I had hoped for better weather here in Wuhan, it is snowing all the time but don't worry, the smiles of the Chinese people here makes up for the bad weather.

Yesterday evening we had Chinese food - well, we have Chinese food everyday but always something different. We were taken to a local Chinese restaurant with traditional food. I cannot say that all of it was to my taste. In most restaurants here, you have the fish, crab, lobster, but also frogs (???) kept alive in big containers. I can assure you that passing this container full of frogs made me ask 'What is this dish? What is this meat?' all the time when a plate was delivered.



Later we went with a number of students to the local karaoke bar. It was fun. Chinese people are very musical and their singing is excellent - probably because of the Chinese language with all its variations. Somehow, they convinced me and Mauricio to sing a couple of songs. So after a few beers, we ended up singing 'My Way' and 'Yesterday'. I spare you the details!

The day itself was again full of surprises. Mauricio and I each got our own Chinese name. Mine is 'Liu shi qin'. Liu is a popular name (and the name of a king) here while 'shi qin' means a teacher who works hard. Anyway, you can check it maybe out at www.baidu.com (the Google alternative for the Chinese people). If you are there, type in my name and check out the press coverage we have received (more on this tomorrow).

We went through the sessions on template-based solutions in O12, the .NET programmability with O12 and ended with a first session on WSS v3. Students are going through their labs without too many problems.

In the evenings, Zhou (the Chinese version of Fitz) arranged again a nice dinner (guess
what - Chinese food) with now all the students. Food was excellent.

After the food we went to a local club. The moment we entered the door we were surrounded by girls. No no, it is not what you think it is... these girls were all trying to convince us to buy their brand of beer. So, you had one for BudWeiser, one for Snow, and so on. Since I was the beer man, I had the pleasure to choose. I did not go for the BudWeiser (certainly not the best beer in the world) and went for the Snow adventure (appropriate for the
weather). First, a couple of local singers were doing their best and then at around 22:30, the dancing started. Music was very European with screens displaying TMF videos. I experienced a new form of dancing: 'Chinese Dancing'. Don't know what it is? A lot of people on a dancefloor not bigger than 5 by 10 meters - dancing becomes just pushing and trying to jump a little bit. I can tell you I was happy to go once in a while off the floor to have a beer - Snow beer!

So, at about 2 AM I arrived back in my hotel and had a good night rest.

More tomorrow about my new experiences today. This evening Mauricio and I are going to the shops
trying to find gadgets to take home with us.