I cannot remember when was the last time I went to Asia. I have been to quite a few places over there–Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan, but I have never been to mainland China. After jumping through lots of hoops, I got my hands on the needed Visa a half an hour before the FedEx office in Olympia closed. So now I get to fly to Shanghai to celebrate my birthday tomorrow.
I got good seats with lots of legroom, so that is a fine thing. My hope is to be able to get some work done on the sickle cell detection project as well as some work for my day job. Just in case I get all that done, I bought the latest Longmire novel and a second mystery novel. Who knows whether I will be able to get any sleep.
I will be in Shanghai (our office is in Suzhou) then on to Shenzhen, before catching a flight through Beijing on the way home. Of course this is one of those work trips where I will not get to see anything other than big factories and R&D offices which are pretty much the same the world over. Nevertheless, I am confident I will get some great Chinese food. I am especially looking forward to meeting two members of my team with whom I have spoken fairly extensively over Skype, but have never met face to face.