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.