DATELINE: China World Hotel at China World Trade Center, Beijing, China, 24 October 2006

Long productive flight over. Wrote my Sunday column (on adopting Vonne Mei, born three years ago this week), then worked the brief for the 5 hours I'll be spending with senior Royal Dutch/Shell officials and a second group of young Chinese execs. Then listened to Ric Burns' docu "Way into the West," taking notes. Then almost finished Friedman's "Moral Consequences of Economic Growth." Also watched "Devil Wears Prada" three times, "Cars" once and "Click" (right up there with "Ground Hog Day") twice. Funny what you can get done when stuck in a plane 14 hours.

What I didn't do is sleep.

Got here and had a brief meeting with a friend who's setting up some shopping later today and a F2F with a China Reform Forum senior who's helping me get BFA sold for Chinese rights (PNM in the process of coming out).

Then had meeting and dinner with Shell and Duke Educational Corp. officials about today's events, before my brain gave out at 9am Monday morning (back home time, equating to 9pm Monday night here) just after I found out the Pack won in Miami.

Up today with solid 8 hours (thanks to Ambien keeping me down) and gearing up for the day.

Interesting piece in NYT ("To Stand or Fall in Baghdad: Capital Is Key to Mission" by Michael Gordon, 23 Oct) makes me think the two breakthroughs that Bush might accept from Baker would be direct talks with both Syria and Iran to clamp down on the borders (huge problem of picking a fight with the entire bar at once instead of just concentrating on the badass you started up with) and some acceptance of an international state/force package for Baghdad (a more modest admitting of failure and a mea culpa that allows us to socialize our problem a bit with the right allies). I think that combo would do a lot. Sad to say, I don't see the Bush administration being willing to change. It's like that quote in the NYT on Friday: something to the effect that the problem with the neocons isn't that they're not often right, it's that they never admit that they're ever wrong.