Carlton Bale

Garrett and I flew into Dalian today from Beijing. The flight was no problem as everything was both written and spoken in English. The small amount of warm Sprite in a small paper cup was the only unsurprising detail. When we entered the 21st Century Hotel, I was struck by how elegant it was, much more so than I was expecting. The staff was very courteous and helpful and my room turned out to be quite nice. I was surprised that it was not in as rural of a location as I expected; it is well within the city limits. Since all of these wereRead More →

Only in China can two engineers walk into a bar and be the center of attention for all of the females. Two engineers walking into a bar is usually the opening line of a joke. There are two possibilities here. One, engineers are completely irresistible. Or two, there are a very large number of “working women” in the bars in Beijing. I know that employment can be a major issue. For reasons of personal pride, I’ll assume that option one is correct and I’ll never attempt to find out which is really the case. For the record, I love and miss my wife and I’mRead More →

I slept until 11:00 this morning when Faye gave me a call. Those over-the-counter sleeping pills work pretty well! Faye graciously arranged to take me on a tour of some areas that the group will not get to see when we return to Beijing. I wish I could remember the exact names of the places we visited! We started out a Buddhist temple — the only one in Beijing. It was interesting to young people there worshiping. Next, we went to the old downtown area where we climbed the bell tower, visited an actual Chinese home, and toured the gardens of a former prime minister;Read More →

It’s about 11:00 PM local time in Beijing and it has been a long day. I awakened at about 5:30 this morning, a half hour before the alarm went off. Since I went to sleep after midnight, this was not a good thing. My wife dropped me off at the airport and we said our goodbyes. I checked-in early, got on a plane to Detroit, another to Minneapolis, a third to Tokyo, and a forth to Beijing. Because I’m a picky sleeper, I only sleep when I’m exhausted. I had a 15 minute nap at the beginning of the 12 hour flight to Tokyo andRead More →

I’m no where close to being ready to leave. I have 2 weeks of school but left but only one week to complete all of the work for classes as well as pack and prepare for China. The classroom activities have prepared me as well as can be expected for the hotel pricing consulting that the team will be performing. We won’t really know anything until we get to Dalian and experience the assignment first-hand. By the way, we will be consulting and staying at the 21st Century Hotel in Dalian, China. Dalian is located in the northwest of China, on a peninsula with BeijingRead More →