Day Four - Panda Express

Having fallen asleep by 9pm last night, I was wide awake by 6am. The whole group went straight to Microsoft at 8:30am, which was only a block away. We piled into elevators to the 21rst floor and asked to meet with David Liu - the receptionist asked which David Liu we meant (there were 4 who worked there. We got a kick out of that).

There was a meeting room set up for us. Drinks were provided, and again I was reminded of my growing love for Chinese tea. David's presentation was excellent - being head of the R&D department at this branch, he spoke on everything from Chinese culture, population, growth, and socioeconomic status, to the next steps that Microsoft is taking in terms of innovation and development. He showed us a video that simulated what the technological world might look like in 10-15 years, consisting of crazy things like computers in the form of mini projectors that can project a screen and keyboard onto any surface, and conference calls generated in a face-to-face simulation through glass walls. These ideas kind of freaked me out. This laptop is close to as far as I go with technology..

After the presentation he opened up the floor for questions, during which I asked how Microsoft in China targets the lower-income families in the more rural areas. I was surprised with his response; not only does Microsoft provide more easy to use products for the rural consumers, but Microsoft actually reaches out to these lower-income areas by providing subsidies, supporting programs that allow every child access to a computer, and by circulating buses that are stocked with computers with internet access that are parked in rural areas for anyone to use locally. David also said that Microsoft looks for social corporate responsibility in their potential employees, and takes that strongly into account during the intervieweing process. I was thouroughly impressed.

After the presentation, Annie & I went back to our room to change out of our business caz and into appropriate hot-weather clothes, and headed to the local supermarket. I needed to stock up on some almonds and cashews - I am noticably lacking protein. I also got a couple of jugs of water and a re-usable water bottle, because something was telling me it wasn't great to keep refilling this disposible one once it had been exposed to extreme temperatures, several times.



Somehow a large number of us always manage to organize a trip during our free hours, so a bunch of us met up at 1pm for a trip to the Beijing Zoo. We split up into several cabs (so worth it, compared to the subway, and a barely noticible price diff) and went. Admission was beyond cheap. I noticed the upkeep of the gardens in the zoo surpassed the upkeep of the animal habitats, which was kind of sad, but made sense for China. I loved the employee uniforms (rainboots and sun hats). ahaha. we decided to save the pandas for last; quote of the day was a reaction to that decision: "this sucks balls" - eric.



We found a little motorboat ride that looked a lot less fun than it actually was. Life vests were involved, which didn't tie well and instead flapped in the wind. It was funny.





Afterwards we took cabs to go see the Summer Palace, but after being persuaded by a "tour guide" with a foam lego piece to take a guided tour since most of the gates were closing soon, we decided against it. We actually started walking home, but I really had to go to the bathroom so that didn't work - I took a cab with a few others and got back to the hotel. I finally took advantage of the instant coffee in the room, which is actually pretty good, and then got dressed for Lindsey's birthday dinner. We went to the hot pot; I got sushi but it wasn't up to Sadako standards, in my opinion!

I'm back in the room now; I think we're going out in a few minutes to continue the birthday celebration. Tomorrow is our first day of class! I want to plan a temple/massage day for sometime this weekend so we'll see how that works out. I also keep hearing about this bike tour that sounds pretty worth it.

Photo below: another little asian girl wanted a photo with me. So cute.



xoxx
Karen

10:00pm Onward:
We went to club Suzie Wong - it was about 40 minutes away. They had pretty good music, drinks, and dancing, but some people definitely went overboard. Tomorrow morning should be interesting...