7:22 Friday evening (7:22 Friday morning for those of you on the East coast) and we have been airborne from Beijing for almost an hour. I have this unexplainable need to watch the airline maps during flights, and see that we are heading east over southern China (thankfully keeping a good margin from the North Korean border) and, presumably, over Japan shortly. So apparently we are going to cross the north Pacific. Curious, since my main flight coming here took me over the Arctic Circle, Siberia, and Mongolia to get to Beijing.
Left my hotel at 7 this morning (8 p.m. Thursday in Columbus) and, with luck, will be home in the first hour of Saturday. All stocked up with charged laptops and plenty of reading material for this 13 ½ hour flight. Sleep is doubtful…almost all of the passengers are tourists from China and, by the way they are standing in the aisles and talking, they are all from the same family and this is their first reunion since 1920.
I definitely got a different idea of the Beijing Capitol airport today…perhaps it was because I had much more time to kill today than four weeks ago. I was scheduled to have four hours of downtime, but the inefficiency of Customs workers there took a large chunk of that vacant time away. The parts of the airport I was in today are much cleaner than I had seen previously. And, it is incredibly underutilized…probably less than 10% of capacity. If I recall, it was built as an entry showcase for the Olympics 3 (or 7?) years ago, and Beijing’s growth as an international commerce city has yet to catch up with that. In fact, it is so sprawling that two of the three terminals are for international flights – one for local international (Vietnam, Taipei, Malaysia, Australia, etc.) and the other for long-haul international like this one. Unfortunately, the two international terminals are 20 minutes apart via free shuttle bus. Then, in the long-haul terminal, after clearing security one has to take an electric train perhaps 2 km. to the midpoint of the 60-gate terminal. The view from the air is overwhelming.
Inside were many employees, both government and those of the retail shops. One could tell the difference because government employees wore uniforms as they stood around and looked bored, while the others chose other outfits to be bored within. The port is as overstaffed as it is over-capacitated (?????). No Starbucks yet, but there is a Burger King and all of the CPG brand names that newly-wealthy Chinese flock to. I got some vastly-overpriced newspapers and magazines, including interesting Asian versions of Financial Times and the Economist. Sidebar – there is NO reading material for purchase, in any language, in the Hanoi airport. Glad I had 4 ebooks stored on my phone. Also found a reasonably-priced restaurant for a dinner of Asian braised beef (too sweet, but the sticky rice was perfect).
This has been a most interesting week on the project. Suffice it to say that the project presentation for the Chairman of the bank, now scheduled for next Wednesday morning, has taken twenty times more work time than anyone with a brain would have justified. Apparently nobody has briefed the Chairman about the project, so IFC (International Finance Commission, part of the World Bank) is looking to us to sell him on the project. This, when we have had all four consultants on site and are a third through the calendar for it. Somebody, and somebody NOT on the immediate project team, really screwed this one up on the pre-project portion.
I suppose there is much behind the scenes that I don’t know, but the image of the IFC in my brain has taken a definite his in the past month.
Speaking of images taking hits, the Chairman of this bank had a heart attack a few years ago. Since then, one of his two personal secretaries (he has two – both are male) always travels with him on business, and sleeps in the same room at night in case another heart attack starts. I would kill to see the job description for that one.
I still have about 400,000 dong in my pocket, about $20 USD, that I was planning to spend on reading materials at the Hanoi airport. With a delay in selecting a marketing research vendor on this trip, and the resulting delays in my deliverables, I do not expect to make my next trip until March. By then, inflation in Vietnam will have shrunk my dong by about 10% (yes, I phrased it that way deliberately so all of the 2-year-old-brains reading this can giggle for the next half hour).
And, with that, it is just after 8 p.m. and dinner is being served three rows from here. Good timing to shut the laptop down and bring out a magazine.
Here are just a couple of photos from my last week:
https://picasaweb.google.com/110414898143254307072/FinalWeekOfMyFirstTrip
