Well.... here we GO!

I leave early tomorrow morning on another wonderful (work-sponsored flight) journey! It’ll take nearly 30hrs of travel time to reach my initial destination of Beijing. We have a company holiday on Monday, so I wasn’t about to travel 30hrs across Tues/Wed for meetings at the end of next week… (No disrespect intended for my highly-respected colleagues I’ll be meeting up with after my “touring” is completed! But I gotta SEEEEEEE some things!)

I depart Nashville BNA early tomorrow for Detroit (ugggh… haven’t been through there since my Ford Credit tour of duty) and then from Detroit onto Japan. After a quick re-fuel in Japan, we head for Beijing and arrive on Saturday at 9:15pm. (So there won’t be any blog activity until Sunday at the earliest.)

I have 3½ days of touring lined up. I’ll have a personal driver + an English-speaking guide named Rina. Over the course of the next few days, we’ll see the best of the Olympics-focused capital city, as follows:

Sunday – Tiananmen Square, Forbidden City, Temple of Heaven, Lama Temple, Xiushui Market, Laoshe Tea House
Monday – Ming Tombs, Badaling Great Wall, and a Beijing Roast Duck Dinner
Tuesday – Beijing Zoo, Beijing Hutong, Summer Palace, with a Chinese Tea ceremony and tasting
Wednesday – Beijing Planning Hall, Underground city, then fly to Dalian

The time difference is 13 hrs ahead of EST and 14 hrs ahead of CST. So when my work buddies return to work on Tuesday morning (from the President’s Day holiday weekend) at 8am in Nashville… it will already be 10pm on Tuesday night in China. I’ll still (I better!) get emails and cell phone calls on my Blackberry – the world is so “small” these days… (Isn’t technology wonderful?!)

Beginning Thursday, I’ll be in business meetings in Dalian. Dalian is in northwest China, just across from Dalian. It’s the “Silicon Valley” of China and my boss tells me I’ll be blown away by the newness of the city and the infrastructure that supports a bustling technology region.

Think “warm thoughts” for me – last time I checked it was 14 degrees (Fahrenheit) in eastern China. Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr…..