Click the image for a closer view of this mother and child.

 
The park is also home to a number of different monkeys.

 
The gardens were exquisite featuring rich lush tropical vegetation. The park is rarely visited by tourists but heavily used by the diverse local population.

 
After work members of my team take me first to a pair of local shrines and then on to the botanical gardens.

 
Pictured here are members of the Penang office staff who we join for both lunch and dinner.

 
Penang is a tropical island. Temperatures here are quite warm and the humidity is near 100%. A one block walk is sufficient to induce a heavy sweat. View from the office conference room.

 
Our Penang office is on the 11th floor of this building and offers a spectacular view of the Indian Ocean.

 
The 30th floor of the Northam will be home for the next three days as we meet with staff members at the office.

 
Today is another travel day and we will spend ten hours getting from Changshu to Penang, Malaysia where we have an office and development team. The Shanghai airport is a work of art in itself.

 
Today we visit a much less glamorous factory which is manufacturing many of our existing products. Although it is a Saturday, the factory remains working at full production capacity. I spent a great deal of time on the production line learning every step required to fabricate our various products. It was a highly infromative and successful visit.

 
Directly across the street from the hotel is the massive regional exhibition center which could be easily confused with one of Beijing’s new Olympic venues.

 
This evening we will spend the first of two nights at the Crowne Plaza, a very modern and elegant hotel in Changshu.

 
Here we enter the lobby which will be the last photograph I take. Once inside the plant all picture taking is strictly banned.

 
On this campus Inventec has several production buildings including this one which is where Sonos products are built.

 
I am travelling with colleague Dave Perri. Sonos has started manufacturing one of our new products with a company called Inventec. Here we enter the facility which is the size of a small city. The pictured buses shuttle employees to and from the factory owned dormitories where most of the line workers live. They come from rural China, mostly very young girls to perform hand assembly of everything from laptop computers to handheld GPS units. Rather than recruiting people one at a time it is common to hire the entire graduating class of a vocational high school by arrangement with the school.

 
The port is a beehive of activity filled mostly with huge container ships carrying manufactured goods to the rest of the world. Click on the photo for an enlarged view and see how many cargo vessels you can spot. Also notice the new suspension bridge under construction.

 
Hong Kong’s skyline is composed of 100s if not 1000s of narrow towers nestled below the mountains and surrounding the harbor. You must click on the photo to appreciate the scale of this city.

 
Whoever dubbed Minnesota, Land of 10,000 Lakes, would have needed an extra zero to describe Northern Russia. This leg of the journey was a 15 hour flight.

 
Early this morning I began the 40 hour journey from Boston to Shanghai by way of New York and Hong Kong. This route takes you over the North Pole. Pictured here are polar ice flows as viewed from 36,000 feet. Some of the bigger chunks are hundreds of miles across.

I will be traveling to China and Malaysia for the next week so there will be no posts until I return. I am bringing my good cameras so hope to share some nice photos when I get back.

 
After a BBQ dinner and the world famous Kimball’s ice cream bar we worked off any remaining energy in the bumper boat pond.

 
The competition went on for almost an hour and was dead even after 95 darts had been fired by twelve contestants. With exactly one dart left before both teams had agreed to settle for a draw, victory was secured for the engineering team and we will proudly retain the trophy pictured in the foreground until next year’s rematch.

 
Earlier in the week I threw down the gauntlet and challenged the customer support department to a nerf dart shootout on behalf of the engineering department. The cocky tone of my email provoked the intended call to arms and chest thumping on both sides.

 
…and old alike.

 
The evening featured golf (driving, pitch & putt, and miniature) for young…

 
This evening we attended the Sonos Summer Celebration held at Kimball Farms. Nicolai left for Encore Coda music camp earlier in the day so he was not able to join the family appreciation outing. Despite some brief periods of intense rain the event was a great success. This being the first Cambridge based company gathering since my arrival, I was very keen to take full advantage of the event to build an even closer knit team. For an ice breaker, Maya assisted by sticking labels with the names of taco ingredients on them to each attendees back. Each person was asked to circulate in the crowd and ask yes/no questions to determine what their label said. Having done this, I informed the participants that the first team to form a complete taco (shell, chicken, lettuce, tomatos, salsa, cheese) and sit at a table with their hands up would win the prize.

 
The fact that she was eager to sign up for next year’s camp on the spot suggested that Maya had a wonderful experience in this camp run by the Massachusetts Audubon Society. She enjoyed many activities including kayaking, mountain climbing, swimming, archery, soccer, singing around the campfire, a talent show and a Ropes course. Most importantly, she made some very good friends and returned with a much greater appreciation for nature, wildlife and the great outdoors, a theme of the camp which is woven into every activity.

 
Maya was very proud of the latrine that her cabin shared. She demonstrated the sink and explained how each girl could dip their toothbrush into an individual stream of water.

 
After the closing ceremony, Maya showed me her campground.

 
In addition to to making two friends her own age, Maya had befriended many of the older girls as well.

 
Parents assembled in the amphitheater as the campers, age group by age group, performed a song or skit before reuniting.