I am generally happy in 2011, from the first few days of holiday and the first day of working. At night, Wendy and I went downstairs to the Paris Spring shopping mall for a cup of coffee. Two interesting things happened.
Starbucks!
To our greatest surprise, a section of the shopping mall was under construction. On it hangs big Starbucks logo, and big “OPENING SOON”. Below it was “We look forward to serving you amazing coffee, we just have a few things to take care of first.”.
Great! I finally have a Starbucks store that I can walk into from my bed room in 2 minutes. The store is just outside my reading room window.
I started to walk to all Starbucks store in a day in 2003. There were just 12 of them. Then it grew to 117 in 2010. Now, it is coming to Pudong near my home.
I am a big fan of Starbucks. I hear you, their coffee may not be the best. I personally prefer Coffee Bean and Tea Leafs too. But I like the store.
Where is it?
About 5 years ago, Eric randomly pointed to a Microsoft ad and asked Which subway station was the picture taken?. That led to an interesting journey of searching, blog posting, comment reading and replying, and finally result finding.
Today, I did the same thing. At the basement floor of the shopping mall, on the wall, there was a big photo of an Europe architect. On the architect, it showed something like this:
TIS XII PONT. MAX. …. MDCCLXII
I know MDCCLXII = 1000+500+100+100+50+10+1+1 = 1762. What the rest means?
By doing a simple Google search in my iPhone, I learnt that the whole sentence should be:
POSITIS SIGNIS ET ANAGLIPHIS TABULIS IUSSU CLEMENTIS XIII PONT. MAX. OPUS CUM OMNI CULTU ABSOLUTUM A. D. MDCCLXII.
It is carved on the Trevi Fountain, one of the most beautiful fountains in the world, in Rome, Italy.
Let me quote what I wrote 5 years ago on curiosity of life here again:
This is a vivid example of curiosity for life – the rational motivation for many things we did. I enjoyed the time to search for the answer for the simple question “Where is this station”, and enjoyed the excitement when I happen to see the picture on my dinner table. The research time and the excitement moment are quite rewarding to me. It brings something new to life, so the life is not boring at all. Sometime the reason we travel, ask, research, and study is simply out of curiosity. Curiosity is the genuine human being’s instinct that must be satisfied. The city life, sometime, has killed the passion so people feel boring, while there are millions of poorer people who are happier.