Whoo hoo, another 14 1/2 hour flight. I've been traveling to China for the last 9 years and its still a long trip. It is a lot easier now that I've done it about 8 times. You learn how to pace yourself and time meals, awake time, and sleeping. The trick is to get ones brain on destination time as soon as possible. That means today I convince myself as soon as I get on the plane late AM Chicago time, that it is really late at night. I'm about to stay awake until 2 or 3 in the morning, then sleep for a few hours until mid- to late morning China time. I will skip the mid flight meal (it sucks anyway) and be awake for breakfast they will serve a couple hours before our 1:55 PM arrival in Wednesday. Tang Bo Wei should be in hand to pick me up at Shanghai PuDong airport and I will be checked at the Suzhou Marriot by 5 PM or so, China time (that's 4 AM in Chicago). The plan is to have dinner with Doug tonight before hitting the sack at about 10.

Thursday we've teed up some meetings with Shao Jin'an and the purchasing staff. Thursday night is out staff dinner. Will try to take some photos to post with this blog so you can see what I'm seeing along the way in this trip.

One brief in-flight observation. We are about 10 hours into the flight and are now over the sea north of Japan, about to cross over western Siberia. From there, if I believe the flight path shown on the video map, we fly right over North Korea. Not sure that's right, but also not at all comfortable if that's true - especially with the nonsense that's been coming out of that crazy nation. Oh well, I suspect we are not really flying that path.

OK. I feel better. Checking the map again we shifted course west to fly over Harbin toward Dalian, staying away from North Korea. About 2 hours out from Shanghai now.

Driving from PuDong airport to Suzhou on the allegedly "sunny" day two things are clear. The smog is worse than ever, and there are a lot more fancy cars on the road. Big Mercedes, BMWs, and the usual Audis - and they are driving faster. The trucks are even looking newer, but a few are as decrepit as ever.

Arrived at the Suzhou Marriott after a 2 hour drive. Tang Baowei, the S&C driver must've been chuckling because I dozed off and probably snored during a portions of the ride. Met Doug for dinner at the Italian restaurant where we had an over-priced but decent dinner overseen by Stefano, the embullent and very Italian chef manager.