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Live from CeBIT

I am in Hannover for a couple of days; announcing a new product at CeBIT – the worlds largest IT and technology show.

It is my first time here – and the scale is unimaginable. I was warned by colleagues about the traffic, the remote hotels and the expense – but until this morning I was unprepared.

The Novell stand is huge; with product demos; a cinema and a cafe to talk to partners and customers.

Novell Cafe @ CeBIT

Two press meetings down; a press conference and a partner briefing to go.

Written at: Cebit. Hannover, Germany

Mmm – delicious

All of the food so far in Beijing has been excellent.

Last night I headed out with Laurence and we ran into the Dong Hua Men Night Market – which is renowned in Beijing.

Dong Hua Men Night Market

There is a wide range of regional delicacies on sale – including lamb kebabs, pork and beef skewers and fruit.

Then there are the real specialties. In the interests of fairness – think how interesting pork scratchings and haggis are..

Starfish on a stick:

Starfish on a stick

And roasted and fried scorpions, silkworm grubs and crickets:

Mmmm  

Silkworm grubs. Crunchy on the outside, silky and velvety on the inside. That’s what my online gourmet reviewer said.

Silkworm grubs

Scorpions. Crunchy with a bite. I made that one up.

Scorpions 

Finally crickets. Fried and ready to go.

Crickets

Panoramic photos of Beijing sights

I’ve been taking pictures of my stay in Beijing – I’ve added the pictures from Laurence too.

In addition I am creating some panoramic shots stitching together many pictures to make a panorama.

The panorama is great for trying to give some feeling of the scale of the sights.

Here is Mao’s Mausoleum from a couple of pictures:

Mao Zedong Mausoleum

And here are a couple of pictures from the Forbidden City – still these pictures don’t give the vastness of the scale:

Forbidden City - Palace

[For the record – I am using Hugin to create the pictures – it is free and opensource.]

Beijing stories – continued…

I am here in Beijing with Laurence – a colleague from the UK.

 

Yesterday we did the unthinkable – and booked ourselves on an organised tour to the Great Wall.

First stop – the Ming Tombs – about 50km North West of Beijing itself.

 

As you can see it was drizzling and foggy.

Next stop – after lunch and shopping – was the Great Wall at Ba Da Ling itself.

We drove for just a few minutes and from nowhere Tolkeinesque mountains started to loom up through the mist. Very impressive.

We arrived and the snow started falling. I wanted to get a geocache – so we took the less travelled and much much steeper southern part of the wall.

 

As you can see – almost whiteout conditions.

The climb up was just slippery; going down was part farce, part winter sport. I’ll post a video of that later!

Here is a view during the summer to show the difference:

Finally – back into a very very wet Beijing for the evening.

We decided to avoid the local delicacies on sale in the hutong – pictures of those soon – but it was a festival – so fireworks, firecrackers – and kids with sparklers.