Tania in China

Thurs, Oct 19: Getting ready to travel

Day 12 of bobbing. I am actually getting used to it. There is no need for me to drink here - I spend my whole days a bit dizzy and off-center...

I have A LOT of trouble getting up this morning. Even though I have gotten about 10 hours sleep, it is all I can do to force myself out of bed to grab breakfast before work. There seems to be a large tour group of older Americans staying at the hotel last night - there is a large batch at breakfast, and huge amounts of luggage piled together in the lobby.

Before I leave for work I get a call from the travel agency that my train tickets are ready to be picked up. I ask her if I can put the balance on a credit card - she looks at me funny and says she has change for me! So a round trip train ticket to Shanghai in "Soft Seat" - their equivalent of first class - cost me $23, including the $5 to have the travel agency buy my ticket for me. I can now see why everybody travels by train!

At work we are plugging along, and should be ready to start some testing tomorrow.

For lunch Ben takes Luigi and me to the "technology street" in Nanjing, and we look around a technology department store. They are selling everything technology related - PCs, televisions, speakers, digital cameras, MP3 players, printers, down to circuit boards and cable. Again the floor is covered my many small "departments" - I think the people rent out the stalls in the store, then each run their own store. I am just browsing, but Luigi ends up getting 2 512mb MP3 players and a universal card reader for about $50 US. I will have to see if there is anything I need to pick up before I go back! For lunch we go to the Sky Way deli and get sandwiches (and cake!) to take back to the office.

Lunch is so big and so late that I end up again not eating anything for dinner except snacks in the room. I have to stop that! I try the "crispy drumstick" flavor of potato chips and they are really good. It takes me a couple of hours to pack everything in my room (with some resting and snacking time worked in), and I am actually able to get everything I am not going to want in Shanghai into my big suitcase. It really is a nice bag, and has one of those expansion zippers, so with some work I am able to get everything in there. This way I can leave the big bag with the bellhop at the hotel, then just pick it back up when I return on Sunday. That is much better than trying to haul around so much stuff on and off the train and all around Shanghai. I am also leaving my laptop with Ben - he will take it home with him for the weekend, so this will probably be my last update to the blog until either Sunday evening or on Monday. After my trip it may take me a couple of days to catch up!

I head back to the office for my 8pm teleconference, and am able to get back to my room by 9, then asleep by 11 (my book is getting really interesting now - it is hard to put it down!).

posted by Tania @ 10:20 AM