Day in Limbo

My night did not seem to go well. Sleep was there but not restful. Thus I overslept this morning. No real cause for concern., This will be an operational day. The Beijing team has priority work to do and I will use the time to plan for the rest of the week. Today will be day lost to training so I need to rethink, repriortize and replan how to finish the week.

I jump on the computer, send a note to the staff here in Beijing to let them know I will be a little late getting in and try to start some work. The work fails miserably. I try a couple of more times before throwing in the towel and getting ready to head to the office.

At the office I find the team at work but the network connection extremely slow. I am unable to get work done because the connection to Cary is so poor. This is going to be a tough day.

I spend the morning working from my Blackberry because it is more efficient than the desktop. We break for lunch around noon. Today I have beef and barbecue pork. Sechzuan(sp?) style I think. Very tasty. Terry suggests that I purchase silver chopsticks. Eric even suggests that I could do that and give one to my new grandson so that he would be born with a silver spoon in his mouth. I correct him and tell him it would be a silver chopstick instead. Lana, Jason, and Lily haul me down to the Sogo supermarket to buy chopsticks. There are no silver ones available. We buy 'what they use in their homes.' Six or eight pair. Washable. Reusable. And genuine Chinese. I guess next time we eat Chinese at home we'll be using chopsticks. A man has to practice. Hey, I just thought. I might sneak back down there tomorrow and see if they have any of those funky Chinese soup spoons too. I really like those.

Afternoon is more productive but this will not go down as one of my most productive days at SAS.

There will be a sunset in Beijing tonight. It will be enhanced by the atmosphere that has begun to deteriorate already today. if the wind doesn't pick up or there is another rain, it's going to be ugly in a day or so.

Dinner tonight is hosted by Alfred, the SAS Beijing General Manager. As usual he orders the food for us. Tonight's fare is pretty good. Pork, beef, flounder, and a few other dishes. The most exotic thing on the menu is eel. The food is from Shanghai. Most of it has some sort of sweet sauce associated with it. Even the eel is palatable with the sauce.

Today's picture of the day I'll call Hutong from on High. It's a picture of a traditional Chinese hutong directly across the street from our office. The picture is taken out my office window. This is where the people maintain small shops but mostly live. It's rough looking. And right across the street form a modern 20 story office building and a shopping mall. You have to love the contrasts in this town.