Willem's Planet

We arrived at 10pm Friday night on the Shenzhen-Macau ferry; this was after we left Dameisha at 4pm, so it was not easy to get here.   Next time I will go to Hong Kong and take the ferry from there.    I’m posting only one of my favorite Macau pictures and will post more tonight, it’s of the Macau tower viewed from the Avenida de Republica.  The tower measures 338 m (1,109 ft) in height from ground level to the highest point.  There is an observation deck with panoramic views, restaurants, theaters, shopping malls and walking tour around the outer rim (we didn’t have time to go up in the tower).  It offers the best view of Macau and in recent years has been used for a variety of adventurous activities.  We saw bunjee jumping from the tower albeit with two extra guide cords that keeps the jumper from slamming into the tower.

The casinos and new buildings here are just spectacular.  They slumber by day and come alive at night with giant neon and LED lighting and giant electronic displays.   We stayed in the Golden Dragon Hotel, not quite up to the Marriott’s standard, and the beds are extra extra firm (read : very hard!) but last night I slept on top of the comforter from the second bed which worked very well.

We went food-shopping at Carrefour in Shenzhen last night (the characters are from a children’s book in the store .. I’m the tired guy on the right, I think!), and the food department’s little spelling faux pas reflect the fact that in written Chinese there are no plurals.   One dish, many dish, one house, many house,  one sheep, many sheep (hey, that one actually works! : ).

After work we’re heading out to Macau for the weekend; I hope to get some rest and just check out the joint.   We will wander through the casinos, of course, just to see what they look like.   Some travel sites opine that Macau will soon overtake Hong Kong as a travel destination soon, but I will go and look for myself !

Most St Patrick’s Day partiers that went to McCauly’s Pub in Shenzhen were missing on the early bus this morning (we have an early bus and a late bus).   The pub serves up a mean shepherd’s pie, I’m told, and was packed.    I usually finish up my breakfast at my desk (the yogurt cup’s lid has a folded spoon in, see?).   Lunch time in the cafeteria still offers up new dishes from time, such as the steamed egg below the chopsticks (it has the consistency of flan), the rest is familiar fare : chicken leg, cauliflower and fried rice.  The drink is tea-flavored milk.

I’m looking forward to get the blueprint phase over with so we can get busy building the new system in SAP.    It’s a new version of SAP with new bells and whistles.  So the SAP elephant can be made to dance a few new steps.

Happy St Patrick’s Day!  A group of party animals from work went in to Shenzhen to an Irish pub tonight.   I was tempted to go but it’s a school night, and I had a long day of work sessions.   Tomorrow is the first day I will get time to catch up on all the other work I couldn’t get to.   I also have to pack my things : I am moving to a single apartment.  It will be great to have a little more space and a quieter time in the evening and on the weekend away from my two roommates.

I still check out all the grocery products, foreign and well-known brands, in the little store here at the apartment complex every time I go there.   So in the spirit of St Patrick’s Day (the Irish and potatoes), here’s three Chinese flavors of Lay’s chips not found in the USA : cucumber, blueberry and .. American classic flavor !

Tuesday’s Dead is the name of a song on Teaser and the Firecat, an album released by Cat Stevens in 1971.   It’s the floormat with Tuesday on it in the elevator of our building that made me think of it.   A lot of work it is, to change out the floormat every day of the week, not?  And is the week such a blur that the office workers need reminding that today is actually Tuesday? : )  And why does 星期 二 translate to Tuesday?  Well, it’s ‘small period of time, the second’.       I didn’t do too badly sleep-wise last night, but I am still tired.  So off to bed with me.

星   xīng   star / satellite / small amount;    期 qī  a period of time / phase / stage;  二 èr  two / 2

Yes .. here I am! back in Dameisha home away from home.   The snapshot of the flight recorder on the plane shows we flew over the Alution islands by Alaska, then skirted by the Kamchatka peninsula before making our way down to Hong Kong.     Traffic was heavy all the way from Hong Kong and through Shenzhen and the fog didn’t help .. so it took two hours from the airport to get here.  Anyway, better go to bed .. busy four days at work ahead of me.    I started working on the plane already, but they took good care of me with food and drinks, and I got to catch up a little on my sleep as well.

Sitting in the lounge at San Francisco airport, will soon step on board for the long flight to Hong Kong .. I’m tired !  since I  got only 2 hrs of sleep last night.     I will get in on Monday night Hong Kong time, and this time it’s just me and one colleague that will be picked up by the van that will take us out to Dameisha.

It’s 11.30pm, and my 3.45 am pick-up time for the airport is approaching fast, given that American clocks all ‘spring forward’ by an hour tonight at 2am as well! Eek!  I hope the cab driver adjusts his watch as well !

I still had time to squeeze in watching Up in the Air at my friends Bryan and Gary’s, the movie that stars George Clooney as an über frequent flyer, corporate down-sizer and motivational speaker.  The movie had an engaging storyline and certainly flashes a warning sign to all frequent flyers : make sure you have a home and people to come back to when it all comes to a very sudden halt.  So noted.

Cleaned my house today, and started packing my bags for the trip out to Hong Kong, my 3rd, Sunday.   A group of about 8 of us from work plan to go to Macau next weekend (the former Portuguese colony, now a Special Administrative region of China the same way Hong Kong is).   It is across the Pearl River Delta from Hong Kong (lower left corner of map, click picture to enlarge, picture courtesy of Google Maps), and we plan to take a ferry from Shenzhen airport to get there.

I couldn’t resist posting this picture of a house of cards .. check it out.  I suppose it will be gone by the time we get there next week!

Don’t Anybody Sneeze
In Macao, Bryan Berg breaks the world record for the largest house of freestanding cards with his replica of the Venetian Macao. [Photo from TIME magazine, Mar 10 2010]

Two things from my kitchen counter top this morning to brighten up the cold Monday .. General Mills’s latest Cheerios flavor is chocolate, with real cocoa.  Hmm, so there is such a thing as imitation cocoa? and how much is ‘real cocoa’ and how much brown food-coloring?  It tastes so good that it makes me feel guilty, though.  I should eat oatmeal or Pronutro instead !

The other picture is of one of three cuts of silk fabric I bought in Hong Kong (now making its way to Stellenbosch, South Africa).

Saw this on the sidewalk on the way to Starbucks to get some coffee this morning.. hmm !

So I don’t have to go to China to get sum (some) dim sum, see?  Chinese translation and all.  And yes, they say ‘eat me’ and they are delicious, the little dim sums! : )

The rhododendron in front of my house is in full bloom .. the only color that I have in my small front yard at this point.   I will have to do something to it, but of course not being home a lot makes it complicated (sigh).   Bed-time for me, I got a fair amount of sleep last night and I hope to do even better tonight.

Below is the Boeing 747-400 bird that brought us across the Pacific sitting patiently on the tarmac.  (Notice the phalanx of apartment buildings in the background?)  The flight and connection in San Francisco went fine; I made it in around 2pm to my house.  It was a beautiful day in Seattle, sunny with some clouds, 60° F (16 °C) and the trees on my street are full of spring blossoms.   I see construction has started in earnest on the light rail station here on Capitol Hill (where I live).  The newspaper says Starbucks is stuck in the crossfire for allowing guns in its stores. I am not sure if this was a change in the previous policy, or how the controversy came about.  (Gun ownership by citizens is illegal in all of China.)  I will have to catch up with the local and national news here !  And catch up with my sleep.

I am going downstairs for a nice breakfast and then the hotel shuttle will take me to Hong Kong airport.   I snapped this picture looking back from the van that brought us here from work yesterday.  It’s one of the two suspension bridges that runs across Victoria Bay and connects Kowloon and Hong Kong Island.

Below is another ‘spot the translation faux pas‘ picture, of a paper shopping bag on the counter at the dry-cleaners last night when I dropped off some shirts and pants.    Those of us that go home are all packed up for our trip back to the States already, since we’re going to stay overnight at the Hong Kong airport hotel.   Always, always check the Big Three : passport, wallet and Blackberry.   Then almost as important there’s the cell phone charger, computer, charger, medicine, iPod and Bose head phones !  (Yes, I know – I have too many gadgets).

These pictures from a car parked here at work ..  the Chinese bumper sticker equivalent of ‘back off!’.    My colleagues tell me the second picture (same car) is more rude than the first one, roughly translating into ‘I was a bad boy at school so watch out for me!’.   To look up these characters on my translator is a mini-project : I have to scribe it the right way with the stylus, and some of them are just impossible to get right.

Monday is over and only Tuesday and Wednesday stands between me and Thursday.   I’m going home on Thursday! I can’t wait!

This picture was taken in the Tsim Sha Tsui district in Hong Kong on Saturday night.   An Indian restaurant, a kitchen house ware store, 24 hr internet cafe and .. hel-lo!  Van der Merwe’s Camera and Video Shop!  South African flag on the sign and above the sign, see it?  Background note to non-South Africans :  Van der Merwe jokes make fun of Afrikaners , Van der Merwe being a stereotypical Dutch name.

Is this joke too risqué?  Too late, here it is.   The doctor wanted to go hunting, he calls his assistant Koos van der Merwe and tells him ‘Yes Koos, I am going hunting tomorrow, we don’t want to close the clinic, and I ask you to take care of our patients’. ‘Yes, doctor …’ answers Koos.
The doctor goes hunting and returns the next day and asks:’So Koos, how was your day?’
Koos tells him he took care of 3 patients:
The first one had a headache so I gave him TYLENOL.
‘Great Koos, and the second one?’ asks the doctor.
‘The second one had an upset stomach and I gave him MAALOX, doctor’ says Koos.
‘Yislaaaaaaaik Koos you’re good at this and what about the third one?’  asks the doctor.
‘Man! I was waiting for more patients and suddenly the door opens and a woman enters hot and bothered, she undresses herself, and lies on the table and shouts: HELP ME! For 5 years I have not seen a man!’
And what did you do Koos?!’ asks the doctor.
Koos : ‘Why – I put some eye drops in her eyes!’