Wednesday July 26 update: Bonus PITT

PITT #5: More Sheraton hotel notes. The cardkey for the room at the Sheraton Xi'an also does something I've never encountered before. It controls the room power. Just inside the door is a little box that you must slip the card into when you come into the room. The room lights and power at the desk will not come on unless the room key is put into the slot in that wall box. The other thing is, when you remove your room key from the box, the power goes out in about 20 seconds. So, this means that you really shouldn't leave a laptop on when you leave the room or it will go onto battery power and then some minutes later will go into standby mode. Standby mode will disconnect you from the network.

Oh yeah, and this is the voice of experience talking, when you leave the room, don't forget to take the room key out of the slot in the box on the wall by the door. You just might need to re-enter your room sometime soon... :-)

Also, the Sheraton give you two large 550ml bottles of water each day, complimentary. I've used both of them every day so far.

There is a small safe in the room that's controlled by a key-punched combination. The key sounds and confirmation sounds are unnecessarily loud. The safe is large enough that a Dell D610 laptop will just fit into it but the door won't close. Solve that problem by propping up the front end of the laptop on top of something else you want to fit into the safe. Then the door will close. A D810 developer-style laptop is too long, though.

There is just one outlet for 110v, and it's in the bathroom and is intended for razors only. All other outlets are 220v. There is a hairdryer in the room but I haven't seen an iron. There are not enough hangers in the closet for a week or two worth of clothes. I'm glad I brought some light wire hangers along...

There is a nice workout room and swimming pool on the third floor. They open at 6:00am and close at 11:00pm.

The main restaurant is called "Gate West". There is a wonderful breakfast buffet (with forks and spoons!) every morning that is free for guests. In the evening there are "theme nights". I missed Mexican on Tuesday and Italian on Wednesday, though.

And the revolving door to enter the hotel is the biggest honkin' revolving door I've seen! It's big enough for an entire, fully-loaded luggage cart to fit through. And at two places in this door there are glass-enclosed compartments that have tall flowers in them, revolving with the rest of the door!

There are several nice shops in the hotel, off of the lobby. They have some very nice, very overpriced goods for sale in them, like silks, garments, terra-cotta warrier statuettes of all sizes, and even pharmaceuticals and sodas. And the price for everything in those shops (and at every other shop in Xi'an except those at the malls) is negotiated. And negotiations with foreigners usually means the foreigner will pay more than the natives.

The hotel is about 15 minutes (and about 12-14RMB in cost) from the Software Park where the office is.

That's it!