first taste of the motherland

So, I'm writing this from a hotel room in Beijing, China. Wow, that's a sentence I never thought I'd see me write!

Said goodbye to Kale EARLY this morning and boarded the flight without much incident. Had a middle seat cos the flight was overbooked. The trouble started as soon as I sat down. The guy on my left (who was also pretty big) fell asleep before we even took off... AND he promptly began snoring. Not the gentle, wheezing kind of snoring either.. the really noisy snorting kind of sneeze!!

I was stuck cos I couldn't use my ipod cos we hadn't taken off yet, and they had yet to pass out the headsets. The Aussie guy on my right felt my pain, but he had a pair of headphones with the right adaptor so he was all set to drown out the snores.

Somehow managed to make it through the trip (watched Mr and Mrs Smith and The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants, which are both pretty good). Touched down in Beijing, braved the queues and took a REALLY long cab ride to the airport. Man, it's hazy out here and the traffic is CRAZY! It's really every man for himself!!

Anyhow, went out for dinner with one of the guys who's in the same delegation and his friends. Went for a walk around some Chaoyang park, and caught some Euro-China music festival thingamajig before coming back to the hotel for a meeting with the rest of the group.

The great news is that there's a shopping centre right downstairs of our hotel.. and IT'S HUGE!! wow. I'm going to go and suss it out tomorrow if I can't get to the other shopping centre that we're trying to get to. That is of course, if I have time after churning out these meeting summaries I'm supposed to churn out. =(

Going to take a shower and then crawl into bed. Early start tomorrow with a breakfast meeting.. *groan*..

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To the husband who's back in Singapore.. (since messenger doesn't work with our VPN)
Good night..Love you...
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