"It was an interesting twist of fate, at least in my mind, that the week after Paul Sullivan visited Geokinetics/GDC, the missionary I know best who served in Hong Kong, I went to Hong Kong for my first time - outside of changing planes in the Hong Kong airport a couple of times when I was working for Landmark Graphics. The trip to Hong Kong was at the end of the week. So first I will summarize my very brief notes for the first part of the week, leading up to my one night stay in Hong Kong.
Monday night I have two conflicting notes. One says this is the night we went to the Schultz's for an Empty Nester's Dinner and Family Home Evening. The other note says 'Blessing, Rob,' which implies Rob came over for Family Home Evening and said the blessing at dinner. I certify both events happen. I just can't certify when they happened. It's like I've always had a problem with time and getting mixed up with the past, the present, and the future. I know some of you are convinced I live in the future, striving to force everyone I love to live the letter of the law, as if this will get us all into the Celestial Kingdom. Oh well! See, I wrote it for you! Oh well! There was an e-mail dated Monday, April 3rd from Melaine, which reads:
Tuesday I had a note Rick Duran in Chicago. Rick is an economist that does the economics of building new cities. He has been interested in my Walden 3-D ideas since about 1990, and participated in some of our early planning meetings. Every once in a while he sends me a note to see if there has been any progress on the dream. Ray Gardner introduced me to Rick. Rick is a member of the church. He has ties and interests in Southern Utah. I'm not sure how Ray got involved with Rick originally. Rick's note read:
I sent a note back to Rick, and ended up talking to him on my cell phone when I was in Chicago on my way to Hong Kong about noon on Wednesday. Rick is at another crossroad in his career plans, and wanted to know if Walden 3-D had made enough progress to be able to afford to get him involved. Wished we had. I promised to send him my latest work on Red Cove. He provided very good insights and editing. However, since it is many months later, I can sadly report nothing has come of these efforts. Oh well!
I got to Hong Kong Thursday morning local time. I took a cab to my hotel. Hong Kong is definitely a different city. Everything is vertical. There is a lot of activity. When I got to the hotel I went to check in, and Bob Mishler was waiting for me. He came upstairs with me, and we enjoyed the view. The buildings reminded me of well bores in an oilfield going up with lots of information all along the well bore (see http://www.walden3d.com/photos/China/060406_China_Trip/DSC04337.JPG). When I went in to use the bathroom (it had been along flight and a long cab ride), and after I was sitting down I discovered there was a clear glass window looking out into the bedroom (see http://www.walden3d.com/photos/China/060406_China_Trip/DSC04333.JPG). Thankfully Bob kept looking out the window. We talked reviewed our meeting with Henry Ho, and I got my materials together. Then we went to Henry's office. It was fairly nondescript. The thing I remember about the office was the long hallway down to the conference room.
Henry had two of his staff join us. They summarized the projects they are working on. They have a refinery they are building in Benin. They are putting the funding together for Jude Amafule's OPL-229. They started People's Air, the first private airline in China. They are bringing coal gasification technologies from South Africa to China. They were looking a purchasing an oilfield in Indonesia, which they later decided not to purchase. They were doing do diligence on purchasing some fields in the Ukraine. They were looking at purchase of an exploration project in West Texas called Glass Mountain. The projects were exciting, and big in scope.
I gave them a presentation on the technologies GDC has available, liberally sprinkled with technologies I developed at Dynamic Resources. Henry was very impressed with my presentation, and stated there were several ways that his company, Turmile, could work with GDC. Again, looking back after several months have passed, nothing came of these discussions. It was exciting at the time, and I was sure I had hit a home run for both GDC and me personally. Oh well!
Thursday evening Henry Ho took Bob Mishler and myself out to dinner. It was a very nice meal, and the conversations were enjoyable. Henry told me the nicest place to eat in Beijing is called "South Beauty" by the World Trade Center. I've looked for it several times since our discussion and have never found it. I took a photo of the three of us. When I showed the photo to Dave Johnson, he said Mr. Ho looks like Satan. He is a small Chinese man, with a goatee and a mustache (see http://www.walden3d.com/photos/China/060406_China_Trip/DSC04326.JPG. I find it interesting how often we all have preconceptions and how we let those preconceptions control our interactions with others. I expect a large part of the reason GDC never made any progress with Henry Ho was because of this initial reaction to seeing this digital photo. Oh well! After dinner Henry Ho and his driver brought me back to the hotel. I had been given a free upgrade, and he came upstairs to see the room and the view. I expect Henry Ho paid for the upgrade. It was an impressive view, as shown by the photos I took.
Friday was Good Friday. Early in the morning I took a cab back across town and the big bridge to the Hong Kong airport. It was fascinating seeing all of the big apartment complexes. And it was sad to realize how far off of the mark these buildings are in terms of providing amenities like automatic delivery of mail and groceries, integrated social and spiritual and intellectual and service facilities, energy and water savings and optimization, air purification, etc. Oh well! Hopefully someday I will actually be able to implement my dreams and prototype a better way.
I met Mike Dunn in Beijing. We had meetings with Jialin and Jiafeng and GDC's lawyers. It was strained, to say the least. I don't know if it is the lawyers or the reaction to others to think the lawyers are being paid too much money, or who expect they are being taken advantage of by the lawyers, or something else. Anyway, it did not go very well, and in the months since this meeting, things have seemed to steadily go down hill in regards to business in China. And to think, I actually believe my commissions on Chinese jobs was going to get us out of debt and help provide a retirement. Oh well!
On Saturday Matt called my cell phone looking for Andrea because he felt he needed to. I explained that Andrea, Joshua, and Audrey were on a plane on their way to Beijing and that I was going to pick them up at the Beijing airport in a few hours. Everyone seemed in good spirits when I picked them up. I figured it was important to keep them up in order to help get everyone on Chinese time. So we went out for dinner and had some really good noodle soup at a place in back of the Celebrity Hotel. I believe Andrea and I stayed at the Hilton Hotel on this trip, which is about 20 minutes from the Celebrity.
Sunday Andrea and I went to church. It was the week after General Conference, and the Beijing Branch was watching the recordings of Conference, the week after General Conference, for the first time in their history. There were six branches and 11 groups in China participating in this new program for the first time this year. It was another milestone in the evolution of the Beijing Twig, and I felt very pleased to have the opportunity to participate as an observer. I came away from this meeting with mixed feelings. There were feelings of frustration because I had seen the talks before, and there wasn't a chance to feel of the wonderful spirit in the Beijing Branch. There were also feelings that this branch has something to do with my future. Maybe it has to do with all of the people in brightly colored clothes Aunt Marie saw in the mirrors of the St. George Temple when Marti and I were married. Andrea and I went back to the hotel, changed, met Audrey and Joshua, and we spent the afternoon in The Forbidden City. The photos with Joshua and Audrey start at http://www.walden3d.com/photos/China/060406_China_Trip/DSC04348.JPG, and will be talked about more in Thoughtlet 0616.html. It was a nice visit. There were a lot of stairs, and it hurt to see Joshua working to climb the stairs. After we left the Forbidden City we took two rickshaws and visited some of the back streets of Beijing. It was fun. I especially liked the butcher shops, and took a lot of photos along the way. There was an altercation with the bicyclist that drove us over the cost of the ride. Joshua helped smooth this out. We caught a cab, and had a nice dinner at a restaurant just off of Tiananmen Square. Then we went back to our hotels, which were nice, and not near as nice as my hotel in Hong Kong."
