I’m back home in California now. I got back on Friday, but my internal clock is still out of whack. It seems like I want to stay up all night and sleep all day. Is that jetlag, or is that just normal for me?

The trip went pretty well. I spent about a week in Shenzhen and a few days in Beijing. It was raining off and on in Shenzhen, but I was usually indoors at the time. The first day I had meetings in a building in the Shenzhen High Tech Park. This area has a lot of small electronics companies and a few big ones as well.

I also had some meetings in the Futian district of Shenzhen. This area is dominated by the China Merchant Bank building. It’s an easily recognizable landmark in the Shenzhen skyline. I think this is the area where we will end up opening our office. A lot of our customers are in this area, and there are a lot more restaurants here than in the High Tech Park area.

Over the weekend I explored a bit of Shenzhen, including the zoo. The zoo is pretty good. They have a wide variety of animals, and a lot of the enclosures are pretty big. One strange thing though, there were a lot of places where a handler would be out with an animal like a sun bear or a tiger, and they would offer to let you take a picture with it (for a fee of course). I only saw one panda at the zoo, but there were a number of cute red pandas. You can see more pictures of the zoo in my gallery. Thanks to my good friend, Linlin, for taking the time to show me around!

I stopped in Beijing on the way home for another business meeting. It went pretty well. The hotel where I stayed is very near the new Olympic Park in Beijing. Here’s a shot of the Olympic Stadium, which is currently under construction. They call it the “bird’s nest.” I am looking forward to seeing the new swim stadium. The design looks very interesting.

The hotels are kind enough to remind the guests what day of the week it is by changing the carpets in the elevators every day. This is very useful when you’re running all over the country without a clue as what day it is. In this case it was a good reminder that I would be heading home the following day.

On my last night in Beijing I went to a “disco” with some friends and colleagues. It is called Banana. In the States I would call this a club, but don’t call it a night club there, that usually means KTV (Karaoke). The club was pretty crowded, so I guess it’s a happening place.

The flight home was much more comfortable than the flight over. The plane was fairly empty, so I had a row of 3 seats to myself. I even managed to sleep for a few hours. I also watched two of the movies: “Sideways” and I already forgot the other. I knew I was almost home when I could see Point Reyes out the window…