Culture, Shock

36 hours after departing Loggerhead Key I was on my way back to Beijing.

I will not bore you with details of the plane ride other than to say the even with an empty seat next to me, coach class on United Airlines sucks out loud.

One cool thing about the flight, I did get a peek outside the window as we neared the Arctic coast of Russia and the weather was clearer than I had ever seen it...
I even had the presence of mind to shoot a picture of the icefields below the plane.


Brrr. Even in "summer" it still looks like Cocytus...

With the Olympics so close, they have opened the special lanes at the Customs and Immigration checkpoint for folks traveling to and working at the Olympics, so that usual hour of waiting in line didn't happen this time. Hoo ha!

I did get a good bit of scrutiny at the baggage check.
Apparently there is some kind of initiative to really check for contraband...they did check out my toolkit quite closely, and they wanted to know why I had 3 laptops...
After about 10 minutes of discussion, during which it looked like I would have to post a bond to keep my laptops, one of the inspectors noticed my NBC/Olympics credential, whereupon I was sent on my merry way.
Whew. Typically, it takes an act of God to get your money back when you post a bond for equipment. As a rule of thumb, it's best to just forget about it than to try to negotiate the quagmire of bond refunds.

The final push before the Event


Good Morning Beijing

I'm in a different hotel this time...
The China National Convention Center Hotel, which is part of the Main Press Center, and is about 100 feet from the IBC.
It takes me 5 minutes from the time I leave my room until I get to the IDS office in the IBC. Sweet.
In contrast, the Code Monkey is at the Intercontinental, near the hotel where we stayed in June...
He has a 30 minute shuttle bus ride to get here in the morning.

Speaking of the IDS office... We actually *have* an office this year!

We are definitely moving up in the world.
In Athens in 2004, we were in a hallway near the NBColympics.com operations center. In Torino we were actually *in* the dotcom office...
This year we have our own room.

Speaking of the Code Monkey...

Stass hard at work. Soon the shelves will be populated with laptops that ingest raw stat information and repackage it for other uses.
More on that later...

Even with the thick air outsite, there is quite a lightshow going on out there as they get prepared for the Opening Ceremonies.


Good Night Beijing...

TBG, working on my jet lag...