Today we’ve visited Technicolor, a company you’ve all have seen at least a couple of times during the intro of about any major movie in the theaters. It was quite an interesting visit if I do so say myself. We had the chance to check out their R&D labs and have a chat with two engineers who were working on gateways and set-top box things (like the Telenet Digibox/digicorder). Afterwards we had lunch with one of them.
Next up was the Temple of Heaven park which we had way too little time for. In about one hour and a bit we rushed through the park and we saw just one temple (then again, we’ve seen so many already, nobody seemed to care much anyway). Too bad for the tickets because the others were paid for as well. Nick did buy some Badminton like things which we played with Koen while waiting for everyone to assemble at the exit. But all this hurrying was because of the Acrobatics show.
This spectacular show was quite amazing. One can ask if any of those people had a spine because they could twist their body in the most unnatural shapes. We were not allowed to take photos but Jef and Dieter were there as well so take a guess at how many were taken… yes, close to two thousand photos. According to Donaat that’s about 1 image every three seconds.
For dinner the group split up as some folks wanted to go to the KFC (for the seventh time or so) while others wanted to go have Chinese food. I found myself going with the group of Koen (Pelsmaekers) who wanted to see Tian’AnMen square by night. Unfortunately it was already closed, luckily it’s on the program for tomorrow.
Again we split up in smaller groups, in the end with six people we returned to Wang Fu Jing (near the Food Market) and had dinner in Sevenana, which seemed to be some kind of Chinese semi-fastfood restaurant. Lastly we walked on the Food Market street again and decided to take the metro to the hotel.
As it seems a lot of us are tired we decided to stay at the hotel for the night and right now we’re with seven people on Dieter and my room again (people be stealing wifi!) playing with Katrijne’s new Mahjong set.
Tomorrow, as said before, we visit the square as well as the forbidden city. In the afternoon we’re going to go shopping in Silk Market, where I’m hoping to find some hilarious Chinglish shirts for a ridiculously cheap price.
Apparently the electronics markets sell travel routers for 95 yuan, we’re probably going back there to buy one ourselves as Jonas and Donaat bought one and it seems to be working quite well. We’ve alzo decided to visit the Beijing Hard Rock Café, I haven’t been to any of those so I’m looking forward to that as well.