Last night was great… Best dinner of the trip, and the followed up with a wonderful cruise on the river that runs between the old and new sides of Shanghai… Even though it rained a bit, and was a bit wet all night, it wasn’t too wet and we had a great time talking about the week… The architecture on both the new and old Shanghai is amazing… Barely believable that the new part of the city has been mostly built since 2000… And in the early 90’s it was a rice farm…
Yesterday, we got up in the morning and flew to Weihai and drove to the CCT plant to have a business meeting and the tour the factory/warehouse at CCT… The facility is impressive, and incredibly neat and clean… And getting to see the warehouse full of Roadmasters was interesting also… The CCT team was great, and the hospitality was, as it had been all week, wonderful… Then a drive to the hotel, clean up, and another incredible dinner… After dinner, we went to the karaoke bar, and after a few too many shots of JD, I actually participated for the first time… We stayed there until pretty late, and had a blast… Hoban did his usuals, and pretty much everyone joined in at one point or another…
Got up around 7, had a nice breakfast, and then on the bus for a 1.5-2 hour trip to the Great Wall… As on all the other bus rides, our guide talked incessantly about pretty much anything that he could think of on the way… Must be something that they teach in guide school, that you have to talk about something all the time… When it is on topic, it is interesting… when not, not… And either the average person needs to hear the same point 5-10 times to have it stick, or the guides use that technique to fill the time… anyhow, he is entertaining for the most part, and I even got a short video of him in the Forbidden City just so that I could remember the experience…
Today was a pretty long day… up at 7 (well, up at 1,3,5, and then finally 7…) and then a light breakfast (not that it had to be light… anything and everything that you could want was there…) and then off to Tiananmen Square… Interesting, and people everywhere… (well, there are basically people everywhere all the time… 20M in Beijing means that…) and then off to the Forbidden City… Long, long walk (I think he said about 4 miles…) and it just seems to go on forever… The Emperor was one ambitious guy… 300,000 workers for 14 years to get it done… Took lots of pics (will post when I get back… too much of a pain to do with the phone…) and learned all about that part of China’s history…
Got into the hotel around 4 Beijing time ( which is 12 hours of of EST… ) and cleaned up and went to a nice dinner, but am beat from the long day… Should easily sleep soundly through the night and should be ready for tomorrow… Forbidden City, TSquare should make a good day…
Figured I might as well type a bit… Flight left 6 hours ago, and the map shows that we have gone 3282 miles so far, with 7 hours and 3620 to go… Fortunately, business class is incredibly nice, and I didn’t have to rent so many movies, since there are at least 100 to choose from… Watched Captain America (yeah, wanted to see that for a while… okay, not great…) and Devil Wears Prada (yeah, yeah… I seem to watch it every time I have the chance to…) and then listened to a bit of music to try to sleep… Since it is only 7 pm, I’m really not tired enough to sleep now, so I think that I will watch a movie or a few tech videos on the iPad and then maybe try to get a bit of sleep… I thought that maybe the great dinner (shrimp cocktail, salad, a nice cabernet, wonderful steak with asparagus and potatoes, cheese and crackers and finally ice cream… God it’s nice flying this way…) would make me tired, but it just made me full… even with about a half bottle of the cab…
Heading off to China tomorrow morning… Long flight (almost 15 hours…) but looking forward to the trip… All packed (I think it is the lightest I have ever packed for a week, thanks to the suggestion of getting a RedOxx carry on bag and watching some good packing videos…) and for the first time, I won’t be dragging a laptop along… Just using my iPad 3 with a Bluetooth keyboard if I have a lot to type…
Okay… haven’t posted in a while… But things are still going well…
I decided after the first 4 weeks that I would go with a fairly strict, mostly vegetarian diet… which I did… Problem was, I only lost 3 pounds in 2 weeks… (and that included a few days where I had steak and fried stuff at dinner…) Not bad by most standards, and I ate quite a bit and felt great, but I really wanted to get some more weight off quickly… So I decided that this Monday I would go back on the juice diet again for at least a week to see what would happen…
Four weeks done… Only Juice, no solid food… And it worked…
I have been feeling better than I have in years and years… This actually works… And amazingly, yesterday (the first day that I indulged in solid food…) I was looking forward to eating vegetables, something that anyone who knows me would know is radically out of character… So I had a small arugula salad with mushrooms, and a lunch portion of grilled Ahi tuna on a bed of some kind of beans… and it tasted better than anything like that had in the past, and was very filling… My energy level seemed to be up in the afternoon, even better than when drinking what I have been for the last few weeks… Morning was still juice, and evening was the blueberry/green smoothie that I have been drinking… And when I weighed in at the gym, I was at 266, which is 27 pounds in 28 days… Right at my target, and as long as I eat sensibly for lunch or dinner, and keep on with the juice, the weight loss should stay consistent… we’ll see what happens over the next few weeks…
Five more days to go to finish off the first full month… Pretty much used to it now, and even over last weekend when I was at Lakehurst for 3 days, it really didn’t bother me too much… I actually missed my own concoctions last weekend, as we didn’t have power until Friday afternoon and I didn’t have time to freeze homemade juice for the weekend… So I just bought tomato juice and Naked Green Machine everyday during the weekend…
