Friday, March 23, 2012 - The moderately anticipated entries have officially begun

Apologies for the lateness of the first post, as you may or may not know, I only have access to this site from the office, from the hotel it is blocked. So, It is actually Monday morning as I publish this...

I awoke feeling surprisingly well rested, got ready and headed down to breakfast. Was greeted by I think 5 different hotel workers on the way and was lead to the main restaurant. It was very spacioues an elegant, with many different stations with different styles of breakfast, Chinese, Japanese, American. I immediately noticed the juice station and was delighted to see it was all freshly squeezed on the spot, similar to Singapore - hooray. I downed a few different fruit juices and had two bowls of I think frosted flakes with dried bananas. Since my stomach thinks it is dinner time, I could eat a bit extra, so I had a slice of French toast, a small pancake, a piece of bacon and a sausage. All very tasty.
Now that the office has moved to a new location, I can no longer walk to work - in fact, it was now a 20 minute cab ride to the new Dalian Software Park. Our building (located here) was, of course, perched on top of a hillside and, of course, the taxi dropped me off at the bottom of the hill. After about a 20 story climb along twisted paths and endless stairs, I reached the abandoned entrance to the building. Unfortunately for me, no tenants are on this side and I had to walk down about 8 stories of stairs where I noticed some other people walking - so I followed them. Their path wove around the other side following a dirt path (I am not kidding) through a construction site to the entrance - bizarre. For next week, I will now know a better drop off site so I don't have to walk so far - however, I still have to climb this dirt pile to get to the entrance - maybe a picture will be needed - crazy.
The office is very new (< 4 months), very sharp, and I got the tour from my good friend Winson (and some others). I was then shown my office, where a great multitude of hardware and computers awaited me. I worked a bit in the morning and we went out to lunch around 11:20am . It was about 40 degress and snowing lightly as we hailed a cab and headed to a standard, nice, restaurant nearby. I had not been to this place before, but we enjoyed standard China fare. I did pass on the pig knees this time, just too much grissle and hard to eat with chopsticks. I especially liked some lettuce plate with a great bitter dressing, and another nice plate of tofu - which I absolutely cannot stand in the states - but here - excellent. Also of note, was the tea - it was nearly black in color - but decent.
I worked frantically throughout the afternoon and was instructed, due to the weather and Friday, to grab a taxi before 5:00pm. So, at 4:45pm I headed back to the hotel. Much more traffic this time and it took about 40 minutes to get back. I went up to my room, and resumed work. A bit of a crisis was going on for the last couple of days for one of my projects and I was doing my best to help. I took a break around 8:00pm for some room service. I ordered the grilled sliced beef w/ teriyaki on rice (128RMB - $19) and a large fruit plate (60RMB - $8). The beef came with a number of small side dishes (like at a Korean restaurant - pickled bits of food, and some dried fish) and a very tasty salad. It was another excellent meal. I continued work until around 11:00pm and went to bed.