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May 06, 2009
Wednesday
Authored by JM
The morning was spent working out at the gym and then we ate breakfast before the Microsoft presentation. The Microsoft building is located right down the street in the core of the research center in Beijing. We ventured up to the 21st floor and a man gave a presentation on the R&D aspects in China. He was from the US, but moved here 6 years ago with his family. He also showed us this amazing video about the future of computing technology or something called Natural User Interface. He explained that they are currently working on this new technology right in the Microsoft office in China and he expects the technology to be used within 10 years. Overall, we found the presentation to be very interesting and the presenter to be knowledgeable about the Microsoft products even though he mainly used Macs at home.
The Microsoft presentation ended around 12 and we walked back to the hotel to change out of our business casual clothes. We ended up going to a noodle place that was right around the corner from the hotel, where we got a full bowl of noodles for about 4 dollars. As a side note, everything is always so cheap, but the fact that it is so cheap never gets old, we love spending money. When we were at the noodle shop, we ran into a majority of the group and we all ended up going to the Beijing Zoo.
We took a taxi out to the Beijing Zoo. It cost about 10 dollars to get into the Zoo and then about a dollar to get into the panda exhibit. The panda exhibit was the most unique part of the zoo. The pandas were all just hanging out, most were just sleeping, but there was one that was being fed. It was funny because he was just lounging on his back and people were throwing food at him, which he was snacking on. After the pandas, we walked around the outside of the zoo and went to the bear section. The first two bears that we saw were wrestling with each other, which was pretty fun to watch. The bears next to them however were being fed by some of the local people. Instead of throwing food though, the people were pouring their drinks into the bears mouths. The bears were standing on their back legs and positioning themselves to get the directly under the drinks that were being poured over the railing. The Beijing Zoo was just a massive place and it took a couple of hours for us to just walk around to get back to the exit. We ended up running in to a part of the group that was headed to the silk market.
John had a shirt tailor made for himself, so we ended up linking up with that part of the group and heading to the silk market. As we said in one of the other entries, the silk market is just too much to handle. They are all very ridiculous and very aggressive. John got his shirt and wanted to pick up a pair of Jordans before we left. The shoes are all downstairs and we spent a while haggling for the shoes. At the silk market, they like to show that the material is real leather by doing a fire test. So while we were down looking at the Jordans, they kept telling us that it was real leather and we had them prove it with the fire test. The lady was very funny about it and after she burned it, she was like smell it....do you see it is real leather. She then proceeded to bring over a pair of fake pumas with a type of cloths material on the outside. She was trying to pitch those shoes to us and I told her to do the fire test on the other shoes also, not thinking she would really do it. Well she did it and ended up burning a hole right through the shoe. John and I were just both laughing so hard and she ended up thinking it was pretty funny as well.
We couldn't get a good price from that stand, but John was able to negotiate for 2 pairs of shoes for 15 dollars each. After we got the shoes, we left the silk market and got back to the hotel in time for dinner. We all went around the corner to a hot pot restaurant. The entire group was there because it was Lindsay's (a girl on our groups) birthday. The restaurant was really cool because we all had just boiling pots of seasoned water to cook the food. We ended up getting a meat platter, some noodles, shrimp balls, and a vegetable plate. The food was amazing and it was a nice change for us to just have some meat that was prepared without some of the seasoning that we typically get at the other restaurants. Once we finished dinner, everyone went back to the hotel to meet up again before we went out to the club.
We ended up going to a club called Suzie Wong for Lindsay's birthday. We showed up with a group of about 30 of us and dominated the club. John and I realized that in China, Americans really don't have to follow any rules. We not only were going crazy on the dance floor, but we also ended up throwing Lindsay up in the air so she could crowd-surf. The owners and employees of the restaurant instead of telling us to put her down were taking pictures of us. The night was a lot of fun and the entire group gets along really well.
http://picasaweb.google.com/Fryback3688/Beijing2009?feat=directlink
Posted by jfavorit at May 6, 2009 01:35 PM