Today was a truly early start at 4:50 AM. Did my final packing and trudged out at 5:45 to a closed subway (opened at 6). Got to check in in-town (before going to the airport) which was awesome because I got to avoid the line at the airport. Unfortunately, my flight was delayed by an hour so I had my last breakfast with Li at the only place open in HK at the time, McDonald’s. The Airport Express train got me to the Hong Kong airport (which is cavernous and crowded) where I had to walk about 0.75 miles up and down stairs and on a tram to get to my gate. I got the Sunday edition of the New York Times (HK$114, ouch!) and boarded. once in Shanghai, I had to go in and out of customs and security unnecessarily to get to my flight, where I met Nancy, who had wrangled a seat next to me and was a fully equipped telewarrior with laptop, microphone, headphones, and webcam. She was videoconferencing when I got there. We had some lunch at a ridiculously-overstaffed (maybe government owned?) restaurant and some ice cream truffles. I tried to pay for my share of the meal using a combination of Hong Kong dollars, Chinese yuan, and US dollars, but the only things they would accept were Chinese yuan and US dollars. Weird how they won’t accept money from their own country. On board the flight we spent a lot of time talking and I wrote this journal. On the way back, our stewardess eventually stopped addressing me in English and went with Chinese (maybe because of Nancy?). Customs also asked, “Are you coming from China” to Nancy, who replied yes, so we had to get security screened along with a group of Chinese nationals. Finally a place where ethnic profiling would have benefited me and Nancy had to go and screw it all up!