Exploring The Pho Laboratory with Rotaract

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

On 27 May we had an unplanned gathering of Rotaract friends in the tiny restaurant “The Pho Laboratory”, a Vietnamese noodle outlet across the street from the Great Leap Brewing restaurant. Thanks Jaime for setting this up.

 

I should go back there again to have a real dinner as the noodles tasted great but I had had another dinner that evening. And I need to find out more about their banner “Notre Dame Club”: every year I talk to their (E)MBA students visiting Beijing. A very well known U.S. University.

Birthdays and more birthdays!

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

I did not post yet the pics of our birthdays. We have pretty unusual dates: myself 31 December, Sun 14 February. Valerie follows on 21 February.
Sun got two cakes on Valentine. As usual we celebrate in Morel’s Restaurant.

Except for Valerie as she had to work, she wanted her Japanese sushi and we had other friends joining.

Meeting a Nobel Prize winner! Yes, in Beijing

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

On the occasion of the visit to China of Professor François ENGLERT (ULB), the Nobel Prize Winner for Physics 2013 together with Peter HIGGS for the discovery of the Higgs mechanism H.E. Michel MALHERBE, Ambassador of Belgium to China and Mr. Philippe NAYER, Delegate of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation and of Wallonia invited us for a reception on Wednesday June 4th at the Embassy of Belgium.

Well, not everyday you meet somebody like that, so my daughter Valerie insisted to witness the unique event.
The professor was pretty friendly and talkative and made it, along with a cool breeze, a nice evening. Even better as Renaat Morel spoiled us with another great buffer and Belgian beer.
Great event and I met the ambassador of Malta who turned out to be a real “Old china Hand”!

Note: some content and pics removed.

Old China Hands Lunch 6 June

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

Yes, another round of our monthly gathering and it seemed all were pretty happy chatting with each other, so I had to ask them to sit down and order…

Always a good sign!
Some got stuck in the thunderstorm or in meetings or somewhere enjoying a beach.
Next lunch is 4 July! Same place as usual, Morel’s Restaurant on Gongti Bei Lu.

The 2014 Beijing Rotary Ball was RED HOT!

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove
in Rotary

As announced earlier, on Saturday 7 June starting at 18:00 we had our Ball in the Kempinski Hotel. It was a Black Tie event (or RED RED!!!). And yes, red it was.
I won’t try to give a full report. I only can say the ball room was pretty full, and I left around midnight. I had brought the Diamond Sponsor, Jiamei Dental. Jiamei had its table chaired by the chairman, Mr. Liu Jia, along with some of beautiful staff. We had another two tables dedicated to China State Grid, another of our main clients. We were honored to have diplomats from South Africa and Senegal.
There were many shows and performances, some you can see in the pictures. I was proud to have our Beijing Rotaract members in full action. Looking at the pics you can understand why I love to work with them… They successfully operated the PhotoBooth and helped out whenever needed.

The pics are just my personal choice! Biased, obviously!
Well looks like most people had big fun, that was the idea!
I finished the late morning in my karaoke, along with some of our clients and friends…

Call that a full day!