President Donald Trump had a big day today, meeting Israel President Benjamin Netanyahu and Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, separately. The White House called President Donald Trump’s Tuesday meetings with leaders from Israel and Ukraine "positive and productive.” Trump then paid tribute to Senator Graham at his National Cathedral funeral service. Netanyahu and Zelenskyy also attended.
About the Iran War, mediators are trying to work out a peace discussion plan. However, Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei keeps saying his country has not asked to resume talks and has no immediate plans for a next round of negotiation.
The good news, however, is that both sides have stopped attacking each other. Yet, the Strait of Hormuz continues to be severely restricted and oil flow through the Bab el-Mandeb Strait is around 50%.
I have been posting on my life, three phases, each 27 years long, and am now into Part 3, retirement. I started at the age of 6, and covered education and work in the first two phases. Will there be another 27-year post retirement gift as Part 4? The odds are minuscule, for that would mean death at the age of 113. Why so pessimistic? The current oldest living man right now is João Neto of Brazil, who is 113 years old. The oldest male ever was Jiroemon Kimura of Japan, who lived to be 116 years and 54 days old.
So back we go to February of 2010. I spent about a week in India:
- INDIA SUCKS…*
- INDIA IS AN EXPERIENCE
- NEW DELHI
- AN EERILY BIZARRE DINNER IN DELHI
- INCREDIBLE INDIA
- FROM DELHI TO MUNICH TO BARCELONA
The flight from Bangkok was enjoyable. The plane lands on time, I pick up my bags and get sent to another baggage check area, where they find my computer. I am asked, how much is this worth? I say $2000. The customs officer says, I need to pay duty. No sense continuing this discussion, for the drill is that they find something to charge you extra, so I coolly give him the equivalent of $100 (surreptitiously, under the table….really!), for that is just the price of a typical dinner on this trip. He offers me tea, I say no thanks, and he ooshes me on, but as I’m about to exit the customs area, another officer notices that I have $5000 of cash indicated on the form, which he says has to be taxed. Without argument I pass on another $20 and move on. I suspect $20 would have sufficed for the first guy. This is reminiscent of Cairo, another nightmare, found in Chapter 6 of SIMPLE SOLUTIONS for Planet Earth.
Air pollution was terrible. That photo above was from my room of India Gate. I might add that this posting drew the most comments of all in the 17-year lifetime of this blog. You should read them. Most agreed with me, and some of the comments are hilarious.
To continue:
First things first, and I joined a tour to Agra and the Taj Mahal for what I think is $50 (2400 rupees). Pick up at 6:15AM tomorrow and return at 10:15PM. I think, because a hotel car with driver was to have cost me $200.
- Oh what an experience. Not only was there a driver, but to his left, a navigator. He was the one who told the driver when to pass. I saw my life pass at least a dozen times. Why?
The drive of 4 hours to Agra was a nightmare. Early in the morning, a red light means please consider slowing down, but, if there appears to be no crossing traffic, whiz through as fast as possible. The 130 mile ride was mostly down a four lane highway, with a few complications. Ox, goat and horse driven carts; wandering cattle and water buffalo; way overloaded trucks; tuk-tuks that carry not two people, but up to 20; congested towns; people running across the street and horrendous air pollution (it was smokey the whole way). For transportation buffs, you will see every possible mode of transport since the dawn of civilization, including trains that seem to move along well and, above, airplanes, which I only imagined were there, for the haze is worse than when the volcano emission envelopes Honolulu.
I should mention that now there is a more efficient 6-lane highway.- The Taj Mahal is in Agra.
- It cost $20 to enter. Today? $13.
- The Taj Mahal is kind of an off white, but, after all, it is made of white marble (was finished in 1648), stands in a polluted atmosphere, and is 378 years old.
- I dropped off Pearl's ashes next to what looked like a plant with lehua blossoms.
- Return to Delhi:
The most exciting part was the ride back to Delhi, all 6 hours of it. This was the equivalent of the road through hell. They say that just at the moment of a catastrophe, time slows, like, say, your car meeting another head-on at 60 miles per hour. To survive in this traffic, the driver needs to be intrepid, no, make that, reckless. He needs to fearlessly pass cars and toot his horn as much as possible. Time virtually stopped for me at least a dozen times today.
The miracle of it all is that not once did our van even scrape another vehicle. I did not see an accident all day. However, an hour into Delhi we ran into an electrical storm. If you never have been through one of these, you're in luck. In one town there was a siren blowing. Maybe tornadoes? Lightning hit a pole in front of us and sparks fell on the road. But, I landed at the Le Meridien, which, I said yesterday, is an oasis.
Next. Probably Mount Kilimanjaro. Oh, you should read that final posting mentioned above: FROM DELHI TO MUNICH TO BARCELONA. This was one of my ultimate adventures: First Class on Lufthansa, incident at the Indira Ghandi airport where I thought I was going to be executed....as in shot, arrival into Munich during a whiteout (we flew into a blizzard), and more.
About all those hurricanes:
- Fausto is now only a tropical storm at 650MPH, and will be north of Honolulu tomorrow, with expected weakening to 40 MPH.
- The eye is 400 miles east northeast of Honolulu, and moving west at 14 MPH.
- Today, a few showers with little wind.
- Tomorrow, the prediction is high east-facing shores, but not much rain nor winds.
- Here are some predictive models of the path.
- Super Hurricane Genevieve was up to 160 MPH yesterday, but has already weakened to 125 MPH today, with a predicted track almost parallel to Fausto, but further north.
- Tropical Storm Dolphin in the West Pacific is at 50 MPH, and will become a typhoon tomorrow, but zoom up in a 24-hour period to reach Category 4 strength.
- Then the next day on 29July become a Super Typhoon at more than 157 MPH. Current models out to August 2 still shows Category 5 strength, still with a track to the middle of Japan.
- According to Stars and Stripes, last night (remember that the International Date Line is just west of Hawaii):
JTWC (Joint Typhoon Warning Center) forecasts Dolphin to then peak at an incredible 165-knot sustained winds, or 190-mph sustained winds, and 200-knot gusts, or 230-mph gusts. Equaling Tip for the strongest on record. It’s still not clear what Dolphin’s final destination will be. Model-track guidance and the GFS and Euro forecast ensembles are slowly favoring southwestern Japan, Shikoku or Kyushu, in the neighborhood of Sasebo Naval Base and Marine Corps Air Station Iwakuni. We’re still taking more than a week out. Much can change over that span. But for any weather observer, this is quite interesting and exciting to watch. We’ve had some strong typhoons and tropical cyclones the last 15 years. This could top them all.
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