Battleship Texas

The battleship Texas is a retired ship that is located near the San Jacinto battleground. The San Jacinto battle ground is located half an hour drive east of Houston. It is well known for the decisive 20 minute battle against the Mexicans, which started the Texas as a country.


By now, you ask yourself: “What is a 20th century battleship doing at a 19th century battleground. I guess there were no other State Parks in Texas where you could get with moor a 34,000 ton battleship. The battleship was commissioned in 1914 and fought in both world wars. It is interesting to read the plaques where the first world was called the World War. The First World War only got its today’s name after The Second World War started.

As a nearly 100 year old ship, it was no longer able to move on its own and some components were quite rusty. The volunteers made an exceptional effort to keep the ship in shape, like one of the guns below where dad had more fun than his son.




During the fieldtrip I was puzzled by the many small hooks at the ceiling. Only when I spoke to a colleague who received training on a submarine, I learned that everywhere where those hooks were, bed were hanging on chains to accommodate a part of the 1645 person crew.





As someone from Europe, one sentence in the battleship brochure caught my attention: “Battleship Texas is owned by the people of Texas and is administered by the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department.”

Twitter

Tonight, I went to a new Meetup group 'SMUG photography'. You might think: "What photography?" SMUG is short for Social Media University Global. The goal is to learn from each other.

The weeks after Ike, during the power outage. the social media got a boost because this was the only lifeline to other people. Somehow also my BlackBerry had internet access all the time.

Today's lecturer told a wonderful opposing hypothesis for the naysayers to social media which made me think about the Dutch queen's Christmas speech.

In 2009, in her annual Christmas speech, the Dutch queen advocated to have more personal contact and move away from having contact through one off the growing number of social media websites.

One day, the daughter of today's presenter ran away from home. He posted messages about this situation on websites like Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. As a result people in his social network, who ran into his daughter, told her that her father loved her and offered their cell phone to call her dad. Already one week later his daughter called home and asked: "What are you doing?"

Father and daughter are united again and he showed some flash photography pictures, because that was actually what today's meeting was about.

The message of this story is that social media is not a bad thing but it's not the final stop. Social media is a tool to eventually meet people in person, like I did tonight. It would have been much more difficult to meet all the nice people I met during the last year when there wouldn't be social media websites.

Washington D.C. II

To save some time and I had already seen plenty of the Capitol, I took a cab to Washington Monument. Last year, I thought this was just a marble monument. Until recently a colleague told me that you can go to the top of the tallest (500 ft) stone structure in the world. Since more people are not aware that they can visit the inside of the monument it is quite easy to get a ticket. Near the street is a bookshop, where at the rear (!) side, a window is located where you can get free ticket to get access. Unlike to the Statue of Liberty, in the Washington monument an elevator takes you to the top.

The capstone of this monument which commemorates the first U.S. president, General George Washington, was set on December 6th, 1884. A difference in shading of the marble is visible approximately 150 feet up, where construction was halted for a number of years. The construction was halted because of the lack of funds and the Civil War.

From the top of the Washington Monument, you have an excellent view on the White House. On the left side of the picture you can see Obama’s basketball court (look for light green color) and the Michelle Obama’s vegetable garden. The vegetable garden has a 24/7 security guard. It would have been less expensive to go to WholeFood to buy some organic ingredients.


The overcast sky limited the options for a nice shot at the Vietnam memorial, but I got the most likely one.


My next stop before I would return to Houston was Arlington. The size of this cemetery is immense. I must have been quite an effort to align all the tombstone as can be seen in the picture below.

Washington D.C.

Every year, the Transportation Research Board (TRB) has it Annual meeting in Washington D.C. About 10.000 engineers gather in three hotels to meet and listen to one of the 30-40 parallel sessions or about 20 committee meetings. Remember these sessions and meetings are not after another but are the average number of presentations and meetings at the same time! It is quite a puzzle to figure out where to go. All day long, TRB operates a bus service between the three venue hotel and the about 5 overflow hotels where people sleep. Also this year I attended this 4 day meeting. I won’t bore you with what I learned during the Annual meeting.

In addition to my stay at the conference I also book an extra night at a hotel close to the Capitol. Thursday morning, after the last session at the annual meeting, I rushed back to the hotel, got a lunch, and took a cab to my hotel.

Amazingly all the drivers in all cabs I took in Washington D.C. were senior citizens. When I tried to reach them the money I owned them, they just couldn’t get it, because the movement of their arms was limited (because of their age). The drivers also wouldn’t come out of their cab to get my suitcase from the trunk. Apart from these minor inconveniences the pros outweighed the cons: they don’t drive like Michael Schumacher, have an exceptional memory of street names, and finally getting across town will only cost you a few dollars.

My hotel was only a few blocks away from the historic government center of the US, i.e. The Mall. This is a one mile long, and 300 feet wide area with on one side the Capitol, in the middle Washington monument, a little to the side the White House and at the other hand Lincoln Memorial.

The Mall is named after The Mall in St. James Park in Londen. This was a strip of land was used in the 18th century to play a French ball game, i.e. Paille Maille (or later in English: Pall Mall). This game has some similarities with golf and croquet. In Pall Mall the ball is struck with a mallet through an arch of iron.

While the golden hour already had started I walked from the Capitol, past the Washington monument towards Lincoln memorial. Lincoln memorial is always a little dark, but unfortunately a tripod is not allowed inside Lincoln memorial. Only from where the marble steps stopped I was allowed to set up my tripod. As a consequence I had to wait a while until everyone got out of my picture. Especially to get Lincoln words and the bright white marble correctly exposed isn’t easy.








After I took the picture above, I returned to my hotel. When I wanted to setup my tripod again to take another night shot of the Capitol, a security guard told me that I was not allowed to set up a tripod on Capitol grounds. Luckily I already had the shots I wanted.

Ice Carving

Today’s Photowalk had the ingredients chainsaws, blowtorches, chisels and ice. By now you are wondering how these things come together. These are all the tools you need for ice carving. Today, during 'Houston's Second Annual Magnificent Seven All Out Ice Sculpting', seven artists competed to create the best master peace out of seven tons of ice in seven hours.

There was a weather warning because of freezing temperatures, which are unusual in Houston. But with the sun it turned out to be a really nice day. However, the real Houstonians think anything below 65F (18C) is too cold.

Finally going to Houston

Again I went through check-in, customs, security and ended waiting at the gate.

The flight is delayed because of the long lines at security. Therefore I find it surprising that security starts only about 1,5 hours before the flight is scheduled to leave, even though by that time there is already a line of almost 100 people. I guess the procedure says to start at a certain time because the employees are chatting for at least 15-30 minutes before they start to work. Also the process could be optimized. There are about 8 employees to question the travelers, one x-ray machine operator, two persons at the metal detector and two persons who thoroughly check all hand luggage. This worked fine in the old situation, but since the Christmas day bomber there are 11 employees and 100+ customers waiting for the two guys checking the hand luggage thoroughly. I guess if they would only redistribute the employees the plane would leave on time and the airline company could save money on fuel because they don't have to make up for lost time and this wouldn't even cost them a dime.

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Travelling

Today, I planned to travel to Houston. Because snow was predicted I left for the airport, early in the morning. After I had passed check-in, customs and the intensified security control, I was finally at the gate. What could go wrong now?

After the scheduled departure time, there was an announcement about a mechanical problem that would be fixed in two hours. Two hours later the flight got cancelled. I had to go through customs again, pick up my bag and back in line at check in. Only this time there were 200 people in front of me.

Update:
Eleven hours after I arrived at the airport, (a lunch, a few power naps, and a few chapters in Machiavelli's 'the Prince' later), I'm at the hotel desk of Schiphol's Sheraton hotel with a direct ticket in my pocket.

Because the hotel was offered at no charge and more snow and freezing temperatures are predicted for the Netherlands, I decided to stay at the airport.

I guess this a rather expensive failure for United Airways, because they have to pay for 200+ new tickets, a plane fell out of their time table and they had to pay for hotel costs. I might even qualify for a compensation payment that is applicable to these
kind of situations since January first.

Update 2
The surprises aren't over yet. While I was unpacking my suitcase, someone opened the door of my hotel room from the outside. I guess I was as surprised as the lady who opened the door, because she received an access key for my room too. (I didn't bribe anyone at the reception desk.)

Update 3
Dale Carnegie's book 'How to win friends and influence people' was right again, today.
i) After standing a few hours in line, I asked a the United representative politely what the options are for my fight to Houston. Fifteen minutes later I had my ticket for a direct flight to Houston where the rest of the people in line were still waiting.
ii) The breakfast voucher for tomorrow's stranded travelers breakfast was only valid between 8 and 9am. That would be after I already should leave for the airport. Tonight, I politely asked for the options and asked if the receptionist could look into the situation. One minute later the manager had validated my voucher for the regular breakfast restaurant (value 29 euro).