October 21, 2010

This morning Hélène went out to get some bread and we had a quick lunch in the hotel room so we could get started early.

We’ve had many challenges in doing the kids schoolwork on the iPads for their net based school. The iPads work very nicely for reading, but have become a pain for interactive homework. This is basically the consequence of Mr. Jobs decision to leave Flash out of iOS for political and power game reasons.

In short we need another Macbook Air to be able to school the kids correctly. This time I luckily did my homework and found out that rumors said that Apple would come out with a new Macbook Air. And so they did, yesterday. Better specs, fixed all the unpractical small things and significantly lowered the price. Good deal.

So, this morning Iseline and I headed towards our local Apple Store,

while Hélène took the boys to central park so Viktor at last could play some saxophone. Our original plan was to go to central park several times while we were here so he could play, but time has passed too quickly.

Iseline and I took the subway and walked to the store. Unfortunately they did not have the new machines yet. Please come back later today. Little did we know that we were going to have a different and urgent reason to come back during the day.

Viktor managed to get his saxophone out in central park and let it breathe a bit before it started raining. We all met up at the subway station next to the hotel having achieved nothing so far during the day. The time? 11am (Twilight Zone music in the background)

We took the subway to South Ferry station and headed for the ferry to Liberty Island and Ellis Island. Marc, our saving angel this week, had told us we needed to get tickets in advance with a time slot. When we arrived at the ferry terminal we were met by a veeeerrrrryyyyy long line of people. Ouch. To our relief there was a separate line for people with prepaid tickets with time slots and it was veeeerrrrryyyyy short. There was a guy there checking tickets and he complained that our tickets showed 14:00, while we were there at 11:30. At that moment he received a phone call and started talking on the phone. A line built up behind us. When he got off the phone he seemed overwhelmed and grudgingly waved us through. Later we found out the the time slot we thought was for getting up to the statue pedestal was in fact a time slot for taking the ferry!

After a very thorough security check, US airport style, we were on the ferry and on our way.

Nice view from Liberty Island:

Once again Wikipedia was my friend and I could brief the children on today’s main destination.

In the 1870s the new democracy in France was seen as very fragile. A politician called Édouard René de Laboulaye suggested to erect a monument in the United States to celebrate the upcoming 100th anniversary of the US constitution as early as 1865 during a party at his house. He wanted the project to be a cooperation between the two countries. The French sculptor Frédéric Bartholdi was present at the party and took the idea and ran with it. It gained popularity partly because it was seen as a symbolic act that would support the new Third Republic.

In 1871 Bartholdi crossed the Atlantic to present the idea to the Americans. To make a long story short the project was announced in 1875 and would take 11 years to complete. Americans financed the pedestal and the French the actual statue. The pedestal was privately funded in its entirety. The French part was funded by many different organizations, amongst them 181 French municipalities.

The very first terracotta miniature Bartholdi made as a study for the statue is today in the Musée des Beaux Arts de Lyon.

Bartholdi steamed ahead and started to produce the arm and the head long before he had complete plans. Wooden forms were created and plates of thin copper were hammered to fit them. The finished arm crossed the Atlantic 3 times, having been exposed in the US before it was brought back to France! The entire statue was assembled in Paris, before it was dismantled and rebuilt in New York. What a massive and long project!

The original designer of the interior part of the statue died in 1879, in the middle of the project. Bartholdi then comissioned none less than good old Gustave Eiffel to design the interior. He came up with a brand new design of steel beams, much like he later used in his faomus tower.

And the copper they used came from a French owned copper mine in Norway. Here Iseline is next to a piece of ore from the mine together with a plaque, a gift from the people of Karmøy, Norway, where the mine was located:

We took a stroll around Liberty Island and saw the statue from many angles before we took the stairs up to the top of the pedestal. We had a good discussion with the kids about liberty and democracy. Should the majority always decide? I quoted Benjamin Franklin who once said that democracy is two wolves and one sheep voting over what they should have for dinner.

Inside the pedestal there is a full size replica of the head:

The original torch is also on display. It had to be replaced in the mid-1980s since it was becoming too fragile from corrosion:

Bartholdi had a similar view of the US as myself:

Afterwatds we headed over to Ellis Island and walked inside the building they used to register the immigrants.

It was a good opportunity to talk about immigration and poverty. In 1900 Norway was one of the poorest countries in Europe, Ireland was probably the only country which was poorer. Infant mortality rate was at 10%. 1 in 10 children died before they reached the age of 12 months. Things can change a lot in about 100 years.

There were computer stations where we could search in the immigration archives. Adrian called my father to ask for the name of his uncle, who emigrated to the US. Unfortunately he had a very common name and the interface only listed name and country for search hits. 33 men named “Birger Hansen” immigrated from Norway to the US through Ellis Island in the years it registered immigrants.

The line to catch the ferry back to New York was huge and we stood in line for about an hour. As usual the kids took out their iPod Touches to play games while we were waiting. Just as the ferry arrived the tragedy happened. Viktor was not paying attention enough and turned around quickly next to his brother with his hand rotating in the air. He gave Adrian a hard “schmack” on the hand and Adrian’s iPod fell onto the concrete.

The screen was broken with a characteristic glass rose of cracks. One of the cracks went straight over the front camera. The boys were devastated. We told Viktor that even though it was not on purpose he hadn’t paid attention and that this was his fault. He would have to find a solution for his big brother. The iPod did work, but it was not pretty and we did not know how long it would work.

We agreed that one solution was for the boys to switch iPods. We also agreed to go to the Apple Store and hear if it could be repaired.

At the store we were told that it probably could be repaired but that it would cost at least a hundred dollars. A big dent in Viktor’s savings. We were given an appointment 30 minutes later.

At the Apple “Genius Bar” we were made to wait an additional half hour before a vey nice Apple hardware guru received us. He entered the serial number into his computer and went “hmmmm” for some time. He told us that the guarantee did not cover this type of damage, but that he would make an exception since the iPod was so new. He gave Adrian a brand new iPod of the same kind free of charge. We later found out that the repair would have cost 200 dollars. The two boys were now very, very relieved. New iPod to the left, broken one to the right:

Suddenly we had the challenge of getting Adrian’s photos and videos off the iPod. It hadn’t been synched for photos for at least two weeks and Adrian had over 600 photos and videos on it. The guy told us sheepishly that he was not allowed to put customer data on demo machines. Not even for 5 minutes. He could lose his job. The situation was absurd. We were surrounded by certainly well over 100 Apple computers that were on the net and we couldn’t copy photos over and mail them to ourselves. The iPod has mail size limitations that made it impossible to mail directly from it. Arghh, trying to guess what is best for the user does not always cut it.

I called Hélène, which was at the hotel, and she arrived 20 minutes later with one of our Macs and we could save Adrian’s data. I told him about backups.

At this point, with all the waiting, we were getting seriously undernourished. We chose a chinese restaurant by random. Very strange place. We got a plastic picnic plate and a simple fork. All around us people were eating with only a fork. The waitress was impolite and snappy. She was shocked when Hélène told her about her gluten allergies. “You have what?!” We got the impression she wondered why in the world we had chosen this restautant when we had that problem.

The food turned out to be top notch. I have seldom had that good Chinese food outside China. I ate chili beef in orange sauce that was heaven. I understood why the place was full now. Who cares about picnic plates and impolite service when prices are low and the food fantastic?

We weren’t home until after 10pm. Yes, Mamilyne, we do have problems finding time to do school work with the kids. On the other hand they are learning lots of new things every day and I am sure we will more than compensate for the “lost” time later.

While I have been writing this the calendar has switched to October 22. Today is the the 44th birthday of my best friend in high school, Jarle Thorsen. Unfortunately I lost contact with him almost 15 years ago and have never been able to trace him since. Happy birthday, Jarle, wherever you are.

Transportation day tomorrow, time flies fast when you are having fun.

See you aorund, folks.

Eirik

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