Beijing, part 3: Bird's Nest and Chunlin's Past

After lunch, we went to the Olympic stadium -- the Bird's Nest. Almost two years after the Olympics were held, it still looks shiny new. When are they going to tear it down?



The biggest surprise for me, although I suppose it shouldn't have been, is that it was swarming with tour groups and other visitors. I'm not used to stadiums being visited without an event being held, but this was China and this was the Beijing National Stadium.



Nearby, the puffy Water Cube (Beijing National Aquatics Center).




The Promenade between the two was full of visitors and kite vendors.


Just behind the Water Cube was a small McDonald's with a limited menu: Big Mac, chicken sandwich, McNuggets, fries, drinks, ice cream, apple pie, nothing else. No little burger for sale for five yuan. We settled for coffee and ice cream.

Next door, a new building that I later learned is called Digital Beijing.


Four o'clock. Jason drove around and picked us up. Next we visited Chunlin's past. First, we went to the China University of Mining and Technology, where she used to live and work, teaching English.


Some of the buildings had new stucco and paint, but they were basically unchanged.

Beijing Normal University, Chunlin's alma mater, on the other hand, was radically different. Her dormitory and main classroom building still remained pretty much the same as she remembered, but much else was gone. The old main gate for the campus was gone. It's now a hotel parking lot entrance.


This is the old entrance to the women's dorm, where Chunlin stayed as a student. It's now locked and the guarded entrance is around the other side of the building.


She lived up there, somewhere.


Here's the building where she took most of her classes. Not much has changed inside, not even the small lecture hall where they watched American movies that almost nobody else in China got to see. She were learning English, after all.

The remains of the big square are in front of the rebuilt library, with the new main gate on the library's axis, with a matching skyscraper behind the library.


It's a big campus, or at least it seemed so.


When we got back to the car, Jason said (in his ever-improving English), "Lots of beautiful girls here."

I replied, "I got me a beautiful girl from this school!"

And so I did.


I've posted more photos on flickr, naturally.

Big Ten Prediction

When the Big Ten conference announces at the end of this year whether it will expand or not, I predict that they'll decide to expand to sixteen schools by adding Nebraska, Iowa State, Missouri, Rutgers, and Syracuse.

This will give them two eight-team divisions. By adding three to the west and two to the east, they won't have to split any state in half.

Plus, all these schools are part of the 61-school Assocation of American Universities, a research association. The Big Ten prides itself on being the only conference with all its schools in the association. Notre Dame and Connecticut (names bandied about for expansion) are not in the AAU (but could be invited if their graduate academics are up to par).

I predict that they'll skip over Pittsburgh (also in the AAU) to gain the new tv markets that Rutgers and Syracuse would provide.

This all would leave the Big 12 with only nine teams and the Big East with only six football teams, so they'd both have some scrambling to do. Maybe they'll raid the C-USA like the Big East did a few years ago. I doubt, though, that Rice will be reunited with the big Texas schools in a new Big 12. Not if those schools are chasing money.

Old Teachers of Old

A coworker's son was at our office today, doing a job-shadowing project that's required for high school graduation. (He complained about another graduation requirement, the forced-labor "volunteer" community service, but that's not what I want to talk about now.)

He goes to my old high school that I graduated from fifteen years ago.

I asked him if there were any teachers he thought might have been around since my time. He mentioned a gym teacher that sounded familiar, but I never took gym, so I'm not sure.

The two of my memorable teachers who are still there are the French teacher and the orchestra teacher. The student takes Spanish, but described "Madame" as crazy. She was old and crazy when I was there, so . . .

The orchestra teacher started at the high school my junior year. I had him 9th grade in junior high before he got the high school job. He still teaches at both those two schools. I wonder if his class still has as much free time as I remember, or if he's got them buckling down now. I wonder if his orchestra will go to Gresham next week and I wonder how poorly they'll do in comparison to the Garfield orchestra. . .

Where's My Snow??

The rain/snow accumulation for today:


And Seattle School District had a snow day for this?

Go Navy!

Perhaps I don't like Obama because of my natural antipathy toward Ivy Leaguers. . .

judging

On Saturday, Christina performed at her school district adjudication. The junior ahead of her could have been professional (or will be).

The judges said she had good style, but only hit 90% of the correct notes.

Oh well. It sounded good to me!

Use That Brain of Yours

From the calendar that Mamurd gave us:

What is 1 5/7% of 1,225?

No cheating now. Do it in your head!

Friday to Lopez

I took Friday off work to go with Christina's high school outdoor group on a three-day weekend trip to Lopez Island. Chunlin drove up Friday evening, not arriving till 10:15. She couldn't get the day off. Darn you, big company!

Chaperoning this group was actually pretty easy. The kids organized and ran the outing themselves.

With 70+/- high school kids, that was no simple feat!

The five in the back look like trouble, though. . .

Once at the park (about 3 p.m.), there was kickball and frisbeeing galore. Us chaperones did a lot of standing around talking. Or sitting.

Christina learned how to get out of a flipped kayak, right it, and get back in.


The sun set.


And then we had dinner cooked by the kids. . .

More photos on flickr. Saturday and Sunday to come.

Djibouti Ad

The capital of Djibouti . . . is Djibouti!

Maybe Coke Zero can start a whole series of geographically inspired ads. Maybe kids will learn something.

The capital of Luxembourg . . . is Luxembourg!

The capital of Monaco . . . is Monaco!

The capital of San Marino . . . is San Marino!

The capital of Singapore . . . is Singapore!

Feb 3 late afternoon

(Chunlin's photo above)

Up the tame Buller Gorge to the swingbridge. Metal suspension bridge for pedestrians. Quite bouncy.

Nature walk past an earthquake fault line. A fifteen-foot drop from a 1920s quake still has bare vertical dirt showing in places. ... Oh, and the sandflies!

(a stranger's photo above)

(a stranger's photo above)

(a stranger's photo above)

(a stranger's photo above)

On our way back across the river, instead of the bridge, we took the zip line. Enjoyable, great view. I was still holding on for dear life, though. Especially when we approached the far side at top speed. Both of us started yelling out.

Chunlin is driving for the first time this trip. Very odd in the left seat. She's getting the hang of it, more or less. Faster road than what I adjusted on. ... I think I overestimated the drive time for today. My butt's still sore from sitting, though. ... 6:30 , we're checked into our hotel for the next two nights. Our room has four beds, zero chairs, zero tables. And there's no good parking lot. ... And Chunlin got a ticket for crossing the double-yellow line on a corner. $150. "Damn it." ... The cop showed us photographs he took while tailing us down the steep hill. Is that safe? Taking photos on a very curvy road?

We can see the North Island, just across the water. ... Wait a mo. That's still part of the South Island. We're facing east, not north.

Lots of families with small kids here in Kaiteriteri. It's the last weekend before school starts.

Welcome to Adulthood!

On one of my calendars, today is Coming-of-Age Day (Japan). On another, today is Adults Day (Japan). The first name is a better translation. Today is the day when twenty-year-olds (the legal age of voting, drinking, etc.) dress up for ceremonies celebrating their ascension to adulthood. The new men wear suits. The new women wear traditional _furisode_ dresses.

In the past, Japanese boys became men at fifteen. Girls became women at thirteen. In 1876, though, twenty became the legal adulthood age.

In the U.S., a recent University of Chicago survey asked Americans when they thought adulthood started. The average answer was 26.

Physically, the fifteen/thirteen is probably closer to the truth. Emotionally, though, I'd say that these days even 26 is too early for a lot of people. . .

Too much coddling by parents/teachers/governments!

PS: Happy birthday, Elvis! And the rest of you, clean off your desk!

Hey, look at me! I'm famous!

Or at least a group of college students in Singapore have read some of my writing and used it as an example in their paper.

What writing, you say? My Vophick calendar for Mars! I wrote it about seven years ago. It was one of many calendars for Mars that I designed back then.

Their paper is about what life on Mars would be like. One of the sections is on calendars. They discuss in depth four systems: Robert Zubrin's (the head of the Mars Society), Thomas Gangale's, Frans Blok's, and mine. Their write-up on mine starts on page 74.

Zubrin's calendar is twelve uneven-length months that fit the eccentric orbit of Mars so that there are exactly three months per season. The months vary in length between 46 and 66 days. Gangale's Darian calendar has 24 months of 27 or 28 days each. Blok's calendar is structurally similar to the Darian calendar (24 months of 27/28), but he invented a new naming system for the months so there would be no confusion between Earth and Mars.

My Vophick calendar has sixteen months of 41 or 42 days each. I was trying to strike a balance between the long months that only twelve would create and the large number of months that shorter months would cause. And this is precisely why they included it in their paper.

They also mention my leap-year system as being confusing, which it is. But there really isn't any great solution for that one. Instead of an extra 0.242 days, there's an extra 0.592 days. You try to solve it.

Personally, I settled on my Pavonian calendar, which has twenty months of 33 or 34 days. But I still keep track of the Vophick calendar, as well. FYI, today is August 11 on the Vophick calendar, Acidalia 1 on the Pavonian calendar, and Aries 11 on the Darian calendar. I don't keep track of Zubrin's silly thing.

The Saga of the Little Yellow Flower

And thus the Arnica Whatchimacalia will be preserved for eternity at the University of Washington Botany Department.

In Memorium

In commemoration of Pluto's demotion from the ranks of planets, I purchased a placemat today.



Now that it's out-of-date, its price is going to skyrocket, right?

I suppose the good thing about all this is that Pluto is no longer an oddball. It has plenty of friends just like it: Xena, Santa, Ixion, Quaoar, and the rest.

I think kids should first learn the four terrestrial planets and the four gas giants, then learn the four largest asteroids and the four largest trans-Neptunian objects, then maybe differentiate between plutinos and cubewanos and Scattered Disk Objects and learn the four largest of each of those.

From Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune. . .
to Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars; Vesta, Ceres, Pallas, Hygiea; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune; Pluto, "Santa", "Easterbunny", "Xena". . .
to Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars; Vesta, Ceres, Pallas, Hygiea; Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune; Pluto, Orcus, Ixion, Huya; UX₂₅, "Santa", Quaoar, "Easterbunny"; TC₃₀₂, "Buffy", "Xena", Sedna. . .
to. . .

And yes, that Buffy.

Is Fleetwood Mac racist?

Because, of course, their song, "Don't Stop (Thinking about Tomorrow)" is based upon a Future Time Orientation, which not all cultures share. So says the Seattle Public Schools, who want to make life easy and happy for the "(Sha-la-la-la-la-la) Let's Live for Today" crowd headed by the Grass Roots.

Good news from India . . . sort of

A textbook for fourteen-year-olds in the western India state of Rajasthan favorably compares donkeys to wives.

"A donkey is like a housewife," declares the Hindi language primer approved by the state of Rajasthan, according to The Times of India newspaper. "It has to toil all day and, like her, may even have to give up food and water."

"In fact, the donkey is a shade better," continues the text meant for 14-year-olds, "for while the housewife may sometimes complain and walk off to her parents' home, you'll never catch the donkey being disloyal to his master."

Um. . .

But the good news is the reaction. The women's caucus in the ruling party of the state government has loudly protested (try that in a dictatorship!) and the government is actually listening.

"The comparison was made in good humor," state education official A.R. Khan was quoted as saying.

He added, however, that "protests have been taken note of and the board is in the process of removing" the reference.

I have high hopes for India. They still have a ways to go, but at least they're moving in the right direction.

What do flags mean?

In Southern California, some high school students took down the US flag and raised the Mexican flag above an upsidedown US flag. Where do you think their allegiances lie? They couldn't possibly consider themselves Mexicans and not Americans, could they? They'd never do anything to hurt the US, would they?

Bear in mind that these are high school kids. Do you think they came up with this mindset on their own? Or perhaps their parents, the radio stations, everyone they look up to has a similar mindset.

And all this protesting just because eleven million people broke the law. That's hardly noteworthy. Everybody breaks the law. There's no need to yell and scream and kick these eleven million out of our country. Oh wait. Are the protesters for the law-breakers?

B.Y.O.B.

One of the three 2005 cds I've bought is System of a Down's _Mezmerize_. Good music. Much vigor. Their lyrics, though, are nonsensical, trite, and naive. I'll skip the discussion of the nonsensical because, well, I like nonsense. But as for trite and naive lyrics? Can't stand 'em. The leadoff song, "B.Y.O.B.," oft repeats two questions:

"Why do they always send the poor?
Why don't presidents fight the war?"

I always want to yell at my stereo at this point. . . Do they really expect a president to be on the front line in battle, gun in hand, getting shot at, getting killed? For any new job, there's a learning curve. If we kept having to replace the president every few weeks because the old one was dead, the Oval Office would never get anything done! We only have one president, but we have a whole bunch of soldiers. Every life is important and invaluable in and of itself, but some people are indeed worth more than others when it comes to replacement costs.

As for the "poor" question, need I point out that there are many, many more poor people in our country than there are rich people? Didn't think so. But why does anybody join our volunteer military? Some do it out of honor/patriotism/loyalty, and some do it because it looks like a worthwhile career/life choice. How many rich people do you think fall into the latter category? No, they're too busy becoming lawyers and dentists and other money-making schemes to be enticed by the wages our soldiers earn.

So why don't the poor aim to become lawyers and dentists, too? That's the real question System of a Down should be asking. I'm positive there's plenty of the poor who do have high ambitions, and some do become lawyers and dentists. But how many of them don't even get an AA? How many of them don't even go to a technical college? How many drop out of high school? A lot higher percentage than over in the rich crowd, I'd wager.

And why is this? I point my finger at the parents. The redneck/inner-city culture has a severe shortfall when it comes to parental expectations and overall responsibility. And that's what System of a Down should really be ranting about in their songs.

I Can't Read Your Handwriting

I have found that a lot of people have a hard time reading my handwriting, even if I'm trying to write neatly. What they don't know (or don't believe) is that I often have an equally-hard time reading their handwriting. Especially old people. It's like we're using a completely different alphabet. An eighty-year-old can barely read my handwriting and has a hard time reading the writing of a fifty-year-old. I can barely read the handwriting of the eighty-year-old and have occasional problems with the writing of fifty-year-olds. The fifty-year-old can probably read the eighty-year-old's writing and mine just about equally, even though the two are completely different. But I can read other "sloppy" handwriting of people my own age just fine and I'm sure two eighty-year-olds wouldn't bat an eyelash at each other's scrawls.

You can't blame computers for my handwriting style, since it wasn't until junior high for me that word processing got started and not until college that it was required for projects. (Of course, now that computers are deep in the schools, I wonder if handwriting is being given its proper time.) So it must just be teaching styles changing through the decades. At least that's the only answer I've come up with.

So all you old farts better be glad that this is typed, or you'd have no clue what I was saying. Then again, maybe it'd be better that way.

Women's Clothing

Two news stories I saw recently, School Board Bans Photo Of Girl Wearing Tux and Condoleezza Rice's Commanding Clothes, bounced off each other in my head.

In the first one, a high-school senior's picture was yanked from the yearbook because she wore the tux that was required attire for the boys instead of the gown-and-pearls uniform for the girls. The school claims it's just because she didn't follow the rules, but the girl thinks it has more to do with her being a lesbian. My conservative father saw the story and didn't see anything wrong with the girl in a tux. He suggested that the school was either caught up in their own power, or else they were afraid that the boys would start wearing the gowns and pearls. Which you know some would, just for the shock value.

But the Rice story brought another possible explanation to my head. It discussed how Rice, on her trip to Europe, didn't wear the bland, pastel suits of other female dignitaries such as Albright, but instead wore all black: high-heel boots, a short dress, and a long jacket (cue Cake here). Here's the paragraph that linked the two articles:

But the sexual frisson in Rice's look also comes from the tension of a woman dressed in vaguely masculine attire -- that is, the long, military-inspired jacket. When the designer Yves Saint Laurent first encouraged women to wear trousers more than 30 years ago, his reasons were not simply because pants are comfortable or practical. He knew that the sight of a woman draped in the accouterments of a man is sexually provocative. A woman was embracing something forbidden.

So perhaps the tux was just too sexy for some of the school board members...