These are my observations for the 13 hour flight to Shanghai. I swapped between the in-flight movies, watching Dr. Horrible, and listening to music on my laptop.

1 hour into the flight. It’s time for lunch service: The dude next to me is smacking his food. And someone else is hawking up a huge loogie. Lovely.

2 hours into the flight: Everyone in the back of the cabin is closing the blinds on the windows and going to sleep. It’s only 2pm (US time)! I guess it’ll be dark inside the plane for this trip, even though it’s going to be sunny all the way over – that is going to be interesting. The flight back will be dark the entire time! The in-flight map shows that we are currently traveling at 640/mph at 34000 ft. That is pretty cool.

~6 hours into the flight: We are currently flying over the Bering Straight and the first thing that came to my mind was the Deadliest Catch on Discovery, along with the Bon Jovi theme song that goes with it… is that bad? I observed the full nose pick twice from the person next to me. She really got her finger up in there and did a number on the nostril. Lol

I find it funny that people are talking to me in Mandarin and I respond in English. Talk to me in Cantonese and there just may be a chance for me to reciprocate with you! I have a feeling I’m going to get a lot of that as I spend my time overseas.

Oh yeah, I have the Linkin Park Minutes to Midnight CD with me… oh so good! Listening to `Valentine’s Day`… maybe I should change the song. I’ve already played out `In Pieces,` – every time I hear it I want to jump around the plane… but I think I’ll have to resist doing that in fear of being tranquilized!

7 hours into flight: I’ve been cooped up in the same airplane for the last 8 hours…. 7 hours in the air. The flight duration is 13 hours! Our current airspeed is 504mph… yeah we slowed down and there is a fierce headwind of 140mph. We crossed over the International Date Line an hour ago. I’ve not slept one bit and the funny thing is that I’m wide awake. There has been constant sunlight since we took off from SFO. This is a 6100+ mile adventure one way. Let’s not make it too frequent eh?

The first thing that I’m doing in Shanghai is logging into Facebook and Gmail. I think it’ll be around 3am in the US when I’m doing that. Would be cool to see at least someone online, but I’m guessing not. I hope everyone is doing well at home.

I’m continuing to pass the time with Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog and a few episodes of The Guild. I’ve seen most of the movies and shows that are playing on the in-flight entertainment system. I also apparently forgot to copy my other movies to my laptop. More Dr. HSAB never hurt anybody! (well, technically he did!)

The flight path was a little weird. I thought we would have flown straight across the same latitude from SFO to the destination, but we went up north along the coast of Alaska, and dropping in from Siberia. I guess this is a shorter path. Just used to seeing a 2D projection of the world.

I think I should have just grabbed the pad of paper and pen from my backpack. It’s a little bit less distracting while trying to plop down thoughts… especially from people overlooking my shoulder. I think one of those polarized security screens would be a good idea for the next trip. The local time in Portland is 7:42 PM. There is 2300 more miles left, 4100 traveled thus far. Time to sign out… and go back to the entertainment of Dr.HSAB!

10 hours into the flight: I resorted to playing minesweeper and I’m getting fairly good at it. It’s a good way to pass the time

Monday Jan 25th (Shanghai time) –
We arrived in the Pudong airport in Shanghai and went through immigration and customs just fine. I noticed that they had IR cameras trained on people’s faces to measure their face temp. The purpose is to try and identify those with a fever and … wait for it… H1N1! It’s a good idea, but I think that may give some false readings since the temperature measurement is taken at a distance.

We took the maglev train out of the airport. That thing travels at 300kph! I got checked into the Renaissance Shanghai Pudong Hotel. This place is really nice! My bed is huge! The view from the 17th floor is pretty cool as well.

My manager and I went down to a local Thai food place down the street. Got fried rice with shrimp and mangos. I should remember this one for next time that I have people come over.

The first experience of crossing the street wasn’t too positive – I almost got run over by a taxi. Streetlights and crosswalks don’t mean a thing over here. If you walk across the street, be very aware of the cars, bikes and mopeds that are around you.

I’ve been awake since 4am Hillsboro time Sunday Jan 24th, now it’s approaching 7am Monday Jan 25th. Body clock is completely screwed up.

Tuesday Jan 26th (Shanghai time) –
I’m up at 5am here. My wakeup call isn’t for another hour and I’ve only gotten 5-6 hours of sleep after this whole traveling ordeal. I’m hoping this will get better as the week progresses. I really need to catch some elusive Z’s.

I checked the hotel internet speed with the Speakeasy speed test. It is less than 500Kbps. At a cost of $160RMB/night (approx $22.90USD/night), that is a rip off.

The sun was out today and it was rather beautiful. First day in Shanghai and I saw the sunrise from my room window.
I met the design team today. They are much older than me. I think they were surprised to learn that I was younger than them and that I am their mentor. We went to a local noodle house for lunch with a few members of the design team.

My manager and I went to the underground market (fake market) after dinner. It was an experience – many markets in two underground sections filled with imitation products ranging from electronics to clothing. Haggling for prices is an art form here. They start out higher than the US prices, and you low ball them. People eventually meet somewhere around 1/3 of the asking price. I didn’t get anything from this place since it was all cheapo things. Still interesting to walk around though. I did see some 580GB USB sticks. LOL, there is no way that density can fit in the small form factor.

Wednesday Jan 27th (Shanghai time) –
I had scrambled eggs, fried rice, sushi, sausage links for breakfast at 7 this morning. A nice change up from having breakfast around 9 after I stroll in to work in Hillsboro.

It’s been a rainy day. Wow it sucks outside and all I can think about is “this is acid rain!”

Went to lunch at the IBM center and dinner with a few colleagues at a fancy Chinese restaurant. I’m an ABC – American Born Chinese – that was the phrase for the night. It’s true, but kind of got annoyed by the reference. I feel really, really foreign here.

Thursday Jan 28th (Shanghai time) –
Woke up in the middle of the night. Realized I’m still at RadiSys, Shanghai! Even after a few days, my sleep schedule is still messed up. I went to sleep at 10pm yesterday, but ended up waking up at 1am, and again at 4am. I decided to check e-mail. That put me back to sleep (thank goodness).

Had breakfast with scrambled eggs, ham, potatoes, and a spring roll. I’m eating way better than I normally do for breakfast. That’s good! Kinda wonder how much food has been laced with MSG.

Went into the office by 7:30 this morning. My manager and I are the first ones here, and one of the last ones to leave. Kind of weird, but have to deal with the e-mail and work here, and deal with e-mail from the US. The world needs to be flat so there are no time zones.

The sun is back out today. I went to lunch with Tim and Grace at the IBM center again. We decided to take a long walk around the technology park on the way back to the office.

I left work at 6pm, had dinner at the hotel and just camped out in the hotel room afterwards. I think i’ve had a little bit too much time to think. I miss home and I have another week here. I miss the familiar. I miss hanging out with my friends. Its 9:18pm – time for bed.

Friday Jan 29th (Shanghai time) –
We went out to lunch at a place called “Soup” (a Cantonese style family restaurant) in downtown Zhangjiang with our Shanghai team. That place was pretty high class!

After work, I met up with Jill and Desi at the Cantina Agave over in Puxi. I’m glad they made it up from Ningbo for the weekend. It was good to finally see them again! We’ve got some cool plans for the weekend. ‘night everyone.

I copied most of my phone pics to Facebook. It’s about time I did that. Thank goodness for the microSD card. I noticed is that the EXIF data is missing on half of the photos- this was rather problematic as I wanted to assign a date comment each photo, so there was some manual labor going through old e-mails and chat logs to find out when some of the photos were taken! There was also something about the phone JPG files that the FB uploader didn’t like. I had to re-save each one in Photoshop to get the JPG headers correct again before it uploaded. That took a better part of 3 hours. I also started to play around with the Facebook Mobile feature the night before. I guess it’s pretty convenient to take photos with the camera phone and upload them directly, but that’s a one photo at a time type of operation. I’d much rather use my small point and shoot or DSLR if i have it on me. We’ll see how much I use this.

My friends finished tagging my Mania Monday party pictures from Dec 21st. I woke up and found 80 new photo tags. There are a lot of pics, and I thank you (John, Clara) for tagging the remaining ones! Jessica blames me for sending a bunch of FB spam. Ha.

I finally made the chocolate chip cookies — almost 30 hours after I said I would make them. The recipe [allrecipes.com] says this would yield 60 cookies. One thing that I realized is that it would yield 60 small cookies. I made 18 small cookies and 20 large ones instead. I figure why make a bite sized one?

I organized my FB Home Cooking album. I also added recipes to some of the captions and updated my recipe folder.

To end the night, I watched Stargate Universe, Episode 10 ‘Justice,’ and Stargate SG-1 Season 4, Episode 10 ‘Beneath the Surface.’ Not a bad way to wind down the day.

Tuesday Dec 29th –
I read my Google Analytics report this morning and it showed someone searching for “Facebook Thomas Ng” – I guess I’m the #2 hit on Google for this term. I’m currently ranked #4 if you just search for my name. The third ranked hit used to be my domain name as well, but it has been bought by some artist. I stopped paying for the .org domain since everything is re-directed to the .net domain anyway. Oh well. One more interesting tidbit: someone visited my website from South Africa!

Random thought: sometimes I feel like Doogie Howser sitting in front of my computer, reflecting back on the events for the day — except I don’t have an old CRT monitor or the 8-bit Doogie Howser theme song playing in the background. OH! Speaking of which, I’m sure you’ll enjoy this if you are a Neil Patrick Harris fan or just a dork (like me).

Hulu.com: http://www.hulu.com/watch/53001/saturday-night-live-digital-short-doogie-howser-theme

While searching for that clip, I noticed that Hulu.com has four seasons worth of DH MD online as well [Hulu.com: http://www.hulu.com/doogie-howser-md]. I remember watching the pilot episode back in 2004 when I was bored out of my mind studying at the library one day. I think I watched an episode of Duck Tales as well that day. Good times!

I’m gonna get my H1N1 vaccination today. That ought to be fun. I don’t mind needles, but I really don’t think I’ll need the vaccination either. I usually just let my body naturally take care of infection/cold and not take any actual medicine for it. Just getting it to satisfy the parents before I head on over to Shanghai for work for the last two weeks of January. Oh wow, it just hit me: I’m leaving the country in 3 weeks! Ack! I should stat looking for a decent sized suite case to fit 2 weeks of stuff and a winter jacket.

I’m aiming for a mid afternoon cycling ride at 2pm today as well. They are currently predicting a 15% chance of rain, and a high around 38deg. Should be alright for a quick ride around town. Today’s cycling plans currently on standby. Likelihood of precipitation is increasing. We’ll play this one by ear.

Alright, time to start the day.

-T

Updates for Tuesday: It started to snow around 1pm today. 3″ accumulated during the evening. The weather forecasts never said anything about it. I’m sure glad that I canceled my cycling ride. Oh well. I got my H1N1 vaccination. The nurse at Kaiser was quite cute and we struck up a conversation. Too bad she’s taken. :-\ Went to Fred Meyers for some groceries. Slowly drove home in the snow.

I made a snowman in my driveway, a snow angel in the front yard and captured some night shots around the neighborhood with my camera. Apparently I cloned myself in a multiplicity shot as well. Pictures are on Facebook (or on my Fotobook page). All in all, a good day.

Wednesday Dec 30th – I changed out the SIM card in my phone today. After installing the replacement one, it decided to delete all of my sent text messages from the phone, but it kept all of the ones in the inbox. There were some messages that I wanted to keep and didn’t have the chance to send them over to my computer yet. That’s a bummer — oh well, we’ll start fresh for 2010.

Party at my place 6pm. Made fried rice for dinner; had chips/salsa and cookies for snacks. Played Blokus, and Carcassone with a small skeleton crew.

Thursday Dec 31st – It’s been a really slow start for the day. I’m not exactly feeling 100% and I’m hoping I can thwart off a cold for another few hours. I woke up with my nasal sinuses plugged up and hurting. I woke up around 11am, checked e-mail and went back to sleep for a few more hours. I finally had breakfast at 2pm. The rest of the afternoon was met with vomiting and not feeling good at all. I did head out to urgent care to get checked out. Needless to say, it wasn’t a good night. Since I wasn’t in any immediate health danger, I didn’t leave with the answers that I wanted… I was just instructed to take some ibuprofen and wait until Monday when the surgeons would be back in the office. Ugh. Maybe I should reconsider my health benefit selections for 2011.

I went to the new years eve party at Chantelle’s place tonight. I was the only sober one there and it was freakin’ hillarious. I am glad that I got to hang out with my friends for the new year. I look forward to 2010. It should be exciting and challenging. I resolve to cycle at least 3K miles.

Friday Jan 1st – HAPPY NEW YEAR! I was going to watch the Lord of the Rings trilogy (extended edition = 11.5 hours) at Lee’s place, but I’m currently feeling a little bit under the weather. I guess I’ll stay home and spend the first day of 2010 sick. I spent way more time sleeping than awake in 2010 thus far. Currently waiting for clear skies, and green light to return to cycling. Ugg.

Saturday Jan 2nd – I woke up with a nice 101degree fever. I guess it was a good choice to stay at home yesterday. I thought about going shopping so I can make something nice for dinner, but was quickly reminded that I should be in bed and definitely not driving. I ended up making noodles for “lunch” at 4pm, and a tomato with egg dish (didn’t have beef though!) for dinner at 9pm. Ah, 2010… this has been a rough start.