This work tour seemed to last forever. I have so much at home to appreciate and not enough time there to enjoy. As I looked through the airplane window I realized I literally flew around the world this time. I flew to Chicago, Stockholm, Vienna, China, Japan then finally to San Francisco. Unbelievable.

Well after being here a couple of weeks I finally found the Chinese version of Redbull and replacement Twinkie. One thing I noticed immediately it didn’t have the throat burning carbonation as the US version. It does appear to be made by same company in Austria.

I’m fairly burnt out on Chinese food. This happened to me in Thailand too, after awhile you start looking for food that reminds you of home. In this case anything but Chinese food sounds good. I found this Brazilian BBQ place not too far from the hotel. The food was good, mostly meat. Once I find a meal I like I tend to go there a lot. I’m sure by the time I leave Shanghai, I will have made many visits.

Well this is the highlight of my trip to China. Standing in front of a huge video display of the “Great Wall of China”. This about as close I as I’m ever going to get since Bejiing is approximately 12 hours away by train. It would have been nice but no way.

After lunch today myself and a few co-workers traveled to Central Shanghai to pickup a few electronic parts. I found every car in the city heads toward the center. The traffic was horrible, took about an hour to travel 7 miles each way.

No matter where you are in Shanghai something is either being built or destroyed. I notice these bamboo scafolds being used all over the city. Who would have thought it would be robust enough. Apparently it is because it’s the preffered method around here. When you stop and think about it, who says it’s not a better method than what were using in the states? They have 20 million plus people, they must have figured out by now the most efficient ways of doing things. Ya think?

Walking around town you see these guys literally dangling from the sky. They tie themselves to the top of a building and start working on the building top to bottom. From what I could see they were using “putty” to fix cracks or holes on the walls.

If these guys should fall, it would be straight into the crowded streets below. The lesson learned, not only watch for pickpockets from the front and rear but also above!

I’ve been in the Shanghai Hilton since Sunday morning. I’ve fully adjusted to the time zone difference from Sweden. I’ve been trying to eat more on the Western type style food. If I ate Chinese, it was at the hotel restaraunt and what they delivered for lunch at my workplace which was some serious down home authentic grub which I probably ate only half of due to I couldn’t recognize the other half.

The traffic is totally insane! Car and pedestrian misses are normal. I’ve taken quite a bit of video footage to put together later on. Every morning my co-workers and meet downstairs for a taxi ride to the plant. After a long day of work take the taxi back to the hotel for dinner then rest. Wake up the next day for the same thing over and over.

I landed in Shanghai Pudong Airport. Its the same as it was in April, very humid and smoggy. I spent a lot of time in customs since I had to hand carry high tech parts for the project I’m working on. I’ll have to return tomorrow to claim them since they are being checked out.

Actually I’m stopping at Vienna to switch planes again. Rainy morning here in Sweden, it will soon be snowing. I got out of here in time.

Next posting will probably be from Vienna…

Update:
In Vienna now, finally made it through their customs and man was it a zoo. Probably the worse I’ve seen so far. The weather outside is actually warm. They actually smoke inside of the airport (you would love that Bugs)

This is the only trip to Sweden I didn’t even bother to look around. I even ate at places that I already had eaten before. I wasn’t in the mood to go exploring, more of a get in and out mission.

The weather for the whole stay was cold and wet. Maybe that’s one of the reasons why I just wanted to get to work quickly and back to the hotel room. The photo below is the train station I went to every day. After weeks and weeks of use, I really got the hang of metro commuting.

Heading out tomorrow for Shanghai, China. I often talked to Bugs about this, how in the world did two Southside Stockton natives ever get in the position to see different parts of the world.

Next posting will be from somewhere other than Sheraton Hotel, Stockholm Sweden.