Rotary

Rotary Club of Beijing meets

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Lunches and dinners

The Rotary Club of Beijing meets now regularly with in principle 3 lunches and one dinner each month.
Our Rotaract Clubs try their best, the West Club with online seminars and the Sanlitun starting again the career talks. The upcoming career talk is by Rtn Benoit, our IPR guru.
On 1 December we had the Annual General Meeting with the elections of the new team for 2021-2022. Next president in July 2021 will be our PE Didier (Belgium) with as the new PE Benoit (yes, Belgium!).

As such the meeting was members only. Some members joined by ZOOM to vote.

A gourmet dinner

Rtn Regula invited us on 5 December 2020 for a real gourmet dinner, prepared by a Chinese chef who worked many years as the cook for ambassadors. Terrific job by the guy who is like 80 years old.

I then also let the people guess who was in this picture dated 1 June 1986,
Yes the two ladies were at the table…

Let’s talk bread

On 8 December 2020 dinner in Morel’s Restaurant for the Rotary Club of Beijing, members and guests.
Guest speaker was David Colin, Mexican CFO of one of the largest bread companies in the world, “BIMBO”.
BIMBO is a Mexican company that has conquered the world and China. David spent some 14 years in China and told us about its development of the company and about the regular culture shock between Mexican and Chinese way of life.
Bimbo (Beijing) Food Co., LTD manufactures and distributes bakery food products. The Company produces bread, bread-type rolls, cakes, burgers, sandwiches, and more. Bimbo (Beijing) Food mainly conducts businesses in China. See here.

In our home we were regular customers of their bread! Pretty tasty!
Our guest Emily got the well-know apple pie of Morel’s as her birthday cake!

Rotary Beijing in action

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Rotaract Club of Beijing

Rotary Beijing in action, also includes our Rotaract Clubs. The West club is still struggling as most of its members are unable to return to China and many universities impose restrictions for students to leave their campus. They do however organize regular online events.

Rotaract Club of Beijing

We did have a few meetings of the Sanlitun club, in Yard House (SOHO Sanlitun), like on 23 November.

Lunch in Kempinski

On 17 November the Rotary Club of Beijing had the regular Tuesday lunch in Kempinski.
Rtn Piper once again patiently explained the complex financing tools we have for our projects, the so-called Rotary Foundation and related.

We also welcomed a new member, our Belgian friend Benoit who is an IP specialist. He is also a member of my “Old China Hands Lunch”.

Dinner at Morel’s

Once per month we have a dinner instead of the usual lunch.
Again we could welcome a speaker, our new member Benoit who refreshed our knowledge of IP. Yes, all that complicated stuff of patents, etc. Think about all the fake GUCCI, Red Label and other on the market here… China being the champion of fakes… despite the clampdown by the authorities.

“Intellectual property rights are legal rights that provide creators protection for original works, inventions, or the appearance of products, artistic works, scientific developments, and so on. There are four types of intellectual property rights (IP): patents, trademarks, copyrights, and trade secrets.”

Not to be confused with IP address… “IP address stands for internet protocol address; it is an identifying number that is associated with a specific computer or computer network. When connected to the internet, the IP address allows the computers to send and receive information.”

Another nice dinner by Morel’s Restaurant!

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.

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.

Beijing Rotary in 2020

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Virus year

A good start, then Beijing Rotary in 2020 became the virus year. Obviously the operation of the Rotary Club of Beijing was severely affected.

Our last memorable event was once more in the Hyatt Regency Wangjing where General Manager Till arranged a great reception where Rotarians, Rotaractors and guest had a good time. Then…

ZOOM and Morel’s

Our Rotaract Club of Beijing maintained several meetings online, with ZOOM.

When Morel’s Restaurant restarted operation, I suggested to start there some unofficial lunches, all while respecting all health measures such as social distancing, registration and hand washing. The first lunch was on 14 April and some Rotaractors also joined.

The following lunch was on 21 April 2020.

 

We had a board meeting on 28 April, some in the meeting, most (like me) on ZOOM.
Then on 19 May and 26 May more lunches at Morel’s Restaurant.
Later we started again our regular lunches at the Beijing Kempinski Hotel.

More to report! This is part 1.