Thursday evening, 12:10 am

Today was a much more encouraging day. I want to write more, but I'm so tired that I'm afraid all I can manage is a quick calendar.

The hotel provided breakfast in the rotating restaurant on the 42nd floor. American continental and full English were available on the buffet, but also available was what looked to us like Chinese dinner, including a salad bar and gelatinous vegetables. We stuck to the western breakfast this morning.

Pleasant walk to the office, and reached it around 9:30. The business day was just beginning. Met with the local boss for a while, and were directed to our office for the day. Met with the regional boss for quite a while and had a very good conversation. At that point I took off, and Dave met with his future teammembers and had more conversations with the regional boss. They all went to lunch together and had a good time.

I explored a bit on foot. Walked through a lovely park to the Shanghai Museum and People's Square. Seems like a neat museum, but I was only up for the museum shop this afternoon. Walked down a lower commercial road back to the hotel, and tried to stop for Chinese lunch but totally failed. Details later, but it wasn't encouraging for future life. I made it to the hotel, where I ordered room service and watched the Discovery channel. It's that or CNN or ESPN, in English. Or HBO, but all the movies on HBO seem to be really old. Is that true in the US, too?

I took a good nap, which turned out to a wonderful use of my time this afternoon. I met Dave back at the office around 6:00, and we waited for the boss to meet us until about 7:30. In fitting with Chinese custom, we spent the evening drinking and eating with the boss, building relationships and talking only rarely about work and the business at hand. He's an interesting man, very smart and pretty good English. We stand to learn a lot from him. His daughter is 4 and attends a Montessori International School, which led to some very interesting conversations as well. Dinner was at a traditional Shanghainese restaurant, and fantastic. We've yet to eat anything remotely resembling American-style Chinese food. And we've really loved everything so far. Back to the hotel around midnight, and I should be asleep soon.

I'll try to write more reflections on today, tomorrow. But suffice it to say that Shanghai is much less intimidating than Hong Kong. I'm really looking forward to our tour tomorrow. We expect to spend our time on Saturday doing the rest of the fact finding, exploring grocery stores and public transportation and such.

Thanks for your comments and kind words, everyone. It means the world to us!