Monday July 25, 2005 12:45 pm

A few minutes after lunch and time for a quick update.

Dinner last night went fine - we all chickened out of going to a real place to eat so after I walked over to the Ramada to meet Scott and Thomas (co-worker from our Austria facility) we ended up just walking back to the restaurant at my hotel.

When I was walking over there were two guys sitting at one of the corners selling puppies. They had two little cages (too little for the number of puppies because they were piled on top of each other) but they were sooo cute! They were very young - looked like they barely had their eyes open. I am sure in the US we would not have been selling them yet. I just keep telling myself they were for sale as pets and not for some other purpose.

In the car on the way to work this morning a few of my co-workers were telling me about another park next to the city. It has a big zoo in it. One of them said that he got his picture taken with a Tiger - he actually went into the cage with the tiger and they took his picture!! He said they have a noose around the tiger's neck - but he could easily just swipe at you with his paw and you'd be gone. It is just amazing to think about!!

One of the things Scott and I were talking about on the tour yesterday was that they are clearly not any lawers in China - there are so many things that people do and conditions that people live/work in that are what would be considered hazardous and just plain crazy in the US. Like the tiger thing -- there would be so much liabiltiy needed that you would never find a situation where you would be able to do that. In many cases I think it is probably a good thing - but on the other hand if you are stupid enough to go in the cage with a tiger to pose for a picture I suppose you get what is coming to you.

We have our trip to the supplier planned for Wednesday. This means we will leave Tuesday night - stay over and then go to the supplier during the day Wednesday and return Wednesday night. It will be about a 4-5 hour drive to the supplier which is on the other side of Shanghai - so it will be intersting to see a new area of the country.

Tina