Joining In

Well, that was fun…with the joys of modern technology I was able to get the full on morning experience with the family back home including some long-distance parenting ("brush your hair, have a yoghurt, remember to buy lemons for pancakes later, get out of the monkey onesie and put your uniform on!").

And probably the highlight of my day. Not that my day is a bad one, just that it has so far and will continue to involve little more than sitting in my hotel room working. Hadn't quite realised the amount of work I have over the next couple of weeks; probably as I have been so focused on the delivery of this China event which hasn't even started yet. Fortunately it is a very nice hotel room with an enormous bed, very stylish glass desk and comfy sofa so I can have a variety of work stations.

Did take a brief trip out to the client offices at lunchtime to do a final test of the technology needed for tomorrow. It's interesting how reliant my job is on the internet; without it, I reckon I would be able to perform about 10%. The offices are in a high-tech business park which, aside from the Chinese characters, could pretty much be a business park anywhere in the world. But we did drive through an obviously very poor area to get there - think ramshackle pop-up shops made of corrugated iron (and not in that trendy London way) and shanty towns with dwellings made of tires. And of course, more crazy wrong side of the road (and I don't mean driving on the right, in fact, that would be great…) and no seat belt but I think I might just stop looking for one!

Not sure I am helping my body clock listening to the Today programme at 4.30pm but as I have to keep working until 10pm it might help me stay focused for that. My final test of technology for the day will be running a webinar from the hotel room via my mobile phone. Hmm, a bit of good old fashioned finger crossing might be required.

So no nice Shanghai scenery today but the best you would get from my hotel window is a smoggy backdrop which is interesting but not that pretty. So here we have my morning in an afternoon instead.

Lesley x