Beautiful Day

Again the Sky is blue and the West mountains are visible from my office.

I was in bed early last night for me and plan the same for tonight if possible. At breakfast I make plans with my traveling companions to go to the dumpling house across the street for dinner. Then I will pack for the trip home. I plan to be in the office tomorrow but only for a couple of hours. We leave the hotel at 12:30.

It was still hard to get up this morning. I wanted to sleep in. I'm supposed to be recovered from jet lag by now so my only excuse is I must be working too hard. Next time I come (if I come again) I will plan more down time for me.

The morning is crazy. I have over 200 emails to process this morning. A lot of it pertaining to the work we are doing this morning. I'm behind the curve when I start and it take me most of the morning to come close to catching up. For that we suffer on the work we are dong this morning. My apologies to the ream in Beijing for that. It's what happens when you have a single point of failure for information sharing. Me. That will change when I get back.

It is cold this morning. Right now, as I write this section of the blog, it is 11:30 AM Beijing time. Temperature is 46 F and with wind chill feels like 39. By comparison it is 11:30 PM in Durham and they are reporting 54F with not wind chill factor. Chilly morning here in Beijing. But as I said it is gorgeous. The air will deteriorate but this weather pattern seems to keep it clearer than I've seen it.

This will probably be the last post from Beijing. I doubt I will have time to post anything tomorrow. Too much travel time. Maybe a summary of thoughts once I get back to the states.

Here is an image for you. I'm not very good with the chopsticks but I keep trying. Yesterday at lunch we're sitting at the table and I look up. I'm sitting across from Jason. And I tell him "Now this is a picture. The American guy is eating with chopsticks and the Chinese guy is eating with a spoon. There is something wrong here." He replies "I'm not very good with chopsticks." Evidently in middle school he learned to use fork and spoon and abandoned the chopstick ways.

At lunch, back to the Sogo Food Court one more time. Today I have chicken and barbecue pork. The presentation of the chicken is quite interesting. It's a cooked leg of chicken that someone has chopped into equal pieces using a cleaver. Bone and all are intact. A little difficult to eat for me but others seem to handle it well.

Afternoon goes pretty well. Good conversation with the team about increasing their testing responsibilities. We basically say good bye in this afternoon session since I will only be in the office for a couple of hours tomorrow hopefully while they are busy with time critical work to do.

Back at the hotel my travel companions and I share drinks and peanuts. Plan our day for tomorrow and confirm our van to the airport. Good thing we did. They didn't have us scheduled to leave the hotel until 4:00. That's plane time.

Bob, Michael, and Peg head off for dinner. I still feel full from lunch so I head back to the room to pack and do a little work.

Good night from Beijing for the last time this trip.

And there is no picture today.