There’s something to be said for a 14-hour plane trip to the other side of the world.  But I’ll be polite.

 

 

 

On Wednesday, April 5 or so it became clear that somebody from Roku was going to need to fly to China to meet with Tatung at their factory “near” Shanghai (actually about 2 hours away).  Since Dave has just returned from China and we needed somebody who could evaluate audio quality to go, I was elected.

 

I confess a certain amount of reluctance about going.  First of all, I just plain don’t like doing anything on short notice.  That’s how I am, and there’s no sense pretending otherwise.  Also, my house is in the middle of ongoing renovation, so I had to leave a bunch of stuff hanging.  And, I’m forced to impose upon my housemate, Mandi, to take care of my cats.

 

But, pushing that stuff aside, it’s also exciting.  This is my first trip to any country in Asia.  It’s neat to meet in person people I’ve only corresponded with by email.  With luck, I should be able to see at least a little bit of China outside the hotel and the factory.  And, my plane trip routes through Narita airport in Tokyo, Japan, so I plan to stop there on the way back.

 

I spent most of Thursday the sixth figuring out plane tickets, and for sure confirming that the trip was going to happen.  In the afternoon, it became clear that it would.  So, on Friday the 7th, I drove up to San Francisco to drop off my application for a Visa to visit China.  If I had known, I would probably have gone up early in the morning and applied for super-rush processing, so I could have had the visa that day.  But, my flight wasn’t until Tuesday, so I opted for 24-hour service and headed back up on Monday to pick it up.

 

Here’s a tip.  When you get an important document like a visa, give it a read-through when you pick it up.  I tend to be paranoid about these things, and I actually discovered that the visa had the wrong passport number on it, as well as the wrong type and dates.  I don’t know if this would have caused me problems, but it sure would have sucked to have it checked at Narita and have them say, “Oops.”  Anyway, by my good luck I happened to look at the visa and notice the problem, so it took only 30 minutes to correct, during which time I had some sushi at the nearby Japan Center.

 

Tuesday the 11th at 1:10, I boarded an Airbus A-330 (same fuselage as the 4-engine A-340, but with only two engines) for the trans-Pacific flight to Narita, with a connection to Shanghai.

 

The flight was long, but not horrible.  I watched some TV shows, read a little and tried to sleep.

 

My layover at Narita was just long enough to plug the laptop in for a bit (although my seat had power, it would not charge the PowerBook -- too much power draw, perhaps?).  Then, on to the 2.5-hour flight from Narita to Shanghai.

 

As noted above, Tatung’s factory is actually in Wujiang City, which is near/part of Suzhou, about 2 hours’ drive from Shanghai’s Pudong Airport.  By the time my flight arrived at around 8:30pm Wednesday night local time in Shanghai (Shanghai is 15 hours ahead of California), I was not much in the mood for a 2-hour car ride.  But, at least my co-worker Max (who speaks Chinese) had also arrived a few minutes before me on a different flight.  So, the process of getting to the car and thus the hotel was smooth.

 

Thus concluded Tuesday and Wednesday!