Drafting

Normally I free-hand but this time I figured I should get my dad's old drafting ruler. (I think it was my dad's anyway. It was with all his other old engineering stuff growing up.)

I love that it can easily do parallel lines. :)

Sesame Street

Shanghai [Part 7: Maglev]

My flight from Shanghai to San Francisco left Shanghai at 1 p.m. on Wednesday and got into San Francisco at 9:30 a.m. Wednesday morning.  o_O  Anyway, I woke up, had my last fancy shower, and went down to enjoy my excellent breakfast view on a gorgeous Shanghai day.

 Notice that the only Chinese flags I ever saw were conspicuously posted on the European-built buildings in the Bund, as if the Chinese are saying "No really, we own this."  ;)

I took a few photos on the way to the subway.

Then I hopped on the Subway which was super easy and cost about a dollar to get to the maglev train station.  The maglev train station had a security gate but there was a train waiting right there.  I hopped right on...  I had planned for my trip to the airport to have about 90 minutes of "oh my god I'm lost" buffer, but everything was going so hilariously smoothly that I knew I'd have a ton of time to kill at the airport.

Oh well, I got to ride one of the fastest trains in the world.  We peaked at 431 km/hr, which works out to almost 268 mph...  which was kind of scary fast.

It was like riding from my house to San Francisco Airport in 8 minutes for $8.

Here is a video of the trip:



We hit top speed at about 3 minutes and 15 seconds.

We pass another train a little after 4 minutes.

Then I spent some time shopping in the airport, got Cecilia and Laura some silk, chatted with someone from the conference, and enjoyed the 11-hour flight home

My jet lag wasn't even too bad.  I showered, spent a day at work, and my stomach was a bit upset for a while, but that was the worst of it.