WORLD'S GREATEST PLACES

Anyone know where Saint Lucia is located? It is an island country of the West Indies in the eastern Caribbean with a population of 180,000, and a member of the United Nations. Julien Alford is 23 and yesterday won a gold medal for the 100 meter event, the first for Saint Lucia. She is 5'7" tall. U.S. women's speedster Sha'Carri Richardson is 5'1". Alford could well become the next female version of Usain Bolt.

You should remember him. He is an 8-time Olympic gold medalist and the world record holder in the 100 m, 200 m and 4x100 m relay. From Jamaica, won both the 100 m and 200 m Olympic races in 2008, 2012 and 2016. An eleven-time World Champion. While he is 6'5" tall, and Alford is only 5'7", she seems a lot bigger than most of the finalists in the Paris sprint races.

Watch Taylor Swift narrate a new promo for NBC--featuring her Style--paying tribute to Team USA's finest: Simone Biles, Katie Ledecky and Sha'Carri Richardson. Maybe it should have been Noah Lyles...except he too looks vulnerable. The gold for the men's 100m will be contested also by Kishane Thompson and Oblique Seville of Jamaica, Ferdinand Omanyala of Kenya and Marcell Jacobs of Italy.

Well I know who won that 100 meter dash, but will honor my pledge and wait until tomorrow to divulge details. The medal count so far:

Most medals: USA 71, China 45, France 44 and Australia 31.
Gold medals: USA 19, China 19, France 12 and Australia 12.

Time magazine chose 100 of the world's greatest places for 2024, and here is how they did it.

Solicited nominations.
They particularly wanted new and exciting experiences.
The result was 100 extraordinary destinations to visit this year.

You can read the details of each place, but to save you the effort, here are a few that appealed to me.

Belmond's Eastern and Oriental Express. Actually, I've taken this railway trip, and it was fine, except that the train is on a narrow track--called single gauge--and there is a lot sideways wobble. Dangerous for old and frail people. Read my posting of more than 13 years ago describing my experience. But this is what Time said.

This train was inactive during the pandemic and just re-began operations.
My trip took me from Bangkok to Singapore. This report only includes a three-night Malaysia tour for 64 passengers starting from Singapore.

There are 15 luxurious carriages with an open-air observation car.
Includes stops for snorkeling, a cruise to Langkawi and tour to Taman Negara National Park, one of the world's oldest rainforests.
A Michelin chef, Andre Chiang, was featured.
Good food and a piano bar at night.
The train's signature cocktail is the Royal Nightcap.
The $3400/person three night journey includes meals beverages and activities. About $1000/day when you work in the fact that there are three plus days.

The Royal Caribbean Icon of the Seas.

Cruising returned to normal last year, with 31.7 million passengers, surpassing the pre-pandemic 2019 year by 7%.
The biggest ship now cruising is Icon of the Seas.
There are 20 decks, festooned with twisting slides.
Cost to build, more than $2 billion.
159 feet wide and 1197 feet long.
Speed up to 22 knots.
Can use liquified natural gas.
There are more than 40 restaurants and bars, with 27 places to eat, 13 being free.

Maximum capacity of 7600 passengers, with 2,350 crew.
There was a fire on board, where electricity was lost for a while on June 25.
The next and final ship of this class, Star of the Seas (right), will not be larger than Icon. Future Royal Caribbean cruisers will be smaller.

I will stop here. You can access the other places.

15 Craigside, where I live, had a golf tournament at the Mililani Golf Course. Some photos:

The chef prepared a bag for lunch, which held a spam musubi, banana and cookies from Irene Nakamato, our resident president.

Ended the day at a Wine Down and bestowed awards.

Followed that up with a luau.

Debby just became a hurricane, and will make landfall over the Florida Panhandle on Monday.

If you have a flight or cruise in this general area, read this. Royal Caribbean's Symphony of the Seas will skip a planned stop at Port Canaveral on Sunday, and spend a day at sea.

A NEXT COVID SUBVARIANT?

By now most know that the Omicron BA.5 subvariant has become the dominant infectious agent, now accounting for more than 80% of all COVID-19 cases. Very few are aware that a new one, BA.4.6, is sneaking in and steadily rising, now accounting for 13% of sequenced samples . However, as BA.4.6 has emerged from BA.4, while there is uncertainty, the scientific sense is that the latest bivalent booster targeting BA.4 and BA.5 should also be effective for this next threat. One concern is that Evusheld--the only monoclonal antibody authorized for COVID prevention in immunocompromised individuals--is not effective against BA.4.6. Here is a reference as to what this means. A series of two injections is involved. Evusheld was developed by British-Swedish company AstraZeneca, and is a t ixagevimab co-packaged with cilgavimab . More recently, Los Angeles County reported on subvariant BA.2.75.2 . which Tony Fauci termed suspicious and troublesome. This strain has also been spreading in

Part 3: OUR NEXT AROUND THE WORLD ODYSSEY

Before I get into my third, and final, part of this cruise series, let me start with some more newsworthy topics. Thursday was my pandemic day for years. Thus, every so often I return to bring you up to date on the latest developments. All these subvariants derived from that Omicron variant, and each quickly became dominant, with slightly different symptoms. One of these will shock you. There has been a significant decline in the lost of taste and smell. From two-thirds of early patients to now only 10-20% show these symptoms. JN.1, now the dominant subvariant, results in mostly mild symptoms. However, once JN.1 infects some, there seem to be longer-lasting symptoms. Clearly, the latest booster helps prevent contracting Covid. A competing subvariant, BA.2.86, also known as Pirola , a month ago made a run, but JN.1 prevailed. No variant in particular, but research has shown that some of you will begin to lose hair for several months. This is caused by stress more than anythi

HONOLULU TO SEATTLE

The story of the day is Hurricane Milton, now a Category 4 at 145 MPH, with a track that has moved further south and the eye projected to make landfall just south of Sarasota. Good news for Tampa, which is 73 miles north. Milton will crash into Florida as a Category 4, and is huge, so a lot of problems can still be expected in Tampa Bay with storm surge. If the eye had crossed into the state just north of Tampa, the damage would have been catastrophic. Milton is a fast-moving storm, currently at 17 MPH, so as bad as the rainfall will be over Florida, again, a blessing. The eye will make landfall around 10PM EDT today, and will move into the Atlantic Ocean north of Palm Bay Thursday morning. My first trip to Seattle was in June of 1962 just after I graduated from Stanford University. Caught a bus. Was called the Century 21 Exposition . Also the Seattle World's Fair. 10 million joined me on a six-month run. My first. These are held every five years, and there have only been

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