Touchdown

Made it, safe and sound. Smooth 11.5-hour flight. Read as much as I could about China on the way -- nice to have a place free of distraction to actually sit down and work through a book. Reading about doing business here makes me glad I don't have to do it myself. It seems like the kind of place where a lot of smart people have come to fail.

Beijing itself, from the air, the airport, the freeway and this terrific hotel I'm in, seems awfully nice. Roads are slick and new, the hotel is one of the nicest I've ever stayed in, and the entire city screams modern. Of course, that's just what I've seen, which no doubt happens to be exactly the part that Beijing wanted everyone to see for the Olympics. But so far, no complaints. It doesn't even seem all that smoggy.

Some of the people on this delegation seem to have gotten especially into the spirit of this place. I thought I was supposed to be at a luncheon meeting right now, but apparently I thought wrong. The moment I showed up, a communications dude from the B.C. government came hustling out with a clipboard and told me I was barred from this meeting. I don't ever want to be in communications. Must be stressful to be so paranoid.

Oh, and speaking of paranoid: the Internet here is weird. Gmail, my Canwest e-mail, etc. all work great. But the moment I venture into anything news related -- CBC, Globe and Mail, Toronto Star, National Post -- it slows to a crawl. It's like it's being redacted in real-time. Strangely, Facebook doesn't seem to want to work, either.