Beijing

Loved being in Beijing - which is high praise given it was a Friday night and Saturday, and included missing the Super Rugby finals.  The main purpose of the trip was to interview a guy for a senior position we are trying to fill in our China office - and he was FANTASTIC.  I've not got it right to employ him yet - so hopefully I'm not speaking too soon - but we have been looking for around 5 months.  Good bilingual people are super-expensive in Beijing and Shanghai.  Hopefully the search is over.  Then there was the fact that it was summer - loooooong perfect days - and I was invited out for dinner by Anita and Pat, who were visiting Anita's family.  It was such fun.  I speak around 5 words of putonghua, about the same as Pat, and roughly the same amount of english as Anita's family speak - so as invariably happens in these situations, those old enough drink far too much and everyone suddenly understands each other just perfectly.  Saturday morning felt rough.  The flight home that night was due to leave at 6.30pm, but the plane sat on the taxiway for 3 hours, was home in bed by 2am - but I really felt that I took a proper bite out of life for a couple of days - which always feels good.  Here's a fitting sequence:

What BJ looks like on the way to dinner...

Anita's lovely family (you might remember her sister, she took us to that shopping centre when we were in BJ together) - a long way into the dinner - photo appropriately slightly fuzzy...

What BJ feels like on the way home from dinner.  

Unrelated to China travels - a super-cool urban bike hey?  Triple butted aluminium frame, box crown fork, hydraulic stoppers, carbon belt drive with an Alfine 8-speed gearbox.  First saw one in Sydney, though the manufacturer is German.