LESSONS LEARNED FROM GLOBAL JOURNEY

I am at the Denver Airport awaiting my flight to Honolulu.  How can you tell?  Those snow capped mountains in the background.

When you travel the world, you gain new insights about humanity, planet earth and yourself.  Among the more memorable were:

1.  Michelin 3-Star restaurants are ridiculously expensive.  No great surprise, of course, but I may give up this extravagance in future trips. A typical meal would cost around $300/person, including a glass of wine or two.  The least rewarding was Jiro's in Tokyo, and, on the same day, Ryugin was only marginally okay.  Perhaps because of cost, I was the only customer in Jiro's (when I left), and Robuchon's in Las Vegas was only barely occupied.  Interesting that Japan has more 3-Star restaurants than France.  There are 106 of them, roughly the equivalent of Pellegrino's Top 100 Restaurants of the World, which are different, as good, and, while hardly cheap, not quite as expensive.  

2.  President Franklin D. Roosevelt was probably treated with cocaine just before his "Day of Infamy" speech on 7December1941.  Here is a clip.  He actually walked to the podium for this momentous occasion.  Maybe the cocaine helped.  FDR  apparently was medically dependent on this substance throughout his presidency.  What has this got to do with the trip itself?  Nothing.  I'm just now watching a History telecast about this day and noticed that the Hawaii governor that day was Joseph Poindexter, the grandfather of John Poindexter, who I referred to in my Friday posting.

3.  Eight-year-old Sophia Gregory from King Kaumuaalii Elementary School in Kapaa, Kauai, was the State of Hawaii winner in the annual Doodle 4 Google competition.  There were 114,000 entries.  The theme was "If I could travel in time, I'd visit...:  Sophia's was entitled "Old Hawaii".  Each awardee will travel to New York City, win a $30,000 college scholarship and a $50,000 technology grant to his or her school.  Among the judges were Katy Perry and Jordin Sparks.

4.  Regarding energy:

    a.  Ammonia from renewable energy (like OTEC??) might well be the ideal transition fuel for fuel cells.

    b.  Nuclear power:  the dream that failed.

    c.  Windpower:  there seems to be a growing resistance, worldwide, to this most economical of solar options.  Some even blame the Tea Party.

    d.  While natural gas usage is growing, fracking is becoming a major issue.

    e.  World petroleum prices dropped by ten bucks/barrel during my trip.  Gasoline prices have also, thusly, declined.  The primary reason appears to be some calm in the Middle East and the crummy European economy.

    f.  Perhaps the most surprising bits of information I picked up at the World Renewable Energy Forum had to do with solar photovoltaics.  First, the residential cost remains around 25 cents/kWh (while windpower is at 7 cents/kWh).  Worse, the cell cost of an installed system is relatively low:  perhaps 20%, but at least one source indicated 10%, which, if true, means that the cost of PV cells can drop to zero, and the installed cost (rest of system, labor,interface equipment, etc.) will never drop below 15 cents/kWh.  I'll need to check further into this.  Something seems wrong here.

5.  Enjoy your Sunday.  Mine was uneventful and, for a United flight, outstanding.  The best part of any trip is coming home, and these are two views why:

Our plane flew right over Diamond Head.

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