If It's Thursday, This Must Be Beijing

As long as I'm sitting here just getting off the clock at midnight in Beijing, I figured I'd tell you how little I know about it. It's very well organized, nothing like the madcap crowdedness and chaos of Bangalore. There was lots of traffic downtown when I got in Tues around 3PM. Took over an hour to get to the hotel. You could see the mountains in the distance, although I heard today that that was very unusual. Today was just plain murk. Maybe it was sunny, but mostly it just seemed smoggy. Not that I got outside. Aside from breakfast and a before-dinner meeting, my entire day was spent in a windowless meeting room that could have been in Fresno. The same is on hand for tomorrow, although I think I'll get a chance to emerge from the hotel for dinner with some other people. The little bit I have seen of the city is not very distinctive. (This in spite of the glowing words from our hosts and others about how great Beijing is in the Spring.) Strangely, I have not seen a tree that did not look planted in orderly rows. Lots of high-rise apartments on the way in that look nice, not like the drab concrete bunkers you think of Soviet-style apartments being. I'm on the 20th floor of a fancy hotel, but at least where I am staying does not have that dense, tall, urban feel of NY or Chicago. My room is very modern, more European in styling than American. Lots of ferners in the hotel. There are 13 countries represented here, including Brasil, Vietnam, Thailand, and Malaysia. Dinner tonight was a variety of Chinese dishes that ranged from dim sum and other things you might find at a Chinese restaurant back home, but also including oddities such as ostrich and french fries. That's about all I can think of! Off to bed while you're waking up.