China Trip - September 22nd to September 27th

It's Sunday night here in Shenzhen, Sunday morning in Kansas City. We left Kansas City at 10:00 AM central time on Saturday morning and arrived at our hotel here in China at about 9:30PM local time, on Sunday evening. We had a direct flight to San Francisco, then flew to Hong Kong from there, and took a ferry to main land China from Hong Kong. Saturday morning, before leaving for the airport I went for a 45 minute run and I just got back from the hotel gym, where I ran on the treadmill for 30 minutes. I don't have any idea how many calories I ate today...I ate the airline meals for lunch and dinner. I figured if I was going to be on a plane for 13 hours I better eat what they give me. It was hard to get enough water. I need to be sure to bring water with me on the way home. I feel like I ate too many calories, but also didn't feel like I had a lot of choices. I could have been a lot better prepared with snacks from home, but I did not have a lot of time to get ready for this trip.

It's now Monday morning, my first day in China. We are in Shenzhen and are going to spend the day with the accountants that prepared the account reconciliations for our Chinese motor manufacturing plant. It should be an interesting day and I am sure that I will learn a lot.

I started out the day with a 50 minute strength training workout in the hotel gym. They didn't have all of the equipment that I would have liked but I was able to improvise a pretty decent workout. There wasn't anyone else in the gym last night or this morning, not even an attendant. I kind of felt like I shouldn't even be there, but no one ran me out so I figured it was OK. It was hot, though! In general, Shenzhen is very hot and muggy and the hotel air conditioning isn't awesome, but it's ok. Unfortunately, both times that I went into the gym the air conditioning was turned off. I turned it on both times and propped open the doors the second time, but it was still pretty stuffy. I will say I got pretty darn sweaty! I wish now that I had packed two sets of gym clothes. I'm going to have to lay out the ones I have to dry as soon as we get to our next hotel, tonight.

Speaking of hotels, here is are a couple of photos from my room and through my window. Looks like China...















It is Tuesday morning, now, and we have changed cities after a very successful meeting yesterday with our Chinese CPAs. We are now in Zhongshan, which is where our Chinese factory is, and we are staying at the lovely Crowne Plaza Hotel. My room is beautiful and I am waiting for Patrick and a couple of other coworkers to have breakfast.

Food is a bit of a problem for me. Breakfast yesterday morning was wretched and I did my best to eat a reasonable number of calories. Lunch was delicious and I was ravenous, so I ate too much, not knowing where my next meal was coming from. Dinner was ok, but too soon after lunch and I wasn't hungry, so I didn't eat much. I have no idea the number of calories I consumed yesterday, I am not even trying to count, but I am trying to eat reasonably. My hands are swollen, so I know I am eating way too much salt. Getting enough water is a problem because you can't drink the tap water. I drink bottled water whenever it is available, but that is not often enough. I went to the gym this morning and ran on the treadmill for 45 minutes at 8km per hour and did 15 minutes on the elliptical. This hotel has a nice set of weight machines and free weights, so I should be able to replicate my regular strength training workout tomorrow better than I did yesterday.

It looks like I may be coming to China regularly, as it appears as if I am going to play a major role in the oversight of the accounting for our Chinese factory. It's all quite interesting. Who knew this is where I would be, today?

It is now noonish on Thursday, September 27th, we are at the San Francisco airport waiting for our flight, which has been delayed by about two hours.

All in all, the trip to China was probably a success. We have some difficult decisions to make for the company, I have a tremendous amount to learn about operating a company in China, and we have a lot of details to work through, but I think we are on the right track towards doing the best thing for the long term health of the organization. I wonder if I can learn Mandarin? Rosetta Stone? Foreign languages have always been difficult for me to learn, at least for me to learn how to speak, but it would make my job a lot easier if I could at least understand some Mandarin.

The hotel we stayed in while in Zhongshan was very nice. Here are a couple of photos of my room and the view:




This photo was taken from inside the bathroom. Notice the big window between the tub and the bedroom. There a blind you can electronically close if you want privacy. Here is a picture with the blind halfway down.





And here's a photo of the room looking back from the window. It really was a very nicely appointed room. Knowing I will be staying here will make traveling to China regularly much more bearable.




And the view from my room...




Prettier at night...



Most of the buildings are decorated with elaborate lights at night.

The trip was a whirlwind, so I didn't get any photos other than those of and from my room. Ah well...I was actually surprised by how western everything appeared. Eventually, one of my trips to China should be long enough to do a bit of sight seeing.

I am very anxious about my weigh-in tomorrow. It was difficult to eat normal meals throughout the trip. All of my meals were much later than normal with breakfast at 8:30 in the morning and dinner often at 8:30 or 9:00 at night. Sometimes I was very hungry and I would eat a lot, because I did not have access to snacks, and other times I was not very hungry at all and I ate small amounts to be polite and to keep from getting too hungry before my next meal. It was difficult because all of our meals were centered around business meetings and I was not in control of where and when we ate. I drank no alcohol, but I did have two cokes because drinking the water was not an option. Each morning I had three fresh bottles of water in my room and I was able to refill the one I brought with me to the gym, so that helped. I still drank less water and more coffee than normal. I have no idea how much I will weigh tomorrow. It's not helping that our flight out of SFO is now 3 hours delayed. Pretty soon I am going to want to eat again. I am getting anxious to get home to my routines and my food! If I gained weight, which I am guessing I did, I hope I can lose it quickly.

Even though the food part of the trip was difficult, I was successful when it came to exercising every day. I had a little fantasy that i may be able to exercise twice on some days, and that did not happen, but I was able to go to the gym every day that I was in China. That helped me a lot.

Lastly, between our vacation and my trip to China, I have missed two Sunday photos! That's sad. So this is best I can do for now; here's a very tired looking photo of me (we left the hotel in China for the Hong Kong airport 21 hours ago) at SFO waiting for our flight to Kansas City:




Till tomorrow...here's hoping the scale results are too awful!!!


Posted using BlogPress from my iPad