O, Canada... the glamorous life... or not

End of day one in Vancouver. Now I remember what attending the user conference was like last year. Mostly tedious.

Last year we were in San Francisco. From the day I arrived to the day I left, I managed a total of two hours outside the hotel. This year will be slightly better because I've got a lighter set of duties, for example I don't have to work the booth. And they wouldn't let us stay in the hotels closest to Canada Place so it's a four block walk and I get to see the outside world.

I guess this balances out the trips to the Eiffel Tower and Great Wall. It's almost 8pm and I'm back in the hotel. Been on my feet most of the last 9 hours and ready to kick back and catch up on the episodes of Heroes that I've got squirreled away on the hard disk. Pretty thrilling.

Gone again... Vancouver BC in ... almost winter

Late flight out of Houston last night for a midnight arrival in Vancouver BC.

Up here for a company conference at Canada Place, the big exhibition center here. I should have a quiet morning catching up with email before plunging into it. Got two speaking gigs here, one this afternoon and one on Thursday. I'm doing part of a 3-hour tutorial today and just a quick update on our product line Thursday.

Flight home is scheduled for Saturday morning but I might see if I can change it to Friday.

Home again, not quite un-lagged

Rush hour on Dong Chang'an Jie, Beijing

Been home for a bit over two days but still not back to this time zone. I'm falling asleep at 8pm and then wide awake by 2 to 4am.

The flight from Beijing took off at about sunset on Monday Oct 22 and landed in Newark 13 hours later at about sunset on ... Monday Oct 22! The route was northwest out of Beijing to the Mongolian border. Then turned north-northeast over Mongolia and Russia, up close to the pole, down over Canada to Newark.

The trip back was full of small annoyances.

• Late taking off from Beijing due to plane being late to arrive from Newark. On the plus side one of my colleagues on this trip had lounge access on his airline so I spent most of my waiting time in a comfortable chair with free food and drink.
  
• The boarding process was horribly mismanaged. Perhaps because they were trying to rush everyone on board, perhaps because Chinese people don't queue up, they jam in. There was just a total crush of people trying to board and the gate agents had jammed tables in the way to force two single file lines.
  
• Continental 777 layout sucks. Way too few restrooms in coach, no space to even pass by someone. I did manage to get a window seat with an empty seat next to me, which helped immensely.
  
• Customs in Newark was a mess. They routed a couple dozen of us from the U.S. citizens lines over to the foreign visitors lines. Problem was that about every third foreign visitor had fubared their paperwork and got escorted out to the little rooms in the back for processing. So I spent a good 45 minutes in line there.
  
• Rushed to my flight... well what I thought was my flight just in time to board. Only when I presented my boarding pass did I find that the agent in China had rebooked me onto a later flight. Everything going out of Newark was late so I really didn't want to wait. I managed to get on the original flight... but my luggage didn't.
  
• Arrived at Bush Terminal E. Baggage claim for domestic flights arriving at Terminal E is over at Terminal C. A solid 10 minute walk, just the thing after over 24 hours in transit.
  
• By the time I figured out that my baggage wasn't on my flight, the next one in from Newark was due in 30 minutes. So I waited. Got bags, left the airport about 90 minutes after landing.
  

It was really, really good to get home!

Campagna T-Rex

This little hotrod was in the parking lot of the local Tex-Mex eaterie we frequent. Picture doesn't do it justice. Some kind of cross between a go-kart and a motorcycle. Three wheels, one fat one in the back and two up front. Two side-by-side seats, butts less than 6 inches off the pavement. Looks incredibly fast!

Final impressions of Beijing

It's Monday morning in Beijing. This afternoon begins the 18 hour flight back to Houston via Newark. The inbound airplane was 90 minutes late leaving to come here so my flight is showing to be delayed.

There would be enough time for a final shopping trip, at least over to Wangfujing... but I'm out of money and out of energy.

Final impressions of Beijing

• Weekend "Dirt Market" (PanJiaYuan Antique Market)
  Enormous. The city spreads for miles and miles in all directions. The drive up to the Wall at Mutianyu took us about 120km out from the city center... and it was all occupied. Some farmland interspersed but apartments and "suburbs" all the way.
  
• Traffic. All the time. Saturday morning and afternoon, Sunday night, Sunday morning. People going places all the time. And "right of way" is what you take, not something that is given. Pedestrians, bikes, taxis, private cars, and buses all mostly just go where they're going and dare the other to hit them. Saw surprisingly few accidents just lots of near misses.
  
• Air pollution is an issue. I had blogged that it wasn't bad. We had a fluke of the weather that kept a fair breeze blowing most days and so the air was perfectly fine. Yesterday, Sunday, the breezes were absent and you could see and taste the air.
  
• Security everywhere. I don't know if this is the norm. This trip coincided with the once every 5 year congress of the Communist Party of China. A hotel quite near ours was cordoned off with police tape and surrounded by a combination of military guards, uniformed police, and civilians with red arm bands and jackets marked "security". As near as I can tell, the meeting is in a huge edifice called the Great Hall of the People which is more or less across Dong Chang'An Jie (the 12-lane street in front of the hotel).
  
• Lots of manual labor. Saw lots of jobs being done by labor that would be done with some sort of mechanical aid in the West. For example, driving up to Mutianyu on Saturday morning, we would periodically pass someone sweeping the road shoulder with a long broom made of twigs. There didn't seem to be any job in the hotel that didn't have two or three people assigned to it.
  
• Everything is well used. Lots of bicycles, electric bikes, enclosed gas powered tricycles and such. Almost all are battered and rusted.
  
• Clean but dusty. I saw very, very little trash on the streets. But there's also very little sign of streets and public walkways being washed. Kind of a ground in dirt and dust patina on everything. Not helped by the massive amount of construction going on.
  
• CCTV buildings going up
  Construction absolutely everywhere. 24x7. At 10pm on Sunday night we were walking out from the restaurant last night to where we could get a taxi. We passed a crew digging up the street to lay a cable. The cable was being pulled off the spool through the trench by a gang of men. Not just small projects and also not just Olympic projects. There are a mind-boggling number of huge office buildings going up.
  

Truly perfect day at the Great Wall

My two compatriots and I had arranged a trip to the Great Wall of China at Mutianyu today. Absolutely an amazing place.

There are four segments of the Great Wall accessible from Beijing. We had been warned away from Badaling as a tourist trap. One of my companions on this trip had been to Jinshanling on a previous trip to China and also seen Simatai off in the distance. He was trying to be nice about it but really wanted to make it clear that those were too challenging for someone of my fitness level... poor.

So Mutianyu was our choice. We arranged a car with the help of the office. Set price of 700RMB (less than $100) gave us the car and driver for the day. A bit under a two hour ride up to the parking area, the driver would wait until we came back down and then drive us back to our hotel.

From the parking lot we hiked up a row of t-shirt vendors, snack vendors et cetera until we reached the cable car terminal. Cable car up to just below a point on the wall at more or less the center of the accessible part of the wall. Then hiked on the wall.

The day could not have been more perfect, sunny and comfortable very early fall day with the foliage just barely starting to turn colors. For me, it was an overwhelming experience to be in this iconic place. It's one of those places that I never really thought I'd see.

From the cable car head we hiked westward and upward until we made it to the limit of the area where tourists are allowed. The last section (second picture) was pretty challenging for someone whose exercise has been limited to a 30 minute daily walk on the flats of Houston. The very last bit is very steep, practically a stone ladder. After a couple of rest stops on the way, I caught up to my younger, fitter friends at the top. I was gasping and seriously wondering if I had overtaxed.

We rested quite a while up there, had snacks and water and let me get my heart rate back to normal. Then back, mostly downhill, to where we started.

When we hit the spot to turn off and take the cable car down we sat for a bit again. If we ignored the cable car, the next stretch was also mostly downhill. At the end of it were three ways to get down: a gondola, a "toboggan run", or walk. We ended up walking it all the way down. Massively easier than up.

We were by no means alone on this segment of the Wall. But it was also not very crowded. The vistas were beautiful as the wall snaked along the mountain ridges. And even though the wall has been restored, just being on this ancient thing is very moving.

Altogether we spent about four hours hiking on the wall. We didn't quite cover all the way to the eastern end of the Mutianyu section but reasonably close. Total trip time from leaving the hotel until returning was a bit over eight hours.

Training of Willpower - Party Office Department

We're in a pretty high priced hotel even though the company rate is dirt cheap. The room has all sorts of folders full of information about the half-dozen restaurants in the place. One of the things says "newsletter" on the top of the cover. It's about 90% very poetic descriptions of particular dishes served or the furnishings of the nicer rooms.

Near the back of this is this little gem of an article:

In the running up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Grand Hotel Beijing commenced its preparations for the training sessions in hospitality reception and services geared at 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, all relevant activities are fully underway with definitive objective and focal point in an orderly manner.

As an important part of the training for 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, Party Office organized the employees in batches to participate in "Willpower Training Activity" - they are sent to Beijing Canal Golf Club to go in for labor of getting rid of the weeds. The training strengthened the willpower of the entire staff members, tempered their superior quality of willingness to work under pressure and to adopt the work style of hard struggle as well as the team spirit, so that the employees of the Hotel can perform the arduous reception tasks during Olympic Games period with excellent skills and sound mentality.

Um. Wow.