Sunrise in Shenzhen

Good morning from Shenzhen! Since I didn't sleepmuch at all on the plane and we got in late, I slept pretty well. I left most of the curtains open overnight for a little extra light (hey, i'm on the 17th floor, who's looking in?) and crashed into the big cushy bed about 1:30 am local. At 6:30 I woke up with a start and thought "Holy CRAP! I'm in CHINA!" I've spent a couple hours arrranging all my stuff in this plush hotel room this morning, and we will be meeting our suppliers around 10:30 for a late "Chinese Breakfast." I'll let you know what that amounts to later. Could be Burger King.

I posted the first round of photos. You can see them here - My Smugmug

Here's a video of our late night dinner in a noodle shop overlooking one of the street markets a block from the hotel with our friends from Yaham Optoelectrics:

On behalf of Delta Airlines, Welcome to Hong Kong

Here we are in the airport, one hour early thanks to a 60mph tailwind. Now we have to catch the 8:30 ferry to Shenzhen, clear customs, and get to the hotel. Wheeeee!! I shot some pics of the polar ice floes from the air, I'll post up when things settle and I have a chance to roost.

That is one long flight, I kid you not....

Nature's Table Bistro

If you're ever in the Intl Terminal at ATL - eat here. fresh food that is really - really - good. Only time I've looked forward to eating at the airport

Just testing out the mobile blogging feature....which won't do much good from China anyway. Here's a pic from yesterdays non-flight

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China looks a lot like South Atlanta...

And we have lift off....wait, no we don't. After 2 attempted take offs that were aborted because the check engine light came on. Then we went back to the gate. Then after telling us "15 more minutes" about 5 times, we all got to grab our luggage and return to the gate. Apparently the repair the new Boeing 777 required went from "a few minutes" to "about 18 hours." Our flight was cancelled and the best we can do is to reschedule for the same rodeo tomorrow, leave ATL for Detroit at 10:55 AM, fly Detroit to Hong Kong at 3:30 and arrive Sunday night (HK time).

Through the whole experience, I want to give the Delta employees credit for being as helpful and kind as you can imagine. After much confusion we found three people at the International Rebooking counter that worked with us over an hour to sort out our best option, track down our luggage and get us a hotel and meal coupons. They went so far as to give us free overnight kits ( see pic), travel vouchers for $100 off our next flight, and cards for free drinks in flight.

And so it is that I find myself at the Comfort Inn North in South Atlanta (??) instead of stuck in a 777 high over the pacific. I think I'll look up some friends and go have a drink. Lord knows, I could use one...

The "Skyteam overnight kit" including a skyteam logo tshirt (xl), basic toiletries including push up deodorant, and a note in 15 languages that says "We regret to inform you that your luggage has been lost. Our deepest condolences in your time of bereavement." Or something like that.

Mechanical Pencil Overkill

I found these on a recent foray to our local house-o-office-supplies. A large pack of mechanical pencils. That look just like real pencils. um, huh?


Is there some tyrannical, gestapo school district out there forcing its students to rely on the antiquated wood-and-carbon sticks for communication, driven by secret kickbacks from the pencil lobby? Is there a heroic rebal alliance of forward-thinking students distributing these cloaked, highly advanced writing instruments to like-minded learners? Perhaps they are designed thusly in order to help the technophobe masses ease themselved into the advanced technology of non-sharpened pencils. I can see some confusion on that front, especially when granny first inserts one of these mimic wonders into her Grindapoit2000 5hp gas-driven pencil sharpener. Or maybe they just look kinda cool. I'll concede that they do.

An even better question though - WHY THE WEEPIN' JEHOVA DO YA NEED 28 OF THEM? They're MECHANICAL so they're REFILLABLE! So you can REUSE them! I checked, it says so on the package. Even accounting for loss, or -horrors- mechanical failure, 28 seems like more than overkill. And why 28? That's obviously smaller than the average class size in secondary education, and golf courses would need a smaller version, without erasers of course. Wouldn't 30 or even 25 make more sense? I suppose odd numbers would make the even distribution of yellow and black models more difficult.

It looks like one more product is happily answering a question no one asked. Don't we all feel safer because of it?

To The Far Side of the World

In the movie "The Truman Show" the lead character dreams of going to Fiji because it's as far as you can go before you start coming back. It may not be Fiji, but my upcoming trip to Shenzhen China certainly seems about as far from here as you can get, geographically speaking. It will be my first foray outside of the country, though hopefully not my last. It will be the longest flight I've taken, on the largest plane yet. I'm still a bit shell-shocked, but the excitement is starting to build as well. I've always wanted to travel overseas, and China specifically was on my wishlist but seemed pretty unrealistic given the vast difference in culture and communication. Or so I thought. Now, thanks to a return to a job I know well, it has moved from dream to booked, prepaid reality.

Normally I try to research the destination before I go for business in order to make the most of my time away from whatever obligations take me there. Surf the web, check the travel Channel site, read up on what Tony Bourdain did while there...any kind of local knowledge from like-minded adventurers can be useful. This time I haven't done much of that. Its such a foreign culture that I am trusting in my travelling partner who has been there repeatedly, and in the hospitality of the business associates we'll be visiting. It should be an adventure of the best kind. Or the worst, but I choose to ignore that possibility. I will try to keep updates coming and will try to post picture to my photography site (See link at right.) Since internet access will be free and cell coverage expensive, don't expect those nice picture messages like John H sends out. After all, I barely qualify as a Junior International Man of Mystery. So far.

In a side note, the new (old) job (or is it the old(new) job...) is going well. The strangest thing is that it looks the same...but it tastes different. I left, worked elsewhere, and returned to different circumstances that Mike and I negotiated. Everyone else kept working there, so their view and their experience never changed. To them it's the same old job, but to me it's not. Add in that I know information about future company plans and actions that they aren't cleared for, and it can be a strange experience sometimes, I am happy to be back and I'm enjoying the work and the people. I seem to have found a peaceful center regarding work in general that I couldn't claim in the past. I believe the time spent at the asphalt plant was necessary and good. I put some tools in my toolbox that will serve me well, and gained some perspectives that I needed. The new adventure should be a good one.