SHERATON GRAND SEATTLE to NORWEGIAN ENCORE

'Twas a simple day yesterday. Only went to Din Tai Fung for an early dinner. Have written about this Taiwanese restaurant many times here. First one started in Taipei in 1958, and the 181 restaurants worldwide today are still mostly fast food pick-up places. However, the one that opened in New York City this summer sits 450. The Seattle chain I went to is huge. Showed up around 3:30PM and had to wait 15 minutes to get in. It specializes in Shanghai Soup Dumplings, or Xiao Long Bao.

Very large restaurant.

Beef and pork noodles, plus pork/shrimp dumplings.

Shanghai Soup Dumplings.

With Johnny Walker Black and ginger/vinegar sauce.

Saw two great NCAA football games yesterday:

Oregon edged Ohio State.
LSU never led until the end, and beat Mississippi in overtime. I every two years particularly identify with this match because my Chemical Engineering Department is adjacent to Death Valley. If you too watched the game, you would have noticed that there were 102,000 in attendance. Only students/faculty and those who got seats through inheritance get tickets. In my days, men wore sport coats and women, gowns.

We soon leave the Sheraton Grand to board the Norwegian Encore, a cruise ship with a max capacity of 4000 passengers that will take us from Seattle to Miami. We stay on this ship and then will reach our final destination, Southampton, England. Well, not final final, for we then fly to Amsterdam to join a Viking Christmas River Cruise to Budapest. After a two-day stop in Zurich, be back home on Honolulu on December 7.

Comments

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 a...

THE ENIGMATIC PHIL SPECTOR

The first presidential debate of Donald Trump and Joe Biden ended up in a near tie. Both lost. However, it was an unmitigated disaster for Biden, who just might be too old to win this re-election. For Trump, it was a reinforcement of what he does all the the time, lie. There will be significant calls for the Democratic Party to work out "something" to replace Biden as their presidential candidate. Suddenly, Kamala Harris, Gavin Newsom and Michelle Obama are added to the spotlight. But what can "legally" occur at the August Democratic Convention? The situation is different on the Republican side, as Trump is the Republican Party, and no matter if he gets 4 years at his felony sentencing on July 9, or even if the Supreme Court determines he is not immune next week or later, he will be the presidential candidate. Trump is a damned boastful liar and convicted felon, but that is the only option for Republicans. His vice-presidential choice now become...

OSAKA EXPO: Day One

Well, the day finally came for us to go to the Osaka Expo. We were told ahead of time that the long walks would be fearful, giant lines will need to be tolerated just to get into the Expo, with those ocean breezes, it would really be cold, and so forth. Maybe it was pure luck, but we avoided all the above warnings We had a grand day, and are looking forward to Sunday, our second day at the Expo. So come along for an enjoyable ride. Our hotel is adjacent to the Tennoji Station, a very large one with several lines. We upgraded our Suica card and caught the Misosuji red line towards Umeda. Transferred to the Chuo green line at the Hommachi Station. This Osaka Metro train took us to the Yumeshima Station at the Expo site. It was a very large mob leaving the train and heading to the entrance. Took only a few minutes to get to the entrance. This mob was multiplied by at least a factor of ten of those already waiting to enter. However...

Search This Blog