meetings and a visa

For some reason, I decided to sandwich in a trip to the Chinese consulate between important business meetings today. Serves me right!

It took an hour. Not to get there, fill in forms, and pick up the documents. Just getting through the queues. The pick-up queue switched back across the first floor, then up to the second floor via the stairs, then from there on up to the third floor where it wandered around the place.

Ye gods. Naturally, it was a free-for-all of line-cutting as various parties dodged in front of mild-mannered Japanese. I was sweating and unhappy when it was over, but now I can go with my family to China next week so it was all worthwhile.

We're doing some interesting things these days, both in business development and in understanding some things that are brand new to us—like what it takes to get an investor interested. Whew.