Events

This is the point in the residency when I see how much work I have to do by Saturday afternoon and wonder if I should have taken the bar exam instead. And as much as I love Chinese and Indian food, I'm ready for a Whole Foods salad about now. Before resuming my Strategy reading, I'd like to draw the reader's attention to this front-page story in the Shanghai Daily News: Dense fog affected Shanghai yesterday, blocking dozens of ships and ferry boats and delaying at least 150 flights. At least 400 ships...

I mean, literally. Sunday afternoon: This morning: Shanghai has been hazy since we arrived, so some of the fog is man-made. It isn't approaching the level of London in December 1952, but it isn't exactly the fresh spring fog of an Appalachian valley, either. (I'll have more to say about China's economic development in a bit.)

Due to an unexpected attrition of Flip cameras[1], several teams (including mine) set off on the Shanghai Culture Dash without them. This turned out to be liberating: between the six of us, we had four video-capable cameras, so we got more than 80 minutes of video. I'm especially pleased that we got two 10-minute interviews with multiple cameras. That will make the final product a lot more watchable—and audible, I think. We actually dashed over much of the same ground I explored Thursday and Friday...

Really, it's the food. We're all going to double our waist sizes here. This afternoon they took us on a teambuilding exercise in which we made lemon chicken and pork fried rice. Much fun, many calories. Our team won best preparation but, owing to a lack of salt (we think), only came in second overall. Our presentation: One of my teammates copied down on his iPhone the entire procedure as the chef demonstrated it. Once he's able to send me the note, I'll repost it. It involved only one ingredient whose...

I'm still digesting Shànghăi, possibly because it's all about the food. Take, for example, the family dinner my classmate Kyle invited me to. Including me, there were five of us. This is what Kyle's mother and wife prepared: That doesn't show the rice, by the way. All of it was delicious. I admit, I didn't try the green jellied duck eggs, but Kyle smoothed that out with his folks. Earlier yesterday he took me to Qībăo, a tiny oasis of old Shànghăi about 15 km southwest of the city center. More food...

Obligatory Pŭdōng skyline shot: And completely surprising shot of the kids that mobbed me to practice their English:

Best view yet: Much better than Dubai.

It's 5:20 in the morning here, and I don't know what day it is. This, believe it or not, I expected, which explains why I got here a day early. Just one major complaint: The Great Firewall apparently blocks Facebook[1]. Those of you waiting for me to play Scrabble, I'm sorry. (The Great Firewall sometimes changes its mind, so I'll keep trying.) I won't bore you with details about my messed-up circadian rhythm when I could do it with something else, so here, à propos of nothing, is a photo of Tokyo...

Above Siberia, 9:34 JST I actually can see Russia from my window:

Over Great Bear Lake, N.W.T., 16:20 MDT Note the first: A westbound 13-hour flight seems a lot shorter than a 9-hour flight the other direction. We left Chicago a little more than four hours ago, which equals the flying time from Chicago to San Francisco, the farthest place you can go within the Lower 48. It doesn’t feel that far. The sun confounds perceptions of time: we took off at 1pm and we land at 3:30, chasing the sun across the Canadian permafrost most of the way. I get to Shanghai at 7pm. My...