4th day in Beijing, if I counted it right

Very confused about the date and day of the week. Busy, busy, busy, busy...

Saturday was the first day in weeks that I could have seven hours sleep, but that was followed by three busy days in a row.

On Sunday, we had a meeting about the exhibition at 9am. Then, we were in the hotel waiting for the delegates to arrive. It turned out going smoothly, except very tired and long day for us.

On Monday, I woke up at 5:30am! Not because I couldn't sleep but because there were works, works, works, and again, busy, busy, busy...

Today, it's the exhibition opening. Again, things went fine but making you very very tired.

The exhibition is supposed to be opened every day from today till Sunday from 9am to 5pm. But today, it "closed" at 3:30pm. Why? Because it was "sealed" for security check to prepare for the special session for Communist Party and Government leaders.

Only two working staff were allowed in per counter, i.e., me and an AS. May be the lowest rank "working staff" among all the Chinese cities' exhibition booths (Macau, our next door neighour had a Bureau Secretary!). We ended up having Wu Yi and a few other important leaders whom I couldn't name visiting the exhibition, and I took a lot of pictures of Wu Yi visiting the HK booth :)

I couldn't turn on the camera and downloaded the pictures. Hopefully, that's only because the camera is out of power (the camera is my colleague's).

P.S. I can write to the blog but can't see the blog from Beijing. I can't visit any blog from blogger.com and blogspirit.com I don't know why, but it seems that it is being blocked here.

Ida @ BJ, again

Yes, I am in Beijing again, 2nd time in four months.

This time is also for work trip. A conference cum exhibition on Beijing + 10. Ends up the scale of the conference is much bigger than I ever expected. Let see if I will write about it next week.

Arrived at noon today. Somehow for no reason the girl who helped me to check-in in the hotel thought I was from Taiwan, when I am holding a home entry permit and barely speak any Mandarin.

Been to check out the exhibition counter, visited a huge book store and had a nice dinner tonight. Will have a busy day tomorrow and the day after tomorrow. Better get some good sleep tonight.

The good thing about today is because the hotel (owned by one of the organizers of the conference) is fully booked, I got upgraded to the uppest floor...hehe...

The room has a nice view to the main street. I opened the window and took the picture below.

Cantonese VS Mandarin

Still exhausted.

Lately, I am working around the clock. Proofreading the conference proceedings even when I am in the MTR or the elevator. But still, I am too slow. My office hours are full of ad-hoc things that suddently pop up, and I can only sit down quietly at home (!) to do the proofreading.

Apart from work, I have two agenda items lately: (1) on diet; and (2) last minute practice of Mandarin.

I find that I am 15-lb heavier than two years ago (that was the MSW time) so I am alarmed. I try to eat less and do some exercise. Unfortunately, this is not successful. Firstly, I am very tired and always want to eat something good. Secondly, I am too busy for any exercise.

For item #2, it's also in a bad shape. Well, I can't even squeeze the time to do anything else except work, work, work, work and work...

But something interesting happen. The organizer for the Beijing + 10 conference at the end of the month has assigned a not very low rank staff to handle the HK delegation -- someone CAN SPEAK CANTONESE!!!!! What a big surprise!!!!! That really light up my life.

Back to work now...to bad...

Tired......

I am exhausted.

People just can't believe that working in the government can be very busy. But here's the walking (if I still can) prove of that.

Want to show you the home-made lotion by Rosey, but I am too tired and busy easy for taking a simple picture. May be later.

Water colour classes starting this Friday. Finally. Desperately looking for a teacher or a place so that I can keep up the momentum. I really want to do something in leisure.

Going to Beijing on a work trip from 26 August to 5 Sept. Ten solid days. Extreme challenge to my "negative level" of Mandarin.