Tired!
Haven't slept in nearly 36 hours and I am so tired I am almost delirious. But I have to stay awake another hour so that I can get on a normal cycle, plus I wanna call Masa and wake him up! SO glad my colleague suggested I just stay in tonight and that we didn't have a company dinner planned!
I'm exhausted but I'm really hungry, too, so I'm sitting here in a bathrobe wondering if I'm more hungry or more tired...
Trip was uneventful except for that when we arrived in Shanghai, they wouldn't let us off the plane and this little army of guys in haz-mat suits showed up with every square inch of their bodies covered, goggles, face masks...it was like that movie "Outbreak". Oy.
They went up and down the aisles, shooting a laser at everyone's forehead to see if it indicated a fever. We all had to fill out questionnaires about our health. Then some guy with a digital thermometer was taking temperatures of random people. THEN inside the terminal, we had to walk through a full body scanner to test our temperature and sit face to face with a quarantine guy who gave each and every one of us the stink eye.
On the flight earlier I overheard this guy sitting behind me saying to his buddy that he didn't feel well and wondered if he had a temperature, so he was nervous. But he didn't seem to have a problem and I saw him later on outside the terminal waiting for a taxi.
I've got to hand it to the Chinese: when they do something, they really go all out and DO it. Five years ago, they totally ignored SARS (to their peril), covered it up, pretended it didn't exist until the rest of the world stamped feet and said "Come, ON!!!!"
So they must have learned their lesson. I wish I would have thought of snapping a photo of haz-mat guys taking Air Canada passengers' temperatures (all these business people were snapping away with their Blackberries) but I thought I'd be testing my luck. I'd hate to be "detained" for revealing state secrets!
But the company did put me in a fancy hotel this time. Cheers!
