Shanghai Stories - Coming Soon!

Since my time is currently limited and I have much to share with you about this city. I will need to take my time to get it all written down. Here is a city view from the 88th floor of the Jin Mao Tower and The Bund.
Cheers!

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.