Tania in China

Fri, Oct 27: On My Own

Luigi is leaving at 11am today, so the early hours at the office are spent frantically making sure we have everything we need from him before he leaves. Documents are passed over, phone numbers are exchanged, thanks are said, and Luigi is on his way. I decide to eat at the Italian restaurant for lunch, and it is still slow even though I am the only person in the restaurant. Perhaps because the head of Ford Asia Pacific is going to be holding an all-hands meeting at the Sheraton at 12:45, and all the Ford people who would be eating at the restaurant normally are getting ready for the meeting instead. I have penne in a gorganzola sauce that must be so bad for me but is so tasty! The bill is only 3 RMB less than the buffet, so maybe I am not wasting so much money by going to the buffet after all.

I decide to head back to the office instead of to the meeting since it is a Ford meeting, and is for the Asia Pacific region, and am able to do a little debugging with the help of Ananth in Australia until Ananth heads home - Australia is 2 hours ahead of China, and will be 3 hours starting next week, since China doesn't observe daylight savings time, so we don't change our clocks here on Sunday like the rest of the world. It is going to make it even tougher for people here who have evening phone meetings with Dearborn - now there will be a 13 hour difference, so all those meetings will be an hour later. Talking about phone meetings, Ben has setup one for 8pm tonight to make sure we know everything we need to in order to go ahead with connecting next week. So, after I am no longer able to get ahold of Ananth, I head back to my room for a nap - I have been really, really tired today. I end up sleeping through dinner, but am up early enough to head off to my phone meeting.

The phone meeting is short, and it turns out that we are not going to be able to get the support we need to connect next week, so are going to have to wait until December. Darn. Now I think things are going to be really, really busy during my last couple of weeks here in China. The good thing is that I don't think there should be any problems in me taking a day off so I can head to Beijing for 3 days next weekend, so I should get to see the Great Wall and the Forbidden City. Luigi was in Beijing last weekend and took a tour to the Great Wall where they spent more time visiting 'factories' (in reality, forced shopping opportunities) than at the wall, so I know I don't want to do that. I need to find out how much it would cost me to hire a car just to take me there and back. In searching the internet, I have found out that you can hire a guide from Grey Line for 8 hours for $90 - I need to do some reading to see if it would be worth it to pay somebody to walk me through the Forbidden City and Tienammen Square. I am only going to be here once, so I want to get the most out of the trip! So, I have a lot of research to do over the next week.

Back in the room I finish the last chapter of "The Bourne Identity", and decide to watch the movie which I brought with me on DVD. Well, the movie is about a guy who has amnesia and who is trying to find out who he is. He finds the name "Jason Bourne" at a bank in Switzerland, he does spend most of his time with a woman call Marie with whom he falls in love, and there is an organization associated with the US government called "Treadstone", but other than that the stories have nothing in common. No Carlos, no Medusa, no Delta. I can't imagine how they made the next movie because the setup in the book seems to be that Jason is going to spend all his time searching for Carlos. Hmm. I will again read the book then watch the movie - I wonder if the stories will have anything in common at all.

I am up late tonight, and am not setting the alarm in the morning - I am going to finally get caught up on my sleep! I have to be down to breakfast before 10am, but other than that there are no restrictions on my time. Yea!

posted by Tania @ 12:24 PM