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In October 2011 our little group: Sonia, Craig, Wendy and Richard visited Peru. We flew into Lima from Rio de Janeiro in Brazil. After a night in Lima we flew to Iquitos.
In April 2010 we travelled to the previous French territories of Cambodia and Vietnam: ‘French Indochina’, as they had been called when I started school; until 1954. Since then many things have changed. But of course, this has been a region of change for tens of thousands of years. Our trip ‘filled in’ areas of the map between our previous trips to India and China and did not disappoint. There is certainly a sense in which Indochina is a blend of China and India; with differences tangential to both. Both have recovered from recent conflicts of which there is still evidence everywhere, like the smell of gunpowder after fireworks.
As holiday entertainment goes, one could do worse than spend two-and-a-half hours (157 minutes) with Napoleon.
Wikipedia tells us: "Napoleon is a 2023 epic historical drama film directed and produced by Ridley Scott and written by David Scarpa. Based on the story of Napoleon Bonaparte, primarily depicting the French leader's rise to power as well as his relationship with his [first} wife, Joséphine, the film stars Joaquin Phoenix as Napoleon and Vanessa Kirby as Joséphine."
The many battle scenes are spectacular and have been praised for their accuracy.
Japan has 55 nuclear reactors at 19 sites. Two more are under construction and another twelve are in the advanced planning stage. Net Generating capacity is around 50 GW providing around 30% of the country's electricity (more here).
As a result of Japan’s largest earthquake in history on March 11 and subsequent tsunami all reactors shut down automatically as they were designed to do but cooling systems associated with two sites had been damaged.
Three reactor sites are adjacent to the earthquake epicentre and two were in the direct path of the tsunami. The Fukushima-Daiichi plant belonging to Tokyo Electric Power Company was particularly hard hit. It lost all grid connections, providing electricity, and its backup power plant was seriously damaged.