Indianapolis, finally

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

After several failed plans to go and visit my daughter Marianne in the USA, I simply decided not to wait anymore and head for Indianapolis where she moved to, time ago, to a suburb called Carmel. It was wonderful to see her again, her two kids, her husband Mike and his parents who came over.
The kids were great as the pictures show. So was the new house, sorry, the mansion.


Indianapolis was in my eyes a picture of “typical American upscale suburban life”. All so well organized and clean (as far as I saw at least). The center of the city was strange – empty for someone coming from the frenzy of Beijing. And that in the middle of the week. Of course no people on the street as everyone is addicted to their car and distances are simply, well, vast. Not sure I saw a bike (it was of course snow time).
The supermarkets are simply huge and entice one to shop till you drop. “Normal” shops and pubs, forget about.
All a bit too quiet for a Beijinger. Guess we would all quickly die of boredom.
But for family life and kids it’s a near paradise and there you realize how much Beijing is behind in terms of facilities. Not even to talk about the air and the blue sky over there.
We visited kindergartens, all so neat and impressive.
And the local library that has a huge department for kids only (see the pics). And the Children’s Museum where kids like play with sand, water, look trains, build stuff and see lots of things they really like. And soccer on the weekends for the kids. Not to wonder why China is nowhere in terms of promoting grass-root sports and mass sports. Weekend sports such as indoor soccer for the kids of all ages is a family affair. Unlike the Chinese who send their kids for weekend intense classes for ballet, piano, extra mathematics, English, etc.
I was also lucky to visit the office where she works, meeting her colleagues.
I also went along with her to a seminar where she had to give a presentation (runs in the family?), making me as a father proud.
Hopefully she will not have to wait so long again to see me…

The Place is my place

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

A bit confusing as a name… “The Place” (in Chinese: shi mao tian jie) is located next to CBD and on Dongdaqiao Lu, close to the famous Silk Market (or Silk Street if you prefer the old name).


My activities are often all in that area so I go there nearly daily: my gym (California Fitness, in The Place), our karaoke (SOHO Shangdu), my Chinese school (Hanwei Plaza) plus several massage place all in walking distance. In the area there are many (new) restaurants, including in The Place (with the biggest buffet in Asia, plus Indian, Vietnamese, Japanese, Chinese, …). Just discovered other ones in SOHO Shangdu and in Prosper Center (basement). Next door there is also a new movie theatre. So, enough choice.
The Place is now a popular tourist destination, many buses stop there for the tourist to look at the huge screen. While huge and impressive, it’s quality is rather soso (not a BARCO…). People all come to take some quick pictures. Not sure it brings money to the coffee shops (at least 3) and the mall.
The huge screen also serves as a roof for frequent entertainment and commercial activities: ice skating, pop groups, car exhibitions, 3G mobile promotion, etc.
The biggest problem there: no taxis during the week between 5 and 9pm. So I normally have to walk home or grab one of those pedicabs…

New Lady Gaga

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

And she does not sing “Poker Face”: it’s: “Liar’s Face”

China is getting paranoid, obviously bureaucrats realize some people are really upset with “certain issues”. Like the milk scandal, the new-rich, the astronomical greed by the real estate sector (read: those who have the right guanxi), worker’s exploitation (slavery is sometimes a better word). Too many things people are not supposed to talk about.
One can wonder if they will succeed to stem the flow. The clever people find a way around the New Great Wall. But others are happy to remain uninformed as they only care about playing computer games and … discovering carnal pleasures.
See here part of article dated 12 February 2010, “Innocent websites suffer in Beijing’s anti-porn push” by Stephen Chen in the SCMP:
More than 130,000 websites have been closed in the mainland’s crackdown on internet pornography, although less than 12% of them were actually pornographic.
The figures, buried in a Xinhua report meant to hail the success of the anti-porn campaign, prove a long-held suspicion that the central government is using pornography as a pretext to suppress Web freedom.
Since December, the Communist Party’s Central Committee has ordered the country’s state-owned internet service providers, such as China Telecom, China Mobile, and China Unicom, to examine every website on their servers, an anonymous senior party official in charge of cyberspace told Xinhua.
The official said the telecommunications operators sniffed through more than 1.8 million websites. By Wednesday, more than 136,000 had been shut down.
Among them, “16,000 contained pornographic or sexually explicit contents, and among these, 11,000 were accessible by mobile phones”, the official was quoted as saying.
Porn-free websites were shut down because they were not “officially registered”.
Mainland internet regulations require websites to apply for a government certificate before opening to the public. The process is time-consuming and often abused by corrupt government officials. For years, many small websites, especially non-commercial ones built and maintained by individuals, have skipped the registration process.
At about the same time that the anti-pornography campaign was launched, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology announced an amendment to the registration regulation. An individual citizen who did not have a business licence or government approval was no longer eligible to register.

Women caned for premarital sex in Malaysia

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

As reported by the SCMP on 18 February…
Three women have been caned in Malaysia under Islamic law for the first time.
Home Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said the sentences were carried out on February 9 in a women’s prison outside Kuala Lumpur after a religious court found them guilty of having sex out of wedlock. Two of the women were whipped six times.
“It was carried out perfectly,” Hishammuddin said. “Even though the caning did not injure them, they said it caused pain within them.”
His comments signal that the mostly Muslim country is now prepared to flog a mother of two for drinking beer, despite the international criticism that the case has sparked.
The case will fuel a debate over rising “Islamisation” in Malaysia, where religious courts have been clamping down on moral offences as well as a ban on Muslims drinking alcohol that had rarely been enforced.
“I hope this will not be misunderstood so much that it defiles the purity of Islam,” Hishammuddin said. “The punishment is to teach and give a chance to those who have fallen off the path to return and build a better life in future.”
Yeah yeah, bunch of muslim hypocrites. In what century are those people living? Then they are surprised we hate them – no problem, they hate us, the infidels, too.
I am proud to be an “infidel”.
Reason enough to kick those people out of our countries. We have no place for you.
Malaysia is a sad case. In the past I liked that country. Now, add them to the blacklist.
China is bloody right to curtail any of those in Xinjiang. Europe could learn from the Chinese, for once. But then lazy Europeans should also start picking fruit and doing other jobs they look down on and have to leave to immigrants. The USA are not better, just see why they need all those Latinos to do the hard jobs.
Another conclusion: here we have bad stuff too. But at least they don’t cane people for drinking beer of having fun in bed.

Olivier Strebelle and the Athletes Alley

Posted on by Gilbert Van Kerckhove

I haven’t been back in the Olympic Forest Park but I was told the gate on the West Side is now open and the statue can now be seen. The gardening was never completed, for obvious reasons (obvious to us!).
Cleaning up my many documents I stumbled on two documents:
– Publication dated September 2008 of the Belgian-Chinese Economic and Commercial Council, with an interview of the artist. The story told is part hilarious and part sad. A complete distortion of the facts, nothing ever happened that way. Just to suit some (famous) people in Belgium  who have selective amnesia. I use the story of the project as an illustration on ”How to do successful lobbying in China and how consulting companies can be the victim of dishonest foreign counterparts”. The story is very popular and I used it in several EMBA seminars.
Download: 080901strebelle.pdf
click to enlarge
one the seminars on lobbying
– A Chinese publication that reports the signing of the agreement covering the donation by The Kingdom of Belgium to the City of Beijing, ceremony held on 14 August 2007 at the Beijing Municipal Planning Commission. Pictured are Ambassador Bernard Pierre and myself.
Download: https://blog.strategy4china.com/wp-content/uploads/070814art.pdf
More details about the sculpture, search this blog…