Sunday, July 13

This was my fifth trip to China, the first being in 2000. This trip was mostly work, but I did have time to take a few pictures and have a few extra-work experiences. My job entailed working in the kitchens of two hotels, producing product that demonstrated the use of whey derivatives, giving two seminars on the use of whey, and then two chocolate-making demonstrations.

It all started Saturday, July 12, 2008 in San Luis Obispo, CA. I boarded the plane around 10:45 AM, 75 minutes after arriving at the airport. The flight had been delayed due to smoke from the forest fires which had been plaguing the Central Coast. The plane then sat at the end of the runway until 11:30 AM, as permission to take off had been delayed. We arrived in SF at 12:30 PM, only 1 hour before departure. I grabbed a quick bite to eat and boarded the plane 25 minutes before departure time of 1:30 PM.

The flight lasted about 14 hours. The sun never set because the earth was turning underneath us in our direction. We arrived at 5:30 PM. The hotel car was there to pick me up and the drive from the airport took about 60 minutes. The Shanghai international airport (located south of Pudong) is flanked by the customary three layers of vegetation: low, green bushes, higher red bushes, and modest sized trees, probably in the poplar family. Occasionally, there were walls of bamboo. All the vegetation is hand-trimmed and hand-watered.

At about 7:30 PM, Sunday, we arrived in Shanghai—at the JW Marriott. The hotel lobby is at the 38th floor and extends upwards from there. My room was on the 46th floor.