Arrived. Again.

For those who are wondering, I've arrived safely in Shenzhen.

For those of you who didn't know I was returning to China, hey. I've gone back to China.

Arrived in Shekou after 20 hours of unremarkable travel. No, that's inaccurate. I should comment on the fact that for the first time in my travels with unf-Air Canada, I had a helpful, pleasant, and hard working crew. The flight actually arrived 5 minutes early. I'd like to write to Air Canada, comment on the efficiency of the staff, and how lovely it was to travel with them, but I fear they'd fire the crew for not living down to their expectations. "Are you telling me that not one of you, NOT ONE, was rude to a customer? And I suppose none of you refused to help someone? Pilots, did you even once think about aimlessly flying about for an hour or two so some people could miss their connections? Well folks, we can't have this kind of efficiency. It's pink slips and re-education for the lot of you!"

With the early arrival, it helped me catch an earlier than expected ferry from Hong Kong Airport to Shekou. The school sent a van and Cory Dickson to greet me. That's Cory with the dinosaur.

A quick trip through Shekou, and we arrived at the school in Nanshan. Things have grown up in my absence. This fact shouldn't be a surprise to me, but it always is. Just when you think there is no room for another apartment complex or mall, the Nanshan Municipal Council finds somewhere new for development. If they don't have space, they'll just reclaim more land from the South China Sea and throw something up.

An aside. A favourite trick of developers here is to build lush high rise apartments by the sea, and sell the condos as "Ocean Front". When the building is full they'll reclaim the waterfront, and build another high rise. Your "Ocean Front" condo now has a stunning view of the apartment building next to you. Hey, you could always sell and buy something in the new Ocean Front building. They'd never do it twice. Would they?

Traffic, well, it's still frantic, but it has a strange life-affirming element to it. Every time you get out of a taxi here and you're still alive, you really feel mildly re-born. You've survived something, and you're going to live a better, more meaningful life now. Or maybe that's just me.

After getting settled and showered, Cory, Heather Wallace, Sharon Hawkins and I went for dinner at Gypsy's. It's still a great place to eat and a lot of the prices haven't changed since I lived here 4 years ago. I would ask that nobody tell Xavier (the owner) about inflation.

Had a great sleep last night, waking at 6 am. A little internet, a bit of food, and it was back to bed for a few more hours. I woke in time to go for lunch at Tasca's, the new tapas restaurant that is owned by my friends Susan Xu and Vernon Murdoch. Preben, my great Dane, has left McCawley's and started consulting for Tasca's. We managed to stretch lunch from 12 til 4:35 when I realized I was 15 minutes away from a meeting that started at 4:40.

Nothing like punctuality to leave a good impression. And I am nothing like punctuality.

Heather has wonderful meetings. She follows this unique standard that I find refreshing. She tells you what information you need to know, clarifies things that need clarification, asks your opinion, respects it, and never once assumes that you're a moron. She even has a little pit bull (Cory) who jumps on idle chatter in an effort to move the meetings along, post-haste. Novel, I know. We're going to get along just fine.

Had a classic moment of jet lag just now. Tomorrow, I have to supervise an exam so I need to be up fairly early. I decided to go to bed at 10pm. I slept for a LONG time. Woke up 6 or 7 times, worried that I might sleep in. After a while, the noise level outside my cell increased. I assumed that the city was waking up (5 am-ish) so I decided I might as well join it. Sat down to check my email and realized I'd been asleep less than 2 hours.

That said, the alarm will be going off in 5 hours, and I am nowhere near tired. I should get a book and try to read myself to sleep. Hope I haven't put you all there with this tale.

Regards.