Traveling everywhere, Working loads and a Rainy Eclipse

Tomorrow I will go on a small holiday to Guizhou. I’m still finishing the last things at home. My sister is still in Shanghai and she will join the trip to Guizhou, where we are going to Angie’s home town and meet her parents – very special. The ten days since my last writing have been rather hectic with many social activities, some traveling (explore a little more of China with my Sister and Angie) and my work has also been rather busy – always just before you go holiday things get hectic.

For De Baak the progress is going steady. This week I was very productive so far. I had an interesting talk with the Victoria Univeristy, which brought much opportunity for De Baak’s China project. However in China I found that opportunities are easy to find – the difficult thing is realizing them. Anyhow there will be another meeting will the Victoria University in the Netherlands in August, so at least the follow up is quick (let's hope for the best). Further I made the outlinse for two Shanghai brochures de Baak will release in September. The frame is there, but I really hope it will be possible to realize everything within the 6 weeks we still have – everybody in the Netherlands is on holiday, so the progress is not as quick as I hoped.

I’m also preparing my activities for my month in Holland (16 Aug – 17 Sept). There will be a China breakfast, debate session and many strategy meetings. Further I have many companies to visit and potential clients to meet. De Baak will also have very unique international symposium on Dutch Leadership and Society “Who are we” on 09-09-09
in Amsterdam http://www.debaak.nl/en/events/whoarewe. I think it’s going to be a great event (very happy I will be there to attend it). This week I slowly started to announce it to internationals in my personal network. It’s strange to think that I will already be back in Holland within a month (it’s been over six months then since my last visit).

Last week I made some serious progress on my new ‘working’ visa. I’m in the procedure to official register myself in China (no temporarily Business Visas anymore). Last week I handed in many official documents to the officials and it’s looking good. The first of six steps has been approved. I'm happy with this, because then I won’t have anymore unpleasant surprises as I had last May, when my Visa renewal was declined just before it expired. Things are getting more and more stable.

Because my sister is here I try to use as much of my free time as possible to go with her to some place outside of Shanghai. Last week we went to ZhuJiaJiao, which is a tiny old water town close to Shanghai. It’s quite beautiful and a nice day trip, but also very touristy, so you miss the real authentic feeling (positive effect is that there is a nice Italian coffee bar for these spoiled tourists). Last weekend we went to Nanjing, a former Capital of China (there have been many capitals in the long history of China – Beijing is relatively new – see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_capitals_of_China). Nanjing was nice and reminded me and Angie of our visit to Xi’an in April (without the Terracotta army this time, instead Nanjing offers the tourists a “purple” mountain). The cable ride to mountain was my personal high light and the visit to the tomb of the first Ming Emperor was disappointing to me (it was also too hot, walking there). I'm happy I had these chances to see already quite some places of the many this enormous country has to offer. Slowly I find my understanding of the Chinese culture and history is developing.

Yesterday was a very special day, because of the eclipse. Angie got the morning off and we were invited by Clarisse and Daan to watch this climate wonder on their roof top, while having breakfast. We were with approximately ten people to enjoy this moment. The said thing was that it was raining heavily and very cloudy, so we couldn’t see the sun. It became dark and than light again quickly and I must say it still made an impression on me – I can understand that there are eclipse fan clubs. And a breakfast with friends is the best start of any day, so no sad face for me, because of that rain.

It’s already late. I’m going to start packing for tomorrow, a new side of China yet to be discovered.