Micah and Martin are on the road again, following the NetBeans World Tour through China!

Ok folks, we must have done something right, because Rob agreed to send Martin and I on the road again - this time to China! We just arrived in Shanghai after some truly round-about flights and spent the better part of today at the NetBeans Day conference meeting and greeting. China so far is truly amazing and absolutely weird! It's definitely not what we expected, anyway. The streets of Shanghai, for example, are nearly pristine - aside from the ubiquitous spitting, there's hardly a stray candy wrapper or coke bottle floating around. The wealth here is also obvious - every other car is a VW Passat, and the city infrastructure seems to be very new and quite efficient.

The Sun folks here are super helpful, which is a nice thing given that nobody in China seems to speak English. Our first day with them was well spent, and I think you'll find that they share a lot in common with folks you may know who are working with NetBeans. Take a look at some of the interviews we've posted and let us know if there's anything in particular that you'd like to hear about next time! The challenge this time is that there is no challenge - except to get by in China! Before we took off, we were laughing to ourselves, thinking that it would be a piece of cake, but far from it! Our mission, should you choose to accept it, is to introduce you to some of the NetBeans and JAVA community in China and to show you some bits and pieces of the culture and life here that you might not otherwise see. Think of us as Lonely Planet TV ;-)

That's it for now - we're both exhausted and we really want to get focused on finding a bit of the real China. So far, there are already a couple of myths busted and a couple standing tall. The great firewall, for example, is EVERYTHING it's cracked up to be and more... More soon,

Micah and Martin

[Download this 69MB flv video]