Today I am saddened beyond words. The 25 year old son, Hakim, of one of my soccer team mates died today. Hakim would frequently join his father and our team for practice sessions. It is impossible for me to fathom this loss and to comprehend the pain of losing a child.

 
Maya belays her new friend as she attempts to gain entrance to the treehouse.

 
Maya made a bee line to the Metzold family tree house and befriended another nine year old girl in attendance.

 
This evening Maya and I attended the surprise 50th birthday party of my high school wrestling partner and good friend Tom Metzold. I had the distinction of being the person who had known Tom the longest and I was thrilled to have shared in the celebration.

 
This weekend Jeanine is visiting her sister in Vermont, Nico is still at music camp in Maine, and Kyle is staying with friends in New Hampshire. Feels like we are playing Monopoly with hotels ready to go up all over New England. Maya and I are enjoying the time together. This evening we had a date night at the Main Street Cafe. During dinner she asked me how a fire alarm worked and followed my explanation with great interest. When we returned home we constructed an alarm bell together. We fashioned an electromagnet from some left over wire and an iron nail. We used a scrap of steel for the clapper and created an interupter switch with wire leads fastened with hot melt glue. It took about 90 minutes but we eventually got the buzzer to buzz. Maya was quite pleased with the outcome.

 
Jeanine has worked out an arrangement with several other parents to create a rotating summer camp for Maya and her friends. On every fourth day, one parent takes all the kids and plans out a camp day. On this day the kids go to a horse farm for riding lessons. Jeanine has been using her camera more often and her skills are really improving.

 
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…