Beijing traffic in the snow...
I arrived safely if not delayed in Beijing yesterday evening. The flight from San Francisco was 7hrs late departing due to "ramp maintenance", not exactly sure if thats the ramp was broken and needed to be fixed or the repair was on the aircraft on the ramp. Anyhow, the flight landed a little after 10:30pm in Peking international airport.
Today I spent a little time catching up with my team, its really good to put a face to a name/voice. Then meetings with Sin-Yaw Wang and then a session with global customers service engineers and managers on technical leadership programs in Sun Services. Thanks to all who attended in person and dialed in, appreciate the interaction/questions.
The drive from the hotel to the office was very interesting, the traffic in Beijing seems completely chaotic with a lot of horn honking and very few turn signals, looking out from my hotel window at a busy intersection its almost like watching a mechanical ballet. But add in some snow and the drivers seem to lose their mojo, we probably have less than half an inch on the ground but the taxis nearly wiped out two times and passed several accidents. I'll never complain about colorado drivers in the snow again :-)
We passed the olympic stadium on the way to the office, amazing structure. Its nick name is the birds nest for very good reason.
(image courtesy of wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beijing_National_Stadium)
I'm really looking forward to tomorrows engineering and research institute new year celebration.
