All the HP delegates had dinner at the LAN Club, which is a very swish place not too far from the hotel (they still hired two buses for us all, though). The pic shown here isn't mine, it's stolen from the NY Times but I took an almost identical picture that I can't seem to get off my camera because it's on the camera memory, not the SD card. It had very Melbourne decor, as you can see, sort of like a cross between Cookie and Order of Melbourne. Fortunately it wasn't a long night so here I am and it's has only just gone 10pm.
Okay, the saga yesterday. Forget for a moment that I went to bed at about 1.30am and woke up at 5.45am. I made it to the airport via train okay, then had to spend about 10 minutes trying to figure out how I'd fit my roller bag into my yellow sack when I went to Japan before realising that I'd tried to put it in the wrong way. I checked in, and only then discovered that the front part of the sole of my shoe had come loose so it was flapping when I walked. I went around the terminal looking for sticky tape and the guy at the Lonely Planet store suggested getting medical tape at the chemist.
It was a brilliant idea, brilliant until I unfurled the tape and then discovered that it didn't just rip like I thought it would. So I hobbled around trying to find someone with a pair of scissors because of course I'd already checked in all my sharp implements. Eventually I found a jewellery store that let me use the teeth of their sticky tape dispenser to saw off the bandage tape. It was quite embarrassing.
Flight to Shanghai was okay. I got a middle aisle seat and the seat next to me was empty, but I noticed the seats didn't have footrests and only reclined about 5 degrees. I read the May issue of Empire magazine for the most part, then slept for a couple of hours before I started flicking through the video channels. I should mention that in the inflight guide, the only English movies they said were showing were 'Harry Potter 6' and 'Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs' but then I found a weird French film, which I then discovered was '17 Again' dubbed in French (I did find the English version and watch the last third) and also the Renee Zellweger/ Harry Connick Jr flick 'New in Town'; (had to look up the title because I remember adamantly not wanting to see it after I'd seen the trailer).
The transit in Shanghai was v short after checking through customs and immigration. I was practically dying of thirst, though, so I bought a bottle of flavoured tea (I know tea is a diuretic, but I didn't know what anything else was). They had these sterilised water stations all around the terminal, but I couldn't figure out how to use them. They
had a paper cup dispenser with words in Chinese and English: 'Paper cup to be used only for cold water' but I couldn't find the cold water button. It just said 'warm', 'warm' and 'hot' with a digital reading that said 99, which I took to be 99 degrees.
So we all got on the plane. I became very interested in a caucasian businessman who looked very out of place among non-businesspeople and Asians (there were non-Asian non-businesspeople and Asian businesspeople but he was the only one who was both). Turns out he was German, or at least read a German magazine with fluency, and he didn't know much Mandarin because he spoke in English to the flight attendants.
Long story short, the plane was delayed by 2 hours when we were already all buckled up ready to go. I slept for the most part (v uncomfortably) except to cram as much water down my throat as possible. I also thought the people who were supposed to meet me at
the airport might leave me to my own devices and I'd have to catch a taxi on my own (I HATE midnight taxi runs in foreign countries where I can't speak the language). Fortunately that wasn't the case: instead I was bundled into a black Mercedes and taken via some long expressway to god-knows-where, which ended up being the JW Marriott.
They gave me the wrong floor access with my room key (I'm in 1816 - level 18, room 16 - and they gave me access to level 16 instead) and can I tell you it is so damn difficult to explain something like that when all you've read is the Lonely Planet Mandarin phrasebook and are really, really, really, really frickin' tired. Eventually I made it with the help of an English-speaking concierge who reconfigured my room key and took me up. I went through all the emotions associated with getting free internet and then discovering I couldn't Tweet nor blog and then I had a shower and went to sleep.
Today was a pretty good day. Too, too early a start, though. Had a meagre brekky because I thought I was late but then ended up hanging around for almost 30 mins before the keynote speaker. We then divided into groups. I met David Flynn (SMH freelancer) and Jacqui (HP rep from Melbourne) and we were put in a group with Malaysia, Singapore,
Indonesia and India. The Indian journos were quite annoying because they were asking a lot of questions that seemed irrelevant but then I thought about it and realised that their SME market (emerging) is completely different from ours (mature) so some of the concepts, such as paying extra for convenience, or for cash flow purposes, were foreign to them.
Overall, a well-run day. I particularly enjoyed the Enviro session, not just because I'm a greenie but because I asked some hard questions and am quite satisfied that HP is the leading printer company in the green space.
Anyway, gotta go file some stories now - and not just the HP ones, unfortunately.
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