornings and cold by day every day since I’ve been back. And no rain.

Report and graphics from the Seattle Times.
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Thursday/ the camera has landed 📷

I left my camera behind in my hotel room in Cape Town on Monday of last week. I had it picked up at the hotel, and shipped back to me.
(Thanks for the help, Chris!)

I think this was the last straw: this camera stays home next time I go on an overseas trip.
I need a light, compact travel camera that can go into my backpack.

Here it is, the big camera with a big, heavy lens on, to boot. (Not shown in the picture is the padded camera bag that the camera was shipped in, bubble-wrapped inside the bag.
I checked the route that the camera took to get to me from Cape Town, and it looks like this:
Picked up in Cape Town, South Africa.
Arrived at DHL Sort Facility in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Arrived at DHL Sort Facility in Leipzig, Germany.
Arrived at DHL Facility East Midlands, UK.
Arrived at DHL Facility, London-Heathrow, UK.
Arrived at DHL Sort Facility, Los Angeles Gateway, CA.
Arrived at DHL Sort Facility, Seattle, WA.
Landed on Willem’s porch. (Landed in my hands, that is. I had to sign for it).
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Wednesday/ additions to my album 📖

Is a stamp collection— any collection— ever complete?
One can always add objects that are ever-so-slightly different than the ones already in there.

Check out these additions to my South African stamp album, which is already a complete collection of all the issues by the South African post office*.

*The years 1910 to 2020, when the last postage stamps were issued.
Iceland stopped producing postage stamps in 2020 as well, and Finland has indicated it may soon follow suit.

I don’t carry whole stamp booklets in my stamp album, but these cute “razor blade” booklets with the art deco-ish fonts on their covers fit into the narrow plastic pockets that normally carry stamps, and voila! they are now part of my collection.
“Post your letters during the lunch hour” instructs the booklet on the back. Cute— but in 2025 we don’t really have lunch hours and definitely no letters to put in the mail anymore; a time now long gone😔
I modeled this page on a preprinted page I found online, of German stamp album producer Leuchtturm (hence the German descriptions for the colors, which I kept as-is, just for fun).
For an unknown reason, this is the only stamp in the series with a “hatched up” version of the text on the stamp (the “RSA 4c”, made up of stripes that go up from left to right), as well as a “hatched down” version.
Are they really different stamps? Of course they are.
One more example of a slight variation in one of the issues.
The 30c stamp in this series was printed on phosphorescent as well as non-phosphorescent paper, and therefore the two versions are also different stamps!
(I only had a pair of these stamps— no singles— and I don’t break up pairs, so the pair goes into the album as-is).
All other stamps in the series were printed on phosphorescent paper only.
One needs a UV-light to see the difference.
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Tueday/ go Ben! 🎾

It was a disappointing day for Carlos Alcaraz fans (me): he lost his quarterfinal match against Novak Djokovic.

Ben Shelton (22, 🇺🇸 ) is playing against Lorenzo Sonego (29, 🇮🇹 ) tonight— Wednesday in Australia— in another quarterfinal match. He is up by one set to none, and should win. Go, Ben!

Ben Shelton checking in with the chair umpire at the changeover, probably asking ‘Are you OK?’ Shelton’s return from Sonego’s serve hit the side of the umpire’s chair. (You don’t want to get hit by a tennis ball from these pros. Shelton delivered 144 mph serves, and can blast back a ground shot at 90 mph. )
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Monday/ watching tennis 🎾

It was Martin Luther King Day here in the United States.
Also, I heard that a new— old— president of the United States was inaugurated today.

My TV remained switched off though .. and I will only turn it on for Netflix and Australian Open tennis the rest of the week.

Happening right now: American Tommy Paul (27) is battling* Alexander (Sacha) Zverev (27, 🇩🇪) in the first of the four quarterfinal matches. Paul lost the first two sets 6-7 and 6-7, but is up 2-1 in the third set.
*Paul’s outfit makes me think of a GI Joe action figure!
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Sunday ☀️

I made it to Volunteer Park today, all bundled up.
It felt colder than the 42 °F (5 °C) reported on my phone’s weather app.

Volunteer Park with its Victorian-style greenhouse structure in the distance, modeled on London’s Crystal Palace.
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Saturday/ from South Africa to Seattle ✉

The mailman delivered all my mail that they had held while I was gone, today.
There were the usual pieces of junk mail, and a few items I had purchased on Ebay just before I left.

Check out this envelope that was sent from South Africa to Seattle in 1929.
As a rule, I don’t collect envelopes— just stamps— but this one was too interesting to pass up.

The sender from South Africa put a single 1927 one-penny stamp on the envelope that was bound for Seattle. We can make out that the mail was sent in 1929, but the postage due stamps hide from where in South Africa the envelope was mailed.
Upon its arrival on U.S. shores in New York City, US Postal Services levied 4c of additional postage on the piece of mail (the two red stamps on the left).
I imagine that Mrs. Nightingale received her mail in Seattle some time later, after paying the 4c postage that was due.

P.S. As of today, the cost of a standard “First-Class Mail” letter (up to 1 ounce) is $0.73 with a Forever stamp. The 73c is almost exactly what 4c from 1929 would came to, with inflation figured into it.

And here is the destination of that piece of mail: the University National Bank building located in the University District at 4502 University Way NE.
This neo-classical building was completed in 1912. Wells Fargo used to occupy the building, but closed its branch there in 2018.
The building was sold to Hunters Capital in fall of 2020.
The main space inside the building has since been turned into a gym dedicated to indoor climbing (a so-called bouldering gym).
[Photo from seattle.gov, and taken around 1925]
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Friday afternoon/ east, west, home best 🏡

The world traveler is home.

Departure at Munich International Airport.
We were bused out to the Airbus 350-900 sitting on the tarmac, so that we could clamber aboard with the stairs. Let me just stipulate that the guys wearing t-shirts may create the impression that we had summer weather out there. We did not— it was freezing!
A last look at the fuselage before I step into the warm airplane.
Making the turn onto the runway for take-off.
Halfway into the 10-hour flight, and we are over the north of the giant slab of ice called Greenland.
Somewhere over Canada, with about two hours to go to Seattle.
Arrival at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport. 
We were international arrivals, and so we walked across the skybridge to the baggage claim and passport control, which is where I stopped to take this picture.
Our flight waited a little bit for our luggage, and then found it on the baggage claim carousel next to ours, for the flight from Frankfurt that arrived about the same time as ours. Then it was on to the Global Entry kiosk for me. There the was no line, and it took literally a few seconds for the face-recognition system to greenlight my entry into the United States. This way out, said an official, and that was it. So no passport stamp needed, no passport, no nothing. (Registering for Global Entry does cost $120 for a five-year membership.) 
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Friday morning/ at the flughafen 🛫

I am at Munich International Airport, and will be heading home in just an hour or so.

It’s a 45-min train ride from central Munich to the airport. Cost €16.
I could have taken a taxi or an Uber (for €100), but the train is more fun. Our train was split in two at Neufarn station and the front part went to Freising and the back part to the airport (I was in the right part of the train!). There is a split in the train track.
Checking for my departure at the arrivals hall for train passengers .. 11h40 to Seattle, out of Terminal 2.
The view from the 6-th floor public observation deck.