racing the clock

I’ll have to come back and add a picture to this post later, as Google and Yahoo image search seem to be dodgy within this communist firewall… apologies.

Thursday morning in Shanghai and I don’t have much time. I need to shower and dress and be downstairs to put away some breakfast before my ride comes to get me at 7:30am. That gives me precisely one hour to write and do all of the above. After that, the local team I work with here has treated me to a “day off” event in honor of the Chinese Tomb Sweeping holiday. We’ll hop aboard a bullet train (yes, I’m pretty pumped about that, although it’s not as fast as the local maglev) and rocket through the Chinese countryside on our way to the city of Hangzhou. In Chinese, I’ve been told that there’s a saying: “There is Heaven in the clouds, and there is Heaven on earth – and it’s Hangzhou.” Supposedly it’s stupid-beautiful and, according to the local men, well-stocked with good-looking Chinese women. Too bad I’m not in the market.

(Well, hope the Wikipedia links work for you… I couldn’t check them because the national firewall here blocks access to most pages – communism, you know. Maybe I’ll go read them when I’m back at home…)

As I sit here I’m sapping the hotel’s bandwidth by doing some torrent work (of course encrypting traffic so not to alert the Red Police and come back to a tossed hotel room and angry M16-toting guards). Grabbing the new Nine Inch Nails album, and some TV shows I missed while away for the plane. Once again, I love the internet for things like this – so easy and so simple and I don’t have to feel “disconnected” at all even thought I’m halfway around the globe. It’s cool, I can leave the client running all day while I’m off tromping through the Chinese countryside. Sorry, everyone else at this hotel who needs bandwidth to do work…

Gotta go, really short on time. Love ya.

Also written on this day...

• hiking - 2019
• i'm sorry but i killed your hops - 2011
• good to be home - 2008
• solace in the shitter - 2006