Gotham

Trying to catch up on my bloging.
This is the Jin Mao Building in Shanghai. And my hotel when I stay there (Grand Hyatt Shanghai). Reportedly the tallest hotel in the world (the lobby is on the 54th floor). My room was on the 67 floor and it made me dizzy going up the elevators (it took THREE to get to my room). There's a bar on the top floor and you actually look down on the Shanghai needle (actually called the Shanghai Oriental Pearl Tower) from the window. Trippy.

However, the thing that strikes me most about the hotel is the design. Whenever I see it, I expect to see the bat signal silhouette on it's side.

Maglev

I've spent the last two weeks shuttling around China, reviewing some of my company's offices. I'll write up a longer entry later this week, but I wanted to post some video while I was still thinking about. The clip below shows my trip on Shanghai's Maglev train between the city and Pudong International Airport. The clip is almost the entire ride -- since it last only 7 minutes to cover 30 KM.



Although it doesn't show on the video well, the train leans about 30 degrees.

I'll have some more pictures and video from Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou later this week.

Beijing

Okay, I've fixed my "firewall issues" (by fleeing the People's Republic) and I got a few minutes to put together some of the almost interesting snippets of video online. I hadn't been here since 2004 and it was amazing to see how much had changed. Behold my short trip to the Financial District of Beijing, China:


I was scheduled to fly home on Friday from China, but a business emergency has made me divert to Mumbai, India. Soooo . . . I'll probably have some video from there later this week.

c3ns0r3d

So you may have noticed that the usual stream of boring posts, strange pictures and pointless video clips has come to an abrupt halt this week. This is due to my trip to Beijing, China where I have been both surprised, and somewhat honored, to learn that my blog is censored behind the Great Firewall of China. And while I have found a hack to workaround this (I am currently sitting at a Starbucks near Tiennaman Square), it has stymied my attempts to upload videos.

So look for new updates sometime this weekend when I make it Mumbai, India.