Christmas Lessons

Merry Christmas!
I hope everyone has had some great days so far and will continue to do so.
Currently I'm floored, this last week has been one huge organisation craze and the execution was far from perfect. Main reason, I think I should just blame culture differences. None the less I had fun so don't worry about that part.

Christmas dinner on the 24th, dinner in a Chinese restaurant with their menu specialty Peking Duck. The number of people that would show up kept on changing throughout the day. In the end we ended up with 23 people at the table. With a total of 10 Chinese persons that I've never met. Fortunate we got a room with space for 30 people. So that wasn't the problem. The main problem occurred when ordering the food. Apparently in Chinese culture your suppose to determine what food will be served to the tables. Meaning the guests will never see a menu and will eat what you decide. This caused for a miss understanding, because the Chinese were not aware that in Western culture you usually get a small menu choice. I apologized for the problems and thanked Gaby to help me solve this matter with the waiter.

The second part of our night we would continue in club SoHo, where I paid for 2 tables total price 2000 RMB ($300 dollar). This amount would be turned into beverages for everyone that decided to join in. Of course everyone would pay back a share... or so I thought. It turned out that half of the people that I counted on that would pay a share cancelled at the last minute. Ouch.. lesson learned. So I had quiet a loss this evening.
One other thing that I disliked was that one of the invited European guest brought 9 Chinese to claim one of the tables and drink it completely empty. With only him paying. Of course others started complaining and we were in for strike number 3 that night. After the dinner, people cancelling I now had to tell these 9 Chinese to start paying or find another place. As expected they moved and later returned without paying a single dime, *Sigh*. I didn't care that much for the money at this point since I had counted my losses already, but I did not like the fact that I and most others did not know any of these 9 people nor did they even attempt to join in.


I just let it go and instead accepted an invite of some random Chinese stranger to have a drink at their table. This really took my mind of of things and I started to enjoy the party. Apart from the problems that occurred everyone had a great night in the end so I can't really complain. I left the club at 03:15 with a massive headache and felt really tired. I guess it was just too much trouble and experience for one night. I slept at Gaby's house where I had a good rest.

The next day (25th) I had planned a small get together in the our working office to play some games. At this point I was kinda done with organizing things, mainly due to how things turned out last night.
So I told Gaby we would pick up her Christmas gift today. I had been teasing her these last day about it. Not knowing what she would get we headed out and ended up in a street full of dog stores. I told her having fun choosing. She couldn't believe it and at first refused to accept the gift because of the cost. She did want to have a look though.


After a total of 3 hours looking, walking away, thinking and coming back she finally picked a puppy. After going over some names I came up with "Dumpling" like the Chinese dumpling food. She taught it was funny and she now has a puppy called dumpling. (Who is currently sleeping on my lap as I type.)

The Christmas gift shopping took a bit longer than expected so I showed up late in the office. Finding just a few people, as expected, having a good conversation. I ran to the store to buy some drinks and food. On return we played a Chinese game called Mahjong (4 player variant). Pretty nice game and enjoyed the conversations.
For dinner the European guy from last night who brought 9 Chinese friends suggested to go to an Portuguese restaurant. I agreed, but did demand he would pay for my 3 Chinese friends this time as a small compensation of last night. I think this was the least he could do. Without too much sputter he gave in and we headed out for some delicious food. I had lasagna, didn't eat pasta for the last 4 months, it was really nice. My 3 Chinese friends really enjoyed the dinner and I was very happy they could experience the European way of eating out in a restaurant. As promised the European guy paid his share. Which I truly appreciated.

All with all Christmas was different, but fun and with a lesson well learned I'm sure things will go better in the future.

Nick 5 months

Just received some pictures from my mother of my nephew Nick.
He seems to have grown in all directions. Quite sure he will become a fighter like his uncle, haha.
Unfortunate I was unable to talk to them on Skype due to Christmas organisations which I will post some things about later on.

Dutch Visit

This week three of our professors from the INHolland university made a two day visit to NPU. We knew that our supervisor/aerodynamic professor would attempt to visit us during the internship, but we were surprised that the dean and our mechanics professor/my mentor joined him.
On the first day we didn't see them and again I was struck down by some stomach problems. I think it was food poison. On the second day we were invited to join a meeting with our professors and our supervisor from China. We discussed the progress, our thoughts, the goods, the bads and things that can improve. After the meeting we thought we would join our professors for lunch, but this was not the case. Both our professors and us were surprised. Chinese planning I guess. So after a handshake we said goodbye and went out for lunch.

A few minutes later I got a call from our aerodynamics professor saying that he invites us to dinner, because he wasn't too happy with us just seeing each other for a meeting. Without hearing about our "other" experiences. Of course we accepted and met them in the evening. We went out to eat hotpot.

I had a great conversation with the dean. Talked about the development going on in China and it's possibilities. At the end of our conversation he said that if I want to do my 4th year internship in China that he might have a place at Siemens in Beijing. I'll certainly keep it in mind!

New Campus

This morning professor Yong Yang walked in to the office with a surprise.
He wanted to take us to the new campus of NPU. The drive is around 40 minutes south-west from the old campus. Of course we accepted his invitation and ran back to our dorm to get our cameras. We got in the professors car and 40 minutes later we arrived at the new campus.

Wow! This is really something else. New structures, spacious and the air seems to be much cleaner. Walking around with the Professor and Sillin (A Chinese student that works close with us on the aerodynamic assignments) First thing we noticed is that the New Campus lies at the foot of Mountain Qin. Named after the first emperor of China.

After lunch the professor wanted to take us in to the mountain. Back to the car! 15 minutes later we were in the mountain. The professor seemed to have changed profession because the speed was kept at 70 km/h while the amount of blind turns increased, it was insane! Responsibility did not apply in this case. Luckily we arrived safely apart from one student who got a bit car sick. I'll safe you the details. We arrived on one of the tops, where we stopped and got out to take some pictures before heading back. The view is amazing, I loved it and it is really something I will not soon forget! Fortunate I have this picture to share with you.

We arrived back at campus around six. I thanked my professor for taking us, I was very happy he did.

Lifting Line Finished?

Finally the Lifting line problem writing in FORTRAN seems to be finished. Although I have my doubts with the method that is suggested by my Chinese colleague since it does not match the theory at all. I'll have to see what the professor thinks about it.

Terracotta Warriors

Today I made a visit to the Terracotta Warriors together with Frank, Stefan and Stefan's mom who is currently on a round trip through China. We had a Dutch tour guide which was fun for a change. I don't feel like typing to much right now so I'll make it short.
I will say this the fact that the statues are still preserved for such a long time is impressive. Although I would have expected to see thousands and thousands of terracotta warriors we only saw a few hundred which was a bit of a let down(most still in ruins). Non the less, I'm glad I made a visit here and would really recommend it. I hope to return one day when more warriors have been dug up and restored.

Killing Code

What should be an easy job is really killing me at this point.
The assignment of simulating a 2D Lifting Line I took on and was done coding in just 2 days. For some reason there seem to be a lot of bugs remaining. Not code wise but theoretical wise. Re-wrote the whole program about 4 times now. I still seem to be doing something wrong but I can't seem to figure out what. Will ask Mr. Gong (Chinese student supervisor) for some help. Hopefully he can give me some insight.

National Week

Chinese National week means a week off to celebrate the founding of the People Republic of China. Or in our case a 7 day break from our internship. I really needed this because we've been working hard these last weeks to round of the first phase of our internship. 5 days a week 8 hours a days going over aerodynamics theories and lines of code. Searching for bugs and errors in attempt to get the correct results.

This week we used to explore Xian a bit and bring a visit to Xian's Bell and Drum tower both located in the city center. Both building are relatively small compared to previous tourist attractions, but still quite amazing to see. The fact that Bell Tower was moved stone by stone in order to retain it's center location in the city was quite amazing. Linc took me out to eat hotpot and Gaby took me out to some local "hidden" restaurants around Bell Tower. The food is just great here I have discovered something called a Chinese Hamburger. Which is a combination of a pita bread some pork. Delicious and almost sold on every corner.


At the end of the week we decided to go to an event park a little bit north out of the city. Here we went for a heat of carting outdoor. I would have expected to have some close races unfortunate my cart was the slowest off them all and this really showed on straight lanes. After the heat we played a game bowling and finished by diving in to a swimming pool.

For dinner Gaby and Irene took Stefan and me out to one of the better hotpot places to eat. The food was great and I was able to get my shoes polished for free.
Overall a great way to finish National Week.

Mid Autumn Festival

The first Chinese festival we encountered is a three day festival called Mid Autumn Festival. The Mid Autumn Festival is a traditionally festival for the Chinese farmers to celebrate the end of the summer harvesting.

For the common Chinese it means to get together with your family and loved once to celebrate. Since a lot of people that I met come from all over China it is for some difficult or expensive to go home for just 3 days. So instead of celebrating spring festival with their family it is quite common to celebrate it with friends instead.
NPU provided all international students with a traditional cake called "mooncake" which people traditionally eat with family or friends under the moon during spring festival.


For us these three days just meant relaxing.
To partipate our Chinese friends in their celebration we were invited to join them to eat at a steak house. We ordered our steaks and drinks and had some friendly conversations. Things seemed to be going quite smooth up till the point that the food was served out. One of the chefs that brought the food lost his balance a bit which made a fork full of steak sauce fall off the plate over my pants and Gaby's dress.
The chef walked away without a word. I was quite upset with this and I demanded an excuse, our Chinese friends told me that this sometimes happens and that it is okay. I gave them one good argument that I pay the restaurant to enjoy their food not to get my clothes ruined. After a closer look a Gaby's dress which was badly covered with sauce she seemed to catch the spirit. The waiter was called for and a free melon was offered and an excuses given. This was enough for me however my other Chinese friend Linc (Gaby's colleague) was not satisfied yet and asked the waiter back.
After a few words he told us that we will get a 20% discount on everything we ordered. I was amazed. The same people that at first accepted what happened turned into hardcore negotiators the moment they realized that they were being deputized.
Linc actually thanked me afterwards for teaching him this lesson. It was my pleasure.

Chinese Friends and the Hotpot experience

On the 4th of September we decided to go clubbing with our African friend Edgar and Stefan's roommate Val (short for Valentine).
We met Edgar in the previous week during a walk on campus. He told us that he arrived 3 weeks earlier than us and said he checked out a few nightclubs which he would like to take us to. In the mean time we had invited Val, who apparently went to NPU alone, to join us to dinner and lunch on regular basis. He seems to me like a nice guy which company I can enjoy. On Saturday the 5th of September we met up with Edgar and went to a club called Fantasy located in the main South street of the city center.
The moment we stepped in to Fantasy I had the feeling it was going to be a great night. I'm not sure if it was because of the hot stage girls dancing in their langere or if it was because of the bottle of Jack Daniels that Edgar had ordered. Either way it felt pretty good and it didn't take long before I got in a party mood and wanted to dance. Val joined me and before we knew it different Chinese girls wanted to have a dance with us. I was just enjoying the vibe dancing with different Chinese I thought this was pretty cool and with all respect I had a fun dance with them.

I took a break and had a drink with Stefan. We were talking about the club and the great time we were having so far in China. At that time I noticed a Chinese girl, that stood out by her cartoon-ish shirt, was standing in front of me. She said "hello" and introduced herself as Gaby. We talked a bit and soon after she wanted to have a dance, I agreed. We danced a bit, talked a bit and she seemed really nice. She asked for my Chinese mobile number, which we just so happened to buy a few days earlier. Unfortunate during my stay in the USA my HTC Hero phone decided to give me trouble after the wrong update was installed. This caused my phone to shut down at times when I most needed it, in this case to get a girl number. I asked Frank to catch her number and to give her mine. I told her I would contact her the next day when my phone would work. She took my number from Frank said goodbye and left. The rest of night we danced some more and a second bottle was ordered. By the time we arrived back at campus it was around 05:30. Unfortunate for us there was a big chain around the dorm entrance meaning that we had to wait for another hour before the door would be unlocked. We staid awake and at 06:20 the door opened, we could finally go to our dorm. For some, maybe a bit tipsy, reason I was tired of my phone malfunctioning and decided to fix it right away before heading to sleep. In the end it took me around 3 hours but I finally got it done! I went to bed at 09:30.

I slept for 5 hours before I got up at 13:30 with a slight hangover. However it seemed something had effected my system, because the stomach problems that occurred in Beijing returned. I made the conclusion that it had to be ice cube related. Since I'm quite sure it was not the alcohol previous drinks with beer were no problem, however any mix drink with ice cubes caused me to drop the next day.
With my phone fixed I asked Frank to give me Gaby's number. I send her a message and we started texting (SMS) back and forward, which on that same day turned in to MSN and later, on her recommendation, QQ (A Chinese messenger program). It seemed I made a Chinese friend she shortly after invited all of us to go with her on Wednesday to the Big Wild Pagoda, where the largest fountain of Asia is located. This seemed like a great idea and we accepted her invite.

We had a great time that Wednesday and Gaby introduced us to a few of her friends: Alwyn, Hayle, Tina. Together we watched the Fountain show which lasted about 20 minutes. After the show it was time to go back to campus and we got an invite to join all of them on Friday to eat the traditional 火锅 (Hotpot). Not knowing what Hotpot is we agreed to try it with them.

Friday 10th of September after our first week of Internship we took the bus to the restaurant where we would meet. We learned that day that traveling between 17:30 - 19:00 is near impossible due to the heavy traffic. We arrived a bit late but this didn't seemed to be much of a problem. Once settled down at a big round table, a big bowl of what seemed like some sort of soup, split up in two sections, spicy and not spicy, was presented in front of us. Our new Chinese friends ordered meat, vegetables and beers to celebrate our new friendship. The meat and vegetables was given raw on a plate and it was up to us to boil it in the soup. The concept was very interesting since everyone was eating from the same soup bowl with their chopsticks. At times Gaby would hand us some boiled food to help us out a bit since our skills with chopsticks where not that great.

After dinner we decided to all go to Fantasy here we had a great night. Again the same problem occurred with the dorm, it was locked with a big chain when we arrived. I was really exhausted of dancing with our Chinese friends and decided to lay down on the pavement. I fell a sleep for nearly an hour, by the time I woke up only 10 minutes were remaining before I could go inside an sleep. I had a great night and slept well, this time without any stomach problems. I'm quite sure we will meet our Chinese friends more often in the coming weeks to experience new things here in Xi'an.

Internship Work and Assignment

In the morning on the 6th of September we had a discussion in our office with Professor Yong Yang. The discussion was about our assignment for the coming 5 weeks.
Basically we will be programming full time in a computer language called FORTRAN. FORTRAN is a very old programming language created by IBM in the 1950s. With FORTRAN we will try and solve various aerodynamics problems. These problems are mainly focussed on pressure distributions surrounding 2D airfoils. After the discussion I had to call in sick on my first internship day. :(
I'm not sure what happened but all of a sudden I didn't feel good at all and my temperature started to rise quite a bit 38.5(C). So I went home around lunch time and slept for a total of 20 hours!
The next morning the temperature had dropped and I wanted to catch up on the reading Frank and Stefan had done in the previous day.
Fortunate for me programming has been a hobby of mine in which I'm starting to get more and more familiar. During the summer I have been working as a web-developer in PHP/MySQL for a consulting company. However those are different languages than FORTRAN. Luckily all program languages contain similarities at least in the basics. Within a day of work I felt quite comfortable in the FORTRAN language and tried some of the smaller advanced code examples. This went relatively well.
During Wednesday afternoon I challenged Stefan to try and build the game Tic-Tac-Toe within Fortran. In my experience setting a challenge which people can associate with, in this case a game, allows people to rapidly learn while increasing the fun factor of what might some times seem a bit dull.
Within in a day we both created our own games and during the process I was able to teach Stefan the concept of using Arrays. This turned out to be quite useful, because on the last day we were asked by one of the Chinese students to try and produce a Matrix solver. Which solves matrices for any size.
This assignment was a new experience for me and I gained a new insight in how I could use my programming skills to produce helpful tools. Solving matrices was a subject that was handled during the first year of my Aeronautical Engineering course. Although this is relatively not to hard it would have been nice to sometimes check the answer of matrices that I tried to calculate during that time.
Who knows a possible future in developing education tools? We shall see in time.
Frank mainly focussed on solving geometry problems regarding triangles. So he did not participate with our little challenge. In the coming weeks we will focus on solving the various problems set by the professor starting with the non lifting pressure distribution around a 2D cylinder. Not sure if I'll post about these things since I can imagine that it might not make sense to most people that read this ;)

Hello NPU (The First Week)

After our Beijing adventures we finally arrived at the city of destination, Xi'an.
Xi'an know for being the culture capital of China will be our home for the coming 5 months. Here we will study at 西北工业大学 (Northwestern Polytechnical University / NPU)
During the last weeks I have kept in contact with the head of overseas students departments Mr. Wentao and was able to arrange pick-up from the airport.
The pick up would take us directly to the campus.
For the first time in my life I came out of baggage claim with a person holding up a sign with my name! I thought this was pretty cool.
The person with the sign turned out to be mister Du from the International Office, he would be responsible for us during our stay in Xi'an. If we have any trouble or need to get something done, he would be the guy we would have to go to. He arranged a van which took as from the airport to the old campus located just south west of Xi'an City wall.


The drive to the campus took around 40 minutes.
When we entered the Campus gate we were amazed it pretty much seemed like a small city. It was huge, after a few street turns we arrived at the international dormitory. Here the university had arranged rooms for us to life in during our internship.
By random choice Frank and I were matched up to stay in the same apartment. Stefan would share his apartment with a French male student. Our rooms were dusty so we decided to clean them first before unpacking. We heard from mister Du that a supermarket would be on the other side of the road called RenRenLe this is where we could buy some product to clean our rooms.
In the supermarket each isle had multiple employees trying to assists us in buying all kinds of different items. At one point we were surrounded by 8 employees all holding different wash detergent, while we tried to figure out which was best quality/price value.
After we cleaned our dorms and unpacked our stuff, we went to small restaurant on campus called TimesCafé to have some dinner. Here we learned about the word 没有 ( meiyou), everything we tried to order on the menu was "meiyou","meiyou" and "meiyou".
This was quite a shame since I was really looking forward to try a pizza. The thing they did have was some rice, with soy-sauce. It was quite dry, a bit of a let down.

The rest of the week we spend time visiting the international office to get our student cards, internet for the dormitory and talking to some other international students. On creation of my student card it turned out that someone else already had taken my student number so it took a bit longer than usual to get my card produced. This card is also a paying card for the school cafeterias and room facilities like water, electricity and internet. On Friday morning we met with our Chinese professor Yong Yang. He would be our supervisor for our internship periode. We had a nice talk about our stay in China so far, what to expect for our internship. He took us to our office on the 5th floor of one of the Aeronautic buildings. The room was labeled "Experimental Software Division" when we opened the door it was clear that the room was not used for a long time. Dust everywhere.
The professor explained cleaning the office is our own responsibility, the benefit would be that no one else will touch your work. This made sense and during the weekend we made sure to clean our office.
The setup is quite nice we all have our own desk with office chairs and dual core pcs to work on were provided. Overall an easy first week on NPU nothing much going on except settling down and explore the area a bit.

5 Nights in Beijing - Day 5 (Great Wall, Emperors Burial Grounds, Hooters?)

[6:45] -_- early in the morning.
We had to get up early because we decided to take a tour to the burial grounds of the emperors and with the main event the Great Wall total price 300 yuan each. As a bonus we would visit a Jade Factory and a Silk Factory although these two seemed more like additional forced sponsored visits. In the hope we would buy some things. Not sure what the deal here was, maybe a sponsor deal for the trip or something. They were kind enough to show us how things were made and how to tell the real and the fake jade apart. This did make it interesting enough to not smell the commercial aspect right away. As for the burial grounds I personally thought it did not show many interesting things. What I can say is that the scenery was beautiful and the guide was very nice explaining all the different artifacts found. The group that we were with were all nice people which was a big plus. I talked for a long time to a woman from Australia about her travelings and her country. It was quite a nice chat and I got some insight of life in Australia. (future visit?)

After the burials grounds we headed to the main even of the tour The Great Wall!
We took a cart ride up to the mountain. I'm not to sorrow to walk, but the tour only had limited amount of time so the suggestion was made to take the cart. So we did, this turned out to be quite nice actually. Once on top, we climbed the wall. The scenery is breath taking! The hills, the wall and seeing it endlessly going on, it is truly amazing. On the wall there are many tourist, but with some good timing you can take some incredible picture like the one I show here.


I had a beautiful experience here and will remember this sight for the rest of my life. I would recommend anyone that is willing to travel to Beijing to have a look. It's a must! Once down again we bought some T-shirts saying "I climbed the Great wall". Stefan bought his first for 40 yuan, after that I bought mine for 20 Yuan and Frank later on even got it down to 10, but already bought one with me for 20. We got some great insight in the prices on tourist items.

At the end of the tour we went back to the hotel, we seen this advertisement on a free map of Beijing that was given by the hotel. It was an advertisement for the Chinese Hooters. I explained to Frank and Stefan the concept of Hooters in the US and I suggested we should go and check out them Chinese Hooters. Without any objection we got in another taxi and headed towards hooters.
At this point I should point out that the taxi cost about 2 Yuan per km which is about 0,23 euro cents per km. So it's quite a nice alternative if your not familiar with the bus route. At Hooters we had a girl which went by the name of Emma serving us food, she brought a friend to have a chat with us. Suggested we should go to some club nearby and wait for them there after work. We tried to find the club to check it out, but failed. Maybe for the better because we had to leave the hotel at 05:00 the next morning to take a plain to the city of Xi'an. The city were we will have our internship for 100 working days. Although we didn't have enough time to explore the night life of Beijing, we visited a lot culture things and I think we will all remember the amazing scenery and bad traffic, haha. Good bye Beijing, see you in 5 months!

5 Nights in Beijing - Day 4 (Tiananmen Square, Summer Palace, Olympic Stadium)

I'm feeling a lot better today! Still a little stress on the stomach, but not enough to keep me down. Since we staid in the hotel yesterday it was time for some catching up on our Beijing experience. So we made a small plan on where to go and what to see using our remaining time efficient as possible. After breakfast we headed out and started walking south towards Tiananmen Square. The weather was again beautiful with temperatures around 30 degrees (86F), not a cloud in the sky. Arrival at Tiananmen Square first thing we saw was the face of Mao, time to take a quick picture and move on.

The square on its own was not very interesting apart from its gigantic size, however the sculptures surrounding the square representing the founding of the People Republic of China showed a lot history. We headed south and walked through a shopping street after a quick check at a New Balance shoe store which was heavily overpriced it was time to move on. We got a taxi and tried to explain that we wanted to go to the summer palace. He understood what we meant and after a 30 minute drive we arrived at the summer palace which was located in the north-east corner of Beijing. The summer palace as the name might indicate was a palace used by the emperor and the empress during the summer to cool off during the summer. I must say, the emperor had quite a nice location to have his summer palace here. We climbed up to the highest point and took a few pictures and videos of the scenery, truly stunning!


After the Summer Palace we grabbed another taxi, this time heading towards the Olympic Stadium on arrival the line for tickets to have a peek inside the stadium got closed. Bummer just a few minutes late, so we walked around a bit and noticed we could have a look at the Olympic swimming pool. So we did, unfortunate the Olympic swimming pool was closed due to some water show. In the same building there was also a recreational section with some slides that take you in a loop truly amazing, would love to try it sometime. Who knows, we might try this on our way back in 5 months.

After this great sightseeing tour we thought it would be nice to have a drink and eat at one of the bar areas around Beijing. According to our hotel we should head a little bit north of the forbidding city. So we did and we arrived at a lake in the middle of the city where lights were shining all around the lake. We walked around a bit until we passed some restaurants. Here we had dinner, we certainly paid much more than at the previous restaurant, but the food was quite nice. Walking around the lake we were offered drinks and girls that we would have to pay to come drink with us. We took most of the free drinks and left the bar area in a "happy" state. Don't ask me how but for some reason we took the risk to sit with 3 people on a 2 person rickshaw (tuk-tuk) this certainly created a fun situation and we laughed all the way until the hotel. The next morning we would need to get up early to join a tour which we signed up for.

5 Nights in Beijing - Day 3 (Sick)

Argg....

Not sure what is going on, I'm not feeling well....
Stomach problems, must be the difference in food or drinks or something.
After some quick check on the internet it turned out to be quite common that the transition of region causes stomach problems, but this shouldn't last more than a few days. Great the rest of my Beijing experience being ruined by this?
I doubt it since I usually recover within a day. We'll see what happens tomorrow.
Slept all day, staid close to the bathroom at all times. Frank and Stefan decided to stay at the hotel as well. They were not feeling super great and still felt a bit of the jet-lag. At the end of the day they brought me some western looking food, which tasted great! Went to sleep again hopefully feeling better the next morning.

5 Nights in Beijing - Day 2 (Forbidden City)

I slept great last night! I had to share my bed with Frank this did not turn out to be a problem. Although he did complain I kept taking all the cover, haha.
Today turned out to be a sunny day, 30 degrees Celsius (86F). We decided to spend our day at the forbidden city since it was close by and one of the main sights of Beijing.

Nice walk in the beautiful weather with Chinese tourist everywhere, who happened all to be amazed with Stefan's height. Stefan is quite tall 205cm (6'7 feet) so he really stood out compared to the average Chinese 171 cm(5'7 feet). From time to time we noticed pictures were being take of us. We just smiled and waved, which caused happy and laughing faces. We entered the Forbidden City from the South Gate which on its own is enormous.


We took an audio guide and decided I should listen to the guide and pass the information to Frank and Stefan. We learned about what the city was used for and that the forbidden city has a total of nine thousand, nine hundred and ninety nine rooms. Chinese historical culture says that heaven has ten thousands rooms, the emperor had one less to show he wanted to show his importance was next in line right after heaven.
In the forbidden city we walked around for several hours visiting almost every region of the city. From the emperor throne to the different houses the emperors and empresses chose to life in.
The main events like the throne were flooded by people trying to take pictures. Fortunate with our height it is quite easy to get a good shot.
At one point there seemed to be some panic at one of the gates we tried to pass through. After we passed the gate it got closed and we were locked in to one of the courts. Some security guards came and started forcing people to move away from the main highlights of the city.
We all basically got locked in the court and decided to sit and wait in the shade to see what happens. It turned out that there was a representative of an African nation visiting the Forbidden City, so everyone had to make way. The whole event took about 25 minutes before we were allowed to move on again. Overall the city was quite beautiful and extremely big!

When we left the city a few different sellers tried to sell us Rolex watches and Chinese statues. Quite a bargain but not something we were really interested in at that time. We went back to the hotel to relax a bit. That night we headed a bit east of the hotel and found a great restaurant where we had great food and a few beers all for a total of 15 euros. This was truly a shock for us, great food, a nice looking restaurant and beers (600mL per bottle) included and that for such a price. There is no way you would find something like this for the same price in The Netherlands. Happy and satisfied we went back to the hotel for a good night of sleep.

5 Nights in Beijing - Day 1 (Arrival)

[12:40] Arrival at Beijing after a 10 hour flight.
I slept little on the plane, but with some movies provided by the in-flight entertainment it was quite durable. Although for the first 15 minutes I was afraid all movies were Chinese dubbed. It later turned out I just had to switch the channel.
Anyhow, we finally arrived and we decided we should just head to the hotel we booked. Stefan had made reservation at a hotel close to the old city and had printed the address in Chinese. Since we were not to sure on which bus to take and being a bit tired we decided to take a taxi to take us to the hotel. We got in line for the taxis and were appointed to a small fan which was old and crooked but did the job. The drive would take around 45 minutes and cost 480 yuan for 3 people. This is about 50 euros in total. Of course this later turned out to be quite the rip-off, but hey, first time in China not sure what the prices were. From our point of view this was still relatively cheap compared to back home.

During our ride to the hotel we got a quick introduction to the Chinese traffic rules, which basically state:
- use the clutch at all time
- on a 3 way lane drive with at least 4 cars next to each other
- the safety lane can be used to speed along the traffic
- use your big light when the person in front of you is not moving fast enough to your liking.
In other words complete chaos!
I personally thought it was quite a miracle we didn't get in any accidents, but it seemed we had a driver familiar with all these rules so we went amazingly fast.

We arrived at The Emperor Hotel, located just east from the Forbidden City. This is where we would stay during our 5 nights in Beijing.
During the wait for our check-in we all got a cup of tea and a wet hot rug to wash our hands and face. Quite nice after such a trip.
Taken to our rooms we were quite amazed with the style used in the rooms. The design really stood out especially the placement of the shower. This design inevitably caused this picture to be taken by Stefan.


After a quick shower we decided to explore the surrounding area. Walking up north, we started to understand that this place was not just a tourist place for internationals but also for the Chinese. Trust me there were a lot of them! After a nice walk we got a bit hungry and decided to just pick a restaurant and check it out.
Frank noticed one on our way he said it looked pretty decent. So we had a check and encountered a few internationals. We sat down and had a look at the menu.
I wanted to order something traditional, to get in the Chinese spirit.
I ordered a portion of dumpling, of course chopsticks were provided and we agreed to force ourself to learn to eat with it.
During dinner we heard the other internationals speak in Dutch, so we thought saying "hello" wouldn't be a bad idea. It turned out that they were students from the same city as us, Delft. I thought this was quite funny to meet people from the same city within 6 hours in an unfamiliar country and that just by chance. After dinner we headed back to our hotel. I had quite a jetlag from flying through 13 time zones within 48 hours so I went to bed at 20:00. To wake up the next morning feeling greatly refreshed.

26 hours

*Yawn*
Bit tired, but well entertained on the nearly 9 hour flight. I was seated above the left engine which provided a constant vibration. This didn’t help me to catch sleep so I’m feeling a bit tired. Luckily these days a great alternative to sleep is in place, the in-flight entertainment system.

With a selection of a few different movies I killed the time and arrived safely in The Netherlands. Upon arrival my dad and the Uncles were waiting for me.
I was very happy seeing them again and after a cup of coffee we headed towards a city called Leiden. In Leiden we would meet up with a few close relatives and friends for dinner. Here I could share my stories and have a pre-celebration of my 22nd birthday which would take place the next day. I had a good rest that night.

AUG 24

This day will be remembered as “The chill rush to China celebration!”
What an exciting day indeed, trust me I've had quite some memories about my birthdays, but this one I will not forget for any time soon.

Let’s start with the chill part, 10:00 nice breakfast with my uncle, eggs and juice, no rush. With my bags almost packed everything seemed to be going quite smooth. Frank (same year aeronautical student) arrived who would join me and my uncle for the ride to the city of Antwerp in Belgium. From Antwerpen we would take at 16:30 the Thalys (high speed train) to Schiphol Amsterdam. The drive would approximately take around an hour or so according to my uncle.
With our bags all packed we drove off at 14:45. After a 45 minute drive (15:30) we approached the Belgium boarder and decided to have a small snack at a road restaurant. We had a late brunch and were quite hungry and it would only take 15 more minutes to Antwerpen or so we thought...

After the small break we turned on the GPS system and the display showed 40 minutes with an arrival time of 16:25!!
We jumped in the car and my uncle started speeding (140 km/87 miles and hour) while I tried to keep my calm and just focus on what had to be done the moment we arrived at the station. Frank was just chilling in the back, hoping it would all turn out well. Arrival at Antwerpen 20 minutes left, we still had to drive through the city. We ran in to construction work ended up on the bus track and did something which are probably not allowed. We were about a block from the station away with no option to get any closer. 10 minutes left Frank suggested we should stop and just run to the station, I quickly checked the GPS and it seems at that exact moment we were only one long street away from the Station. My uncle pulled the car over, Frank and I got out grabbed all our bags and started running. Around 6~7 kilogram on my back and a 20 kilogram in the hand. I cursed myself for wearing flip flops at this point.
As fast as we could we got to the station with 7 minutes left until train departure. I saw a ticket window and kindly asked some girls to let us pass, by the look on our faces and with the bags in hand they understood the situation and stepped aside.
Sadly for us it was the wrong ticket window! Thalys tickets were sold at the entrance of the station. We rushed to the entrance of the station where Stefan (same year aeronautical student) was waiting on us with his Thalys ticket already in hand and pointed us to the ticket window. He already went ahead towards the railroad. Stefan's aunt was waiting for us in line on our arrival she was next in line.
Thank god she stood there because the line was very long and we could not waste another minute! 5 minutes left, we put some pressure on the employee to start printing some tickets, he said we were lucky my other uncle, who I have to point out as one of the most excellent travel agents, already registered our names for the Thalys. This made the ticket printing an easy job and it was done in a few minutes. After the printing he told us we are very lucky because the train had a delay of 5 minutes! So it would leave at 16:35. Which gave us 4 minutes to run to the correct railroad. Problem was we still had to run 5 stores underground with bags and all. With our tickets in hands we weren't about to give up and with a few crazy quick sprints down the escalators we managed to get to the right platform, where Stefan was waiting for us with good news. We made it!

YES!
What a relieve, my heart was pounding like mad and my legs were shaking, but the news that we actually made it brought great joy.
The train arrived, we said goodbye to Stefan's family and boarded the train.
Which took us within an hour to Schiphol Airport.

At Schiphol I first found my dad waiting for me. He brought a present and a card with Chinese characters written on it. The present was a small book with Dutch-Chinese translations this could help me during my stay in China. Later on Frank's family and my uncles arrived. We all had diner together.

It was time for Frank, Stefan and me to head towards the gate. Up on arrival at the gate I noticed the increasing amount of Chinese people there was no place to sit so we stood around waiting until boarding would start. Calls were made for parents with infants and disabled people. During that time all the Chinese seemed to wake up and got in one big line. As soon as the doors opened for normal boarding they just marched in.
I was stunned!
I told Stefan and Frank to wait getting in line until everyone else has passed. Our tickets had our seat numbers printed on them so there was no use joining the madness I just witnessed. I would like to remind you that a mere 26 hours ago I got of a Delta flight from the US where boarding is done in sections. Starting with the passengers at the back slowly moving to the front of the plane. Which makes boarding efficient and pleasant.
So what I witnessed just now was a bit shocking and strange. It was like people were afraid the plane might be full if they didn't hurry up. Walking through the plane it was a bit of chaos, people all over the plane were still putting their stuff up and a few people were walking back and forward through the isles.

Our seats were all the way in the back at last row. I got to my seat and found a Chinese woman sitting in my seat. She moved back to her own seat which was located 3 row to the front. I'm not sure what she was hoping for. Once I settled down I noticed the space was a bit limited but enough to remain comfortable during the flight.
20:55 The plane took off, destination Beijing (Peking)!
Estimated flight time: 10 hours and 20 minutes

Goodbye America!

Two months have passed and its time to move on with my seven month journey. My stayin sweet home Alabama with my beloved mom, brother and sister has come to an end and even though over the years I have learned to part with them it still remains an unpleasant event. Just before we went up to the airport we took some family pictures and they turned out great! Im very happy we made these.

13:30 [GMT 5:00]
After saying goodbye I got on the plane which took me to Atlanta. The flight to Atlanta is a short one hour flight with a great view on the country side of the states. It sets my mind off of things and is a good preparation for the longer flights ahead of me.

15:40 [GMT 4:00]
After a pleasant flight it was time to wait for a total of 8 hours, before I could continue with my flight to the Netherlands. So what do you on an airport for 8 hours? I usually start killing time by just walking, try and avoid using the metro/train which takes you from terminal to terminal and use your legs just to get some movement. Another good reason for walking is the limited space Ill have once Im on the airplane and with plenty of time on my side there was no reason to rush. After walking around for 40 minutes, it was time to get some food. Enough places where I could eat, took the easy way out and went to the Food Court, grabbed a McChicken and a Dr. Pepper. Fortunate for me free Wifi was available around the food court, downside, none of the connections seemed to work. Thiswas quite a pinch since I still had a little less than 7 hours to burn. Luckily a friendly employee who was walking by was so nice to pass me a password to a secured fast connection. With my laptop connected to the internet and the power cable plugged in time was flying. Starbucks Coffee in between kept me up and going and before I knew it my flight was announced. 23:50

[GMT 4:00]
The long wait was finally over, it was time to board. Next stop Amsterdam!

The Great Journey

Exactly one month from now I'll be starting "The Great Journey".
The hardcore halo fans are bound to be familiar with that terminology, but before you grab your guns and start hunting me, hear me out. ;)

"The Great Journey" has nothing to do with the covenant religion in this case. Currently I'm studying hard for the last exams of the 2nd year of aeronautical engineering, meaning that my free days during summer are approaching. Which is a good thing, since I can't wait to get some time off and do all the other things I love without being distracted by college. This will mainly involve heading to the beach and have some fun with similar character to those from Baywatch. ( or so I hope :$)

Your probably wondering by now:
"Well that's nice and all Bas, but what does this have to do with this Great Journey you speak off".

Let me explain, exactly one month from now on July the 5th I'll be heading to the USA to spend 7 weeks of my summer days at my mom's place.
I hear you think: "Your mom lives in the USA, but I thought you were from the Netherlands?"

Yes I'm from the Netherlands and I'm Dutch my mom decided about a decade ago that she wanted to try her luck in the Wild West and moved there and is currently still living there happily which I support 100%. I try to visit her every year during summer, so for me it's a big break from college. Where I can enjoy a total relaxation and spend some quality time with my brother and sister. :)

So yeah, I'll be leaving for 7 weeks. Now your probably thinking: "Good for you, enjoy your 7 weeks of the Great Journey" There is a catch here....

The Great Journey doesn't stop there.
On August the 23rd I'll be back in the Netherlands, within 24 hours on arrival, I'll be getting on another flight and this time not for 7 weeks, but for a little over 5 months!!
Destination: China.

Your thinking: "Wow, China! What the hell are you going to do in China for a little over 5 months."

During my 3rd year of Aeronautical Engineering I have to do an internship at a company or university, aeronautical related, for a period of 5 months. There just so happens to be an exchange program being offered with a Chinese University, this is the Northwestern Polytechnical University at Xi'an.
So I figured why not go with the extreme and see what's it like to life in a world unknown to most people from the Western world. There is no better way to explore this by living and studying there.

So yeah, in exactly 1 month from now I'll be starting "The Great Journey".
Which will take me from the small nation called the Netherlands, to the biggest player of the West, the United Stats of America and from there to the biggest player of the East, China. The Great Journey has a total elapse time of 7 months!

So what does this mean for Bas?
Great life experience, big boost in knowledge lots of Hamburgers and Noodles, a great variety in girls. (or so I hope :P )
As for the internet,
Let's hope that the Chinese internet censor doesn't include, Halo and website like this one. Since I heard Youtube, Facebook and some other big websites are blocked. I'll be bringing my laptop with me, that's why I'm getting it repaired right now even though it's exam week.

So basically I'll be online a lot during "The Great Journey" but there is a major time difference, and possible censorship, which might effect some of the communication. Fortunate with my laptop around I'll be able to continue developing and be sure that GenHS will be done by Fall.

Phew, long post! But figured it would be nice to give you a guys and update on what I'm doing in life.
Reactions are more than welcome!

Yours truly,

- Bas

Where is Bas?

It's always hard to imagine before you write anything down what the topic of your blog will be. Since life can be so random the content of the blog will be random. So how do you define a great blog title which has to sum all this randomness up?

Sitting down behind my desk, watching the sun go down from my apartment on the 6th floor. I came up with the following title: "Where is Bas?", based on the great children book "Where is Waldo?".


I figured a blog is somewhat like that book, you post some pictures, write a little bit of text on what you been up to and get some friends, family or even the random internet strangers to read your blog. These readers are then able to determine what you been up to and where your currently at. Just like the book you may come across some scenery which you dislike or have difficulty understanding, when that happens there is always the possibility to flip the page and hopefully find a scenery which is more to your liking or wait till the 2nd book (post) comes out.

And so the story begins...