Life in the city

Belgians in Beijing

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Back to social life

Beijing being without doubt the safest place in the world, free of COVID-19, Belgians in Beijing have been getting together recently, with a social drink and with an official reception at the Belgian embassy.

“Belgians in Beijing”

The BiB had a successful social on 29 October 2020 in Groovy’s Schiller (the former Nearby The Tree), a lively chat over beer and food.

We are also looking forward not only to the revival of the BiB but also to the upcoming activities of Vlamingen in de Wereld, with its new Beijing delegate.

King’s Day

King’s Day is more or less considered as our “National Day” in locations such as Beijing as the real National Day is on 21 July when most people are away.
On 13 November 2020 the Belgian ambassador graciously invited the Belgian community to his residence for drinks and food. It was good to be back in the “old” embassy (actually now the Residence only), with the present “temporary” embassy in the Fort Knox building, a pretty unwelcoming location.

Food was by Renaat Morel, delicious and copious as always, drinks offered by the sponsors (Stella Artois, Hoegaarden, Vedett and others).

The ambassador mentioned in his speech the absence of many of our compatriots. At least we had the Schtroumpfs to keep us company.

Very nice evening thanks to the mild winter temperature. Good to meet many familiar faces.

Old China Hands 6 November

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Full house

Our Old China Hands 6 November lunch had a nice crowd of 34 people. New faces and also some who managed to come back after the imposed quarantine. We can now say Beijing is the safest place to be in this dangerous virus world…
Again our friend Kent surprised us all with a big box of his home-made cookies “Halloween” theme. Thank you Kent!
While the “official” start time is 12:00 half of the tables are full well before midday. All eager to join the lunch!

Renaat Morel, the boss of Morel’s Restaurant still sticks to his special price for our set menu. I guess an increase is due for January as it is really (too) cheap.

Next lunch

The next lunch is set for Friday 4 December, the last one of the virus year.
We hope to see more of our members back from abroad.

Rotary Beijing in November

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Kempinski Hotel

Rotary Beijing in November started with a lunch in Kempinski Hotel, it was a special lunch for members only. Our Rotarian Daniel joined the meeting online from his quarantine in Shenyang. He briefed the members about the latest issues for our club.

Oil rigs

Definition: a structure above an oil well on land or in the sea that has special equipment attached to it for drilling and removing oil from the ground.

It was the word of the evening on 10 November 2020 when Tony told us about his 46 years on offshore oil rigs, his passion for it, anecdotes and special experiences (human and professional) in the many fascinating countries he worked in. Tony worked in so many countries I cannot remember… Indonesia, Vietnam, Egypt, North Sea, and many more.

His talk and our dinner were in Morel’s Restaurant, attended by members of the Rotary Club of Beijing and guests. Great talk that opened up a world few of us are familiar with.

Decoration in Morel’s Restaurant

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Flower shop?

Our Susan has a weakness for beautiful flowers and she uses her skills for the artful decoration in Morel’s Restaurant with a wide array of fresh flowers; all the arrangements are done by herself and no plastic flowers! All fresh!
See some of her bouquets and arrangements. One flower that stands out is the orange pincushion flower – I had to Google it to learn about it. Pretty expensive…

And she invented a vase with fake ice cubes – they look like it but it is done by … plastic bags in water. Clever!
Ladies also receive a special flower gift (if they are nice). Or, as I do, take it home for the wife who loves it!

Halloween came to Morel’s

Like every year Susan also puts up the decoration for Halloween, attracting the curiosity of Chinese onlookers who take pictures. Susan is part-time artist…

I contributed with the two big pumpkins, first serving as decoration and later for a delicious pumpkin soup!
This year nobody came painted as ghosts, I guess we already look scary enough without makeup. To be on the safe side and keep ghosts away I had a great red wine. Works.

Beijing Rotary in 2020 (part 2)

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Board meeting 10 July 2020

This final part 2 of Beijing Rotary in 2020, other reports were published earlier.
The Rotary Club of Beijing held a board meeting in Kitty & Daniel’s Grill and Bar, near The Place. An interesting decoration as you can see in the pictures, I guess they spent tons of money on it. I personally found the food good, some of my friends were less happy.

This time no zoom, all present!
I gave the impression eating most because … I love cleaning bones…

Some more Morel’s lunches

We had other lunches in Morel’s Restaurant on 2 and 9 June 2020.

Rotaract Sanlitun had a social in Legend Beer (RIP…) on 15 June.

Major donor

I was honored to receive the crystal and pin as Major Donor (level 1) to the Paul Harris Rotary Foundation Fund.

See: https://www.rotary.org/en/donate/recognition

Rotary dinner 13 October 2020

A nice dinner again in Morel’s Restaurant, well attended by Rotarians and guests. The speaker was Dr. Paul Rochon and the topic attracted many people who were not disappointed.
Paul talked to us about how to turn sleep in something to empower… dreams coming true?  hidden side of dreams? Maybe, but surely all about sleep as Paul with 2 masters and a Ph.D is a specialist in biopsychology and expert in everything related to sleep.

He focused on “sleep chronotypes”, see: https://engineeringsleep.com/chronotypes/
His website: http://engineeringsleep.com/
I actually did the tests he mentions, also contacted him about it.

I also gave the membership certificates to two of our new members.