Eggplant  !!!  (or 茄子 qie zi)  .. That’s  what you say in Chinese when you  take a picture . as in ‘Say cheese !’..  I suppose eggplant is no weirder than Cheese. > A freind wrote it down for me on my hand

Let me back up for a sec to last night.. My big job was to stay awake long enough so I could go to bed at a normal time.. That worked out to about a 36 hour day.. but.. no better way to stay awake than to hang out with friends. I had a great dinner with my friend JY and his colleague (and my new friend) DS. We even got some good work talk in..

We went to a nice local place with very traditional Beijing style food.. traditional except that the menus were ipads..

the food was GREAT !  here’s some shrimp thingy

and this weird grass stuff they always serve you in Beijing.. It’s like the stuff you clean out of a lawnmower.. only tastier.. (just a little tastier, though )

we got this weird mashed potato dish that come on ice with a cherry blossom.. seriously. .it was three types of mashed potatoes.. including mashed potato with blueberry sauce..

this was good spicy wish.. spicy enough that even I could taste it

 

there was this woman at the restaurant playing the ancient Chinese equivalent of a pedal steel guitar.. I kept thinking she was going to bust out with some hank williams or greg allman.. .. but no luck

We decided to walk back to the hotel thoguh the muggy, smoggy and really pretty beautiful beijing night.. You can see the air.. you practically needed to claw your way through it .  t was seriously great seeing the city this way   This place is so vibrant .

I got 8 hours sleep then woke refreshed.. … I met my reind Gary downstairs for breakfast.. which included 1000 year old egg (Yum !)

and this guy.. (Those are leechies that were his eyes … (quick.. anyone get that reference ?))

Then we made or way over to the IBM event..

I was doing one of the keynotes.. My host was my good buddy Jo

She runs the lab here.. I havent seen her in a couple of years and it was just great catching up

my talk went pretty well..and I enjoyed the othe speakers.. Lots of awards were given out.

there were more than 500 folks there !!!  I ran into so many old friends.

Here’s my good friend Hua-pin..We used to work together almost daily  I haven’t seen him in almost 5 years !!!  He’s now a great badmiton player. He’ll be in the Chinese national competition next week !

after the morning session I spent the afternoon in some really excellent work meetings. I got so much done this afternoon for my day job.. It’s SO much easier sitting FFace to face with soemone in front of a white board (or napkin in this case) to get ideas across.

This evening there was a dinner .which was good fun. It was fun catching up with folks/  Most of the folks

were the organizers ..which happened to be about 80 percent women … which was a strange change !

Mei-mei’s glasses were cool.. so we swapped.. which made us both blind.

here’s Matt. he actually lives in South Burlington !!!!  We noted it was 96 degrees here at the same time it was 48 in Vermont.. twice as hot 🙂

mohammed is on assignment here.. he’s from egypt.. he’s also a vegetarian.. not always easy here.

just ask this poor chicken !

tripe !!!

Here’s Patty.. she’s the real organizer of the event..

and my freind Jia is here.. We got to catch up which was great..

I got back to my room aroun 8.. and have been in work calls for a coupl of hours. Its now midnight so I should sign off (oops.. one more work call first.. jus remembered)..

More tomorrow !

 

nite all, nite sam

-me