Last night we went back to Propaganda, the popular bar near our hotel. This time we had our VIP cards, which got us half-price drinks, which was pretty cool. It was a much less exciting night than last time, and I didn't get any flaming drinks. I ordered my first martini, which I thought was tasty in a different way than the sugar and syrup-laden cocktails most of my friends got. I was disappointed that it arrived stirred, not shaken. I guess I need to practice my Bond impression.
Today we visited the Bird's Nest, the Water Cube, and Lenovo. We got off the bus at the Bird's Nest, and walked along a blocked-off two-lane road up to the first security checkpoint towards the complex. Dr. Gao revealed that the newly paved road, replete with beeping pedestrian control systems, is never open to traffic. The only thing that travels along the road are visitors to the Bird's Nest and the occasional golf cart shuttle. I was taken aback by the short-sightedness of the design. Surely no attendees of the games were allowed to park their cars in the lots and drive along these access roads during the even-tighter security of the games. Later on, I was reminded of this poor design when I saw the 4+ newly built permanent warehouses that must have stored equipment for the Olympic games a mile from the stadium being torn down; and the escalators leading from the plaza down to the underside of an overpass, which luckily were gated shut so no-one would ride them down into unyielding traffic.
The Bird's Nest itself was very beautiful, and the intertwining steel girders and red inner structure were a mesmerizing combination. The structure reminded me of the cover of Amon Tobin's album, Bricolage. Inside, the stadium was the largest I've seen in person, and seeing it empty really enhanced the scale of the place. It was fun to run up to the top of the seats and look down over the huge distance of the stadium. There was a tightrope walker walking back and forth across the stadium. Apparently he is a famous walker and walks back and forth repeatedly most days, I suppose for practice. He was very skilled, and even laid down on the wire before getting up and resuming his pacing. We left the stadium to go to the Water Cube, which was closed for renovations. On the way out, I noticed that some workers were repaving a strip of pavement where it looked like a pipe had been laid at all the exits. This, and the extensive renovations going on at the Water Cube were surprising given that these structures had been completed 2 years ago. Perhaps the engineering was not quite up to snuff, or perhaps the buildings were being upgraded from Olympic usage to other purposes. I gathered from the signs around the renovation at the Cube that some shopping was being installed there, but they also may have just been ads. The plaza between the two was a humongous square that stretched off very far in both directions. It reminded me of a less busy Tienanmen Square, replete with a police van cruising around looking for dissidents. I noticed that the media tower that was built to house TV studios' broadcasts with the stadium in the background was missing the second-to-highest level. I guess that someone ordered the top level, and others paid for the less expensive lower levels, but they couldn't sell that floor, and so never built more than the scaffolding for it.
We headed back to the hotel, and got lunch at a restaurant we've been to several times before. I decided to take a chance and order the "slobber chicken" which turned out to be mysteriously crunchy chicken with lots of bones and bone marrow and lumps of fat. I quickly lost my appetite and instead mooched noodles off of my less-adventurous friends. We got dressed up and headed to Lenovo. Lenovo has several office complexes in Beijing, and we spent 15 minutes sitting in the lobby of the wrong one. I took that time to get my temperature scanned by one of the automatic temperature scanners that had been installed in the paranoia of the swine flu. Dr. Gao explained that since us Americans were near Mexico, which got an awful rap as swine flu central, we have been scanned on entry during the panic. This seemed to follow the misguided public health ideas that China follows and which are based on little science. These temperature scanners, to detect those who somehow have fevers but have no idea that they are ill, and the horrendously frightening surgical masks that some wear around in public do almost nothing to prevent the spread of disease. And then the Chinese rarely stock their restrooms with soap, or even rise their hands under the tap, and cough and sneeze without covering their mouths, two extremely easy to prevent and very rapid routes of transmission. Unique cultural differences are great, but when one set of methods is proven to substantially impact public health, the interests of truly useful medical standards should supplant the traditions of the populace.
When we did get to the right Lenovo, we had a very enthusiastic tour guide guide us through the most awe-inspiring trade show marketing wizardry I've ever experienced. The guide showed us the many offerings that Lenovo has on the market, or is developing for release in the near future. The displays and showcases were very well laid out and orchestrated. I had a moment of nostalgia when we passed by a little display of old and current Thinkpad peripherals and saw the USB floppy disk and other tidbits I remember from when my father brought home the company Thinkpad. It was an excellent presentation in the past, present, and future of the company, and it was interesting to see the increasing focus that the company was putting on consumer computer products, expanding its market presence from business tools. The tour guide seemed surprised that few of us were aware that the company sold these products, that we mostly imagined Lenovo as a business-geared manufacturer. It was also interesting to hear how the R&D facilities are staggered around the world so that those in the US come up with a concept, pass it at the end of the day to those in Japan who prototype it, and who in turn pass it to those in China who work on scaling it up. I'm sure that the R&D cycle is not that short, but the division of the design workflow was interesting to see broken down and handed to specific locales.