Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

I haven't watched the whole video yet myself. But the part I've watched so far were really interesting. Especially the part of 'enable dreams for others' really caught my attention. The person speaking is a professor in America, he is holding 'his last lecture' and this is actually true, as he will pass away a few months from now due to cancer.
Let's enjoy his passion for life till the last moment and reflect on our own attitudes....

Some impressions from a sunny day in Leiden

Zijlpoort in Leiden, former city gate

Grachten in Leiden, the famous Dutch channels

A restaurant close to the Zijlpoort

View in downtown Leiden

The Besteenmarkt in Leiden, getting ready for the 'Leids Ontzet' festival

Open bridge, seen from the Zijlpoort

Shopping street in Leiden, the Haarlemmererstraat

A boat manoevering on the channel

Gefeliciteerd met je verjaardag Antje!

Vandaag is Antje's 21ste verjaardag! In de fusie van haar studentenhuis hebben we samen met haar gewacht tot de klok 12 uur slaagt en met haar gevierd.
Van harte gefeliciteerd....

Tara Superstar

The newest face in our Sinology society in Leiden is only a few weeks old and just starting to realize how the world around her works. The proud and happy parents are Ayleen and Tobias, they are proud to be the parents of Tara superstar:

Taipei street scene

Bus, taxi, scooter, smoking man

色狼。。。

Ticket check in Dutch train

Ticket check by a cool conductor in a Dutch train, Den Haag to Amsterdam

Leiden Centraal

The North Sea

Some impression from the North Sea at the Beach of Scheveningen, The Hague

Bei den PHlern in Reeuwijk

Was macht man auf einer richtig guten Klassenfahrt, wenn es Abends draussen kalt ist und drinnen etwas waermer? Wenn der Mond, obwohl in vollstem Rund, hinter Wolken verborgen ist und die einzige Lichtquelle weit und breit die Halogenroehre im Aufenthaltsraum ist? Richtig! Spieleabend:

Und das geht besonders gut, wenn man 3o angehenden Grund- und Hauptschullehrerinnen und zwei angehenden maennlichen Kollegen ist, denn die wissen wie man spielt! Gehoert ja schliesslich auch zum spaeteren Berufsbild immer fuer Anregungen und gute Laune zu sorgen.
Es war uebrigens auch so, dass sich die PHler ein Bild vom niederlaendischen Schulsystem, der Kaesemacherei, Windmuehlen und anderen kulturellen Highlights der landschaftlich gesehen flachen Nachbarn informiert haben.

"Rischtisch scheeee..."

Impression from the "on-bike-perspective" heading towards the city center coming from Leiden Central Station.

Another video clip shot from my bike. Jana is obviously enjoying herself in Leiden; note on the back the other 11 girls with who I went to the beach yesterday.

Beach-feeling....

BBQ in my new castle!

Today was one of those typical Dutch end-of-summer-begin-of-autumn days: After a cloudy morning, the afternoon all of a sudden was just as beautiful as you can only find them on postcards: Only a few nice and happy white clouds and in the background a fabulous blue sky with a nice temperature of around 23 degrees.
This made me think of barbecuing and so I invited some friends and we gathered behind the apartment building where I live now and had a nice barbecue.

Mark op visite

Het is al weer een tijdje geleden, dat onze liefe Mark in het Koningrijk der Nederlanden en in Leiden was. De afgelopen dagen was het dan gelukkig weer zo veer: Voordat het terug naar Taiwan voor hem gaat, ging hij in Leiden een visite doen. En zijn oordeel? "De mensen hebben het dit jaar bestwel druk", maar we hebben nog steeds tijd vrijgemaakt om met jou iets te doen, dus zo erg is het allemaal niet.

Ja, dat vindt onze voetbal supporter niet zo leuk...

Nachschlag: Jana's Geburtstag (Deutsch)

Mittlerweile ist es schon lang, lang her und ich weiss schon gar nicht mehr wann genau es war...Aber eines schoenen Tages dieses Sommers hatte unsere liebe Jana Geburtstag; Anlass genug fuer die treuen Fans unseres Sopran-Stars sich auf den Weg in die Fabrik zu Ebertsheim zu machen.
Da neben gutem Gesang, auch noch vorzuegliches Essen und herzliche Geselligkeit zu erwarten waren, liess es sich tatsaechlich kaum jemand nehmen das Geburtstagskind zu ehren.
Resultat des Abends sind wie weiter unten zu bestaunen eine Menge netter Fotos entstanden, auch gesungen wurde aus voller Brust:

Jens ist schon seit Jahren bekannt fuer seine liebevoll getexteten Geburtstagslieder. 100% nicht kopiert und immer einen Schmunzler wert, ein echter Mattern eben.

Ein kleiner Eindruck der gemuetlichen Atmosphaere

Ein weiterer Hit aus der Jukebox, "Gequelldie Bludwurscht"

Time to go on! (English)

It has been a while! But now the time has come to continue with this blog. I will try to start posting on a more regular basis again. And present some highlights from The Netherlands, where I am located right now.
Some things might improve, other might chance, just as you see a new banner and some new and fresh colour in the background...other things might come, but I cannot promise anything.

My start back in Leiden was not the smoothest, finding accommodation here is quite a hassle, but things worked out and I live in a nice room with a Chinese and a Taiwanese flatmate. So my daily language environment still is Chinese here, haha. At least sometimes. Besides my flatmates, I got to know some more Chinese students, who just arrived in Leiden to study Dutch. So I am already surrounded by a lot of nice Chinese people.
And of course my nice class mates from University.
Below you can see some pictures taken during the opening drink organized by the SVS Sinology Student Association, in the Oude Harmonie in Leiden. All drinks and beverages were for free, so there was of course a nice atmosphere. And also a great chance to meet old friends and get to know new people as well.

Zhuhai (English)

This city or is it a village? Well, whatever. It is nice here. Not so big, not so busy. But you have all you need. Zhuhai is another 2 hours by bus away of Guangzhou in the direction South. It is a harbour city with connections to Macao and Hong Kong.

I will fly to Shanghai from the local airport here tomorrow and will spend the night here.

I walked around downtown for a while today and made some interesting discoveries. First off all, they do have a pedestrian area here. You know what that is, right? No cars allowd on the road, and little cafes or shops in the middle of the street. But yet different from a nightmarket in Taiwan, as the roads are broader and there are trees. A really unique discovery for me in China until now. The pedestrian area actually reminds me a lot of German cities, yet a lot more lively and noisy.

Zhuhai is also a paradies for people from Hong Kong and Macao, as there are good connections to the two cities and prices are a lot cheaper then there. Prices for what? Well, I got a massage, they washed my head, haircut and beard cut for 25 yuan, that is about 2,5 Euro. One hour massage? How about 30 yuan. A meal for one person, don't think you would need to pay more then 20 yuan.

And there is another attraction, interesting for mostly the male visitors with certain desires. I cannot talk about prices, as I did not more then getting name cards from attractive young women, but as I have been told....a forget it.

Guangzhou (English)

The past 3 days and 2 nights were spent in Guangzhou. The city is located about 2 hours North East of Shenzhen by bus. The bus system in China is really good, buses are frequently available, clean, with airco and VERY fast. The last element must not certainly be an argument pro bus here. The bus drivers are the FASTEST in the whole country. Buses are taking over the role of sports and luxus cars in other countries and race on the highway or downtown. The breaks are only used when no other solution is open anymore. Really a scary experience.

But that simply also describes how China is, and how a lot of people think here: The bigger, the better and the more rights you have. Especially compared to weaker ones!

Guangzhou left a decent impression on me. It is yet another huge city though, with a lot of buildings. Guangzhou is the capital of the "business province" Guangdong. This is the province that makes everyone think and talk about money and profits, maybe more then in any other place on this earth.

We visited another few companies there and I got some nice impressions on how business in China works. (I won't publish it here, please wait for my book...).

After having a cold for a week now, I decided to get some advice from a docter and some medication. This has to be done in one of the plenty hospitals. The doctor subscribed me some Chinese medicine, which had to be infused. It took about 2 hours, to wait for the whole liquid to enter and revitalise my body. But it was worthwhile the time, I feel a lot better now.

Shenzhen the workbench

Today I went to visit a factory for water resistant LCD TV's. A small company in a clean factory environment. When we arrived the energy was halted already (a regulation by the government to control the massive energy consumption).
The manager of the company showed us around and gave us the chance to try and test their products.
The trip to the company was a nice experience by bus. We had to switch a total of 3 times, both ways, and drove through an uncompleted and extremely growing city. It is amazing how fast things change here. After a road has been finished it might not take long and construction starts again to expand it, to be able to deal with the huge traffic. I think they don't have a rush-hour here, simply because there is no opposite to that term existing. Whatever time of the day, roads are busy and crowded.

Hong Kong, Shenzhen and China (English)

I am back to the mainland, the motherland almost it seems. After a brief stop of about 8 hours in Hong Kong to obtain my visa to enter the People's Republic I arrived in the flourishing business city Shenzhen.
It is not as humid here as it is in Taipei, but there are not as many air-conditioners as on the island, so it still is pretty hot. One great rule (I really mean great) is that air-co's may only cool down to about 28 degrees. Sounds hot, but it is cool and a great measurement to reduce energy waste. The air-co's in Taiwan are so cold that it is almost nicer to stay outside in the humidity.

I am here to visit a friend and I can stay with a family. This is great as it is the opportunity to see more of the real China. Actually Shenzhen is a special place compared to other cities. It really is a melting point of all the different cultures within the great Chinese empire. People from all over the country come here to make a better living as business men or working in factories. All of them bring along their own customs, dialects and traditions. The real people of Shenzhen are barely existing, as the real Shenzhen is nothing but a small fishing village, located north of the great Hong Kong. That is one reason why the term 外地人 (people from a different region) is not used here, there simply are too few 本地人 (people from here) to use it.
The sphere might be somewhat close to New York or other immigrant cities during the time of maybe the late 19th century, when the US where the place to be for those hoping for a better live and making a fortune by working hard or even being smart. Of course the same downsides can be found here and there, today as well as back then. Quite some crime and a huge gap between poor and rich. But I was told that the actual presence of police officerers every 200m helped to reduce crime in boom-town Shenzhen.

An end to the quietness...(English)

It has been quiet recently on this blog, about a week of no new posts. Did nothing happen? No great news to share with the rest of the 3 billion webusers?
Well, it happened so much that I could barely keep track of it in real live.
The most important news is that I left Taiwan today. It was a quiete heart-aching good-bye and I feel now already how much I enjoyed the time there and how much I am going to miss it.
Currently I am at the Airport of Hong Kong, waiting for my visa to Mainland China, it is just 6 hours of waiting time, so no wories please. Luckily enough is there free wire-less LAN available and I have the right adaptor in my baggage to use Hong Kong enery - that way I can expand my wireless LAN pleasure!