Shanghai Summertime Starts

All is well and I’m back in Shanghai. I’ve got my new VISA and I am ready to start the Shanghai summer – I won’t go back to Holland in June as planned before (changed my flight to August). My three days in Hong Kong were nice. I got to see some more sights, but spend most time behind the computer screen – finishing the summaries of Harry’s stay in Shanghai and started with the outline for a Baak Shanghai brochure. Everything is really going well on the work field. The China project is getting more and more serious. As said, there will be a brochure, we started with the website www.debaak.nl/china (needs content badly, but it exists) and today I’ve looked at a potential office in Shanghai, so maybe no more working at home all the time. I think that a work space will be good, although I found it not hard to concentrate at home the last few months. Only in the beginning it was a little difficult for me, but I got used to it quickly. The secret is …. ‘Make sure you’re really busy, and the concentration will follow naturally’.

It’s great to back in Shanghai by the way. When I arrived last Wednesday Angie, Eddie and me celebrated by going to a Mexican restaurant, followed by a birthday party of Remko. Thursday I started working again directly and had a couple of meetings, including with Bencham (www.bencham.org) the Dutch/Belgium Chamber of Commerce and now ‘partner’ in some of our activities. Further I had a meeting on the Dutch Design Expo here in October (the plan is to also become one of the organizing partners in this big event in Shanghai (Harry will come back personally for this). Friday working also after a great evening, because we went to a restaurant with a big group – my friend JP (the singer of the band) told me that he will leave Shanghai (sad news). For him as for most people Shanghai is just a temporary thing (he has been here for two years).

Saturday music class and at night went to see Davide (the Italian bass player) perform. Next month I’ll have three concerts, but then there will be a big summer break until September. I’d love to get back on track with my recording with Davide (which has been ‘dead’ since TNM-trip) and also want to study all about the theory of music (I’ve downloaded some interesting books). My reading has been going well the last few weeks (so I confident to start with this soon). I finished a couple of books just now (“Dragons on your door” is a must-read for every China-entrepreneur) … still one more China-book to go and than I want to squeeze in some more Music Theory books.

The study of the Chinese language is also going very well now. My monologues finally really start to evolve into dialogues. Angie and I talk Chinese now about 30% of our time (that gives me a lot of practice time). I never expected to learn it so easily – just put some effort for a few months and it really pays off.

My blog, like the whole blogspot-site is blocked now in China, so I had enter my own blog via a special site. Now it worked fine, but it could be, that it will be difficult to write for me sometimes. So changes are that I cannot write very frequently in the coming weeks (for as long as this blocking of the site lasts). However, Harry asked me to also start a twitter on my experiences, so it will even be easier for you to get updates on the developments here. My parents are coming here for a week on Thursday, their first time to go to China – Great!