By Al Wong This is my experience in Beijing, China in the Summer of 2009. If you came to this webpage first, it's better if you start from the beginning of the story. Sunday, July 26 FISM Day 1 Opening Ceremony, Welcome Dinner Show 10:05am Set my alarm for 8am hoping to make the hotel's buffet breakfast but was in the middle of a dream when it went off. Put it on snooze and I was in a dream again when it went off. I always seem to be dreaming when the alarm goes off which isn`t good. This time I set my alarm to 10am and managed to finished my dream before I naturally woke up at 9:30am. Packed up my stuff and I am pretty much ready to go. FISM, here I come! 12:34pm Just checked into the Intercontinental Beijing Beichen Hotel. The room is really nice. Bigger than the other 5 star hotels I've experienced during this trip. This is a REAL 5 STAR HOTEL. They put me in a room facing the corner of traffic but I can barely hear it. I`m assuming they have great sound insulation. The service here is fast, polite and impeccable. And the employees here all speak passable English. FISM Day 1 1:50pm Finally registered for FISM! It was touch and go there. You couldn`t cross the hotel-convention center bridge until you registered. You had to cross the street and walk all the way around the convention building just to enter it! Then you had to go to the 3rd floor to register. Then I went to Plenary Hall B to find my friend, Cathy, one of the organizers for FISM in Beijing. She was coordinating the stage competition rehersals. We`re going to get lunch later. They have wifi service at the convention center but it`s connected to the internet service at the CNCC hotel and not my hotel, the Intercontinental. Blah! 3:36pm In my hotel room again. Just had a bowl of noodles with Cathy. According to her, there are no nearby restaurants in the convention center and that is an annoying problem here. Well, there are over priced restaurants in my hotel and I`m sure there are some at the CNCC hotel. Going through through my FISM materials. What a grab bag of loot! The FISM magazine is great! They should have printed a little map of the convention center that you can carry around rather than just print it in the magazine. I found that I continually needed a small map of the convention center during FISM. Also, I didn't care for the PINK t-shirts they were giving to the registered conventioneers. It makes more sense to give away WHITE t-shirts to the conventioneers instead. (The FISM volunteers should have been given the pink t-shirts so they stand out.) Also, it looks like I won't be taking pictures of FISM performances. According to the rules in the FISM Magazine, they DO NOT ALLOW flash cameras or video cameras during the performances. So the rest of this China trip website won't have many pictures of FISM. :( Opening Ceremony 11pm The first hour of the opening ceremony was pretty boring. They could have livened it up and made it more entertaining. This is a magic convention after all. The opening shows were good, particularly the acrobat act. It was just amazing! Also the closing act by the same Chinese girl, Shen Juan, who competed in SAM a few years ago was great! 03/11/11 Update - I added a video clip of the Chinese acrobat act. It's crazy! Check out the link below. Welcome Dinner Show In the dining hall for the Welcome Dinner Show. The food was simply GREAT! They really went all out here. I've been to my share of mass dinner parties and the food was never really good. This mass dinner was the best I've ever experienced. The food was plentiful and delicious. The service was quick and impeccable. The Next Day China 2009 My Writings Al's Wild Web Page