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.

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.

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.

A look back to 2019

See the previous part. Here comes Beijing Rotary in 2019 (part 2).

More to come about our activities in 2020.

Our SR Richard

As mentioned earlier we have a “Special Representative”. See here his previous visit on 5 November 2019.
That was with Jonathan as our club president. We also had Rotaractors joining.

And see the pics of our lunch on 12 November 2019.

UNHCR presentation

During our lunch in Kempinski on 26 November 2019 we had a presentation by UNHCR (United Nations High Commission for Refugees), Ms. Margriet Veenma, Senior Protection Officer (Leiden University, Netherlands). See their recent update:
https://reporting.unhcr.org/sites/default/files/UNHCR%20China%20Fact%20Sheet%20March%202020.pdf
or here: UNHCR China Fact Sheet March 2020

Margriet introduced UNHCR’s global efforts assisting refugees and asylum seekers in China. Based in Beijing she was previously assigned to territories including DR Congo, Egypt, Pakistan and Sudan.

Rtn Viktor brought several banners from his trip in Germany (Berlin and Leipzig), Rtn Martin introduced the club Kauniainen – Grankulla of Finland.

We also had a visitor Rtn James of the club of The Hague Metropolitan (Netherlands).

Finally a cake

I complained that every year the December birthday boys and girls don’t get the birthday cake. This year, yes I had a BIG one, during the lunch on 17 December 2019. No speaker that day.

Thank you!

A look back to Beijing Rotary in 2019.

Yes, I am finally cleaning up my pictures. More to follow. This is part 1.
Our Rotary Club of Beijing was pretty active in 2019 when the dreaded virus had not yet messed up our lives.

Different locations

We usually have our weekly meetings in a private room in the Beijing Kempinski Hotel but we do change at times.

See here some of the different locations, such as our evening in Legend Beer (27 April 2019), Via Roma in Kempinski (6 August 2019), Hotel Chao in Gongti Dong Lu (27 August 2019), and Paulaner in Kempinski (2 July 2019).

Kempinski lunch 29 October 2019

The speaker of the day was Humana People to People, Michael Hermann, chief representative.

Humana People to People China is a development organization, started in 2005 in cooperation with the Yunnan Government Poverty Alleviation Bureau with the aim to create development in poverty areas of China. On 23.07.2010 the organization registered at the Civil Affairs Bureau of Yunnan Province as a foreign background non-profit organization.
See: https://www.linkedin.com/in/michael-hermann-58058917/

About Michael Hermann, in German:
Der 63-jährige Michael Hermann arbeitet seit nunmehr 15 Jahren als freiwilliger Helfer in Südwestchina. Als Vertreter der Hilfsorganisation „Humana People to People (HPP)“ setzt er sich dafür, Kindertagesstätten für Vorschulkinder in den Bergdörfern der Provinz Yunnan einzurichten, um den Teufelskreis der Armut zu zerstören.
http://www.bjrundschau.com/Meinungen/202010/t20201019_800223982.html

A gorgeous BBQ

Thanks to Rtn Till of the Hyatt Regency in Wangjing a vast number of Rotarians and Rotaractors turned up to enjoy the sumptuous BBQ buffet.

Looking back at those pictures, sad to see how many of our friends left Beijing and how much the virus has changed our social life.