Nice places with nice friends...

Here we are - me and AJ哥 having a business dinner at a French restaurant in TongLi - I cant remember the name but it was pretty good:


Servings were a good size...!

We then went to this place that I really like. It's called the Emperor, and is so new that noone has even discovered it (besides my event managment extraordinnaire friend AJ). It has an open-air bar that overlooks GuLou and the mountians with a great view of Beijing.

It was almost empty but you can see where the seats are up on the terrace, and it has 4 sections - I am taking the picture of the empty space on the other side:

This place is going to be rockin when the Olympics start.

This is the view now, but later you will see the whole of Beijing lit up and it will be beautiful.

Ok, I dont really love this next place. It has alot of tourists and is one of those places that everyone goes to. It's called Houhai lake and its lovely but too commercialised. I usually avoid it when I'm in Beijing unless I'm going to one of the jazz clubs:







LOL.. ENGRISH!!

Had dinner in a Vietnamese restaurant on the lake called Nuage, where you sit in a rickshaw. Hmmm...

Ok this is the best part. You probably all think I'm crazy, but I decided to go off into the hutongs and explore. It was fun! I took pictures of piles of rubbish:

Old houses that the Ming Dynasty(?) Princes would have lived in:

And had so much fun with all the locals and their dogs. This one was my favourite - a 2 year of Bichon Frise called Baobao:

I love wandering off the beaten track... Others would ask why I am more interested in piles of rubbish and dirty locals, than in the beautiful lakes and canoeing on the water... but the true artist understands inherently where real beauty lies...

Miss Amy Zhang's Place...and THE PLACE

My BFF in Beijing, Amy's place in ChaoYang Park....

I love it!



Especially the artwork...

Getting ready to go out... Foxxxy!

The new China Doll @ Sanlitun 3.3

I didnt really like the ambience. More hedonistic than the old one, and just as weird...

And of course we ended up at Suzie Wongs. WHY oh WHY I do not know. I really have a love/hate relationship with this place:


Another place I love is the place called The Place. It has the most amazing screen above your head that stretches for the entire space of the complex. It has really cool graphics and videos and the AV is just mindblowing. There are shops and open-air alfresco dining, and is great at night.

Here's a sneak:

We had coffee outdoors but decided to go into one of the restaurants for dinner:

That's Nick, my America boss who thinks I'm goddsent and looks Chinese yet cannot read or write a word; WangLing our Beijing woman who has been getting on my nerves bigtime lately; Juan the Costa-Rican colleague; Me; and Vicki the really smart freshman from Williams who is 100x smarter than me.

Odd team...

Introduction to Beijing

I am going to try and do this as fast as humanly possible. I am behind almost 2 weeks, and there is no way I can fit everything in, so the following blogs will be pics galore and very little text.

Let's start with the new Terminal 3 at Beijing international airport.



It looks great but can I just say that the Chinese are experts at building bottlenecks into large spaces. What I mean by that is - look at all that space! You would think that you could fit thousands of people in there right? WRONG. The squishy part begins when these thousands of people all have to cram into ONE ELEVATOR. And again when you get to the teriminal cable trains, and there is only ONE TRAIN every 10mins and each train holds like 20 people.

I can only imagine what is going to happen when all the athletes come in. Yes, bottleneck experts indeed. How extremely crafty...

This is the hotel that I have been staying in for the last 2 weeks. It is a serviced apartment for people who stay in Beijing for business for long periods of time. We have a contract with them so its where everyone in the company stays when they're in Beijng. The location is excellent (in Wangfujing) and the place is not too bad.





Here we are having drinks at the Penninsula next door, where some of our US suppliers were staying.

The woman on the right is WangLing, who heads the project on the Beijing side. But we are still managing her. Kinda sad, cos shes like 10 years older than both me and Juan. Anyway, shes pretending to listen in on the coversation here but she cant speak a word of English LOL...

I met up with some Beijing friends on Day One, who I havent seen again since. Jeff & fiance:

Me and Jo:

We went to a Bavarian restaurant called Morels - not bad, but then Nick (my boss) took us to this pizza place called Kro's Nest which was better:

They had massive pizzas! This is one slice from a medium pizza, which was already as big as the table. Good thing we didnt get the Large/Family size:

I'm behind... I know

But I am really busy in Beijing. The hours are really long and I have to run around having meetings with all these people all day. At least I get unlimited funds on food, travel and other "important" things like spas and massages... hahaha

Good news is that I am very close to getting a venue locked in and securing the VIP speakers for the conference. We worked in my boss' suite until 3am last night finalising the website so it will be going live in the next couple of days so that you guys can finally see what I've been so busy working my ass off for!

I've been trying to take lots of photos here so that I can keep track of everything that's happening, but so many things have happened I am thinking of giving up!

Anyway, let me just start with the most important thing - my haircut.

Some pics of me getting my new do and foils from the French salon in Beijing's Nali in Sanlitun - my favourite secret place. Getting my nails done, ordering food and drinks into the salon, and my hairdresser, Christian:

The finished product. I really love the haircut but I'm not so sure about the highlights, cos that was done by someone else:

And here's a sneak peak of me and Amy:

More to come!

Last week in Taipei - Steve Xia, his friends and Mel Lu all came to visit in the same week. HECTIC. I almost died from friend-exhausion...

Here are the pics - sorry no time to explain anything. I have another meeting to go to. I will try to update soon!