Anna Nalick - Wreck Of The Day

Anna Nalick - Wreck Of The Day
Originally uploaded by Peter Podstreleny.

Today I was doing graphical design of one of materials and while doing so I was listening online radio. Today, they played several times amazingly fantastic song called "Breathe (2AM)" from Anna Nalick who is newcomer on the music stage. Anyway her songs are beautiful and especially the Breathe one. I can't get it out of my mind and I sang it all the time today.

This girl definitely has some potential and I thing we will hear about her more often in the future.

If you want to check out her last album "Wreck Of The Day" check out this website:

http://music.msn.com/search/all/?ss=Anna+Nalick

Huanghua Great Wall Exploration - next weekend

Great Wall
Originally uploaded by Peter Podstreleny.

I was thinking for quite a long time what crazy I have done lately. And I realize that there is not much :-). So I was thinking what to do for next weekend - and I got the idea :-).

I'm going to climb/hike/explore/experience complete section of Huanghua Great Wall. I have been already twice on great wall but just in those parts with loads of turists. This will be different I want to walk complete section of the wall (something between 30 - 50 km) which is not really maintained and quite ruined and it's situated in beautiful wild nature (no tourists, just me and wall). I'm guessing the hike will take something like 2-3 days as it is in mountains with loads of valleys and peaks - a lot of climbing.

Right now I'm putting together resources and I'm creating the exploration plan - I hope I can manage that before Friday, so I can go on and use the weekend for the exploration. I'm taking the camera with me, so you will not miss the Huanghua Great Wall Exploration Report :-)

Summer Palace Garden in the morning 2

Summer Palace Garden in the morning 2
Originally uploaded by Peter Podstreleny.

This is another picture from the morning in Summer Palace. For those of you with good eyes, there is a little squirell in the middle of the picture (on the rock). Actually as there are almost no birds (or other animals) in Beijing it seems that all the animals are living here :-). (loads of birds, squirrels and other animals).

Summer Palace Garden in the morning

Summer Palace Garden in the morning
Originally uploaded by Peter Podstreleny.

The most beautiful thing that I have experienced in the Summer Palace is the morning in the parks of Summer Palace. I woke up very early (6:00 am) to be there before 8 am and I was rewarded by sunny day full of breath-taking views and sceneries. It was after the rain so everything was so fresh and full of life - magnificent!!!

Qilin statue

Kylin statue
Originally uploaded by Peter Podstreleny.

Qilin - is very intersting statue of mythical animal. Qilin is mixture of dragon, lion, ox and deer. According to the legend Qilin appears on the earth in times of harmony and it has power to punish evil and repel the wicked.

Summer Palace

17 Arch Bridge
Originally uploaded by Peter Podstreleny.

On Friday I decided to visit Summer Palace (Yiheyuan) – on of the most visited sights in Beijing (voted as number 1 sight in Beijing). The reason was very simple. From Saturday onwards there in October national holiday in China and it lasts for one week – that means loads of tourists and not just from abroad but from different Chinese provinces as well (as they have time to come and visit Beijing). Secondly, I wanted to visit Summer Palace in the summer and there is just couple of weeks left with the warm summer weather.

Summer Palace is huge complex (it took me 5 hours to go through it and to visit all interesting and recommended places there) of palace temples, gardens, pavilions, corridors and huge lake (Kunming Lake) which served as an royal playground to imperial court during hot summer days (There is not a single tree in The Forbidden City and it gets really, really hot in summer there).

Kunming Lake is covering three-quarters of the whole area (you can take boat and enjoy summer palace from it). The main building in the whole area is the Hall of Benevolence and Longevity with hardwood throne inside (for emperor) and many bronze statues of animals in front of the building. There is very interesting statue of mythical animal called Qilin. Qilin is mixture of dragon, lion, ox and deer. According to the legend Qilin appears on the earth in times of harmony and it has power to punish evil and repel the wicked.

On the north of the lake there is so called Long Corridor which is beautiful wooden corridor (long path with beautifully painted wooden roof above it) which is connecting all important buildings on the north part of Summer Palace.

On the highest point of the Summer Palace (Longevity Hill) and above the Long Corridor there is a Buddhist Fragrance Pavilion and Cloud Dispelling Hall – two beautiful buildings which were unfortunately in the reconstruction when I was there, so they were closed (Beijing is getting ready for Olympic Games in 2008 and many historical buildings in Beijing are right now in the reconstruction). The building on the Longevity Hill which was opened was the Temple of the Sea of Wisdom with very old Buddha statues inside (this building is quite demolished and I think soon it will be closed and repaired as well).

Another beautifully thing in Summer Palace is 150 meters long 17-arch bridge which connects eastern part of Summer Palace with South Lake Island (Nanhu Dao) and marble boat which is huge ancient boat made out of the marble.

Summer Palace is very peaceful place with beautiful gardens inside and I got a luck that during my visit not many tourists were there, so I could really enjoy it.

Acrobatics Show at Chaoyang Theatre

On Friday night, we (Me, John and Pierre) went to see acrobatics show in one of the best Acrobatics houses in the whole China (it was held in Chaoyang Theatre – www.bjcyj.com). The ticket was quite expensive (120 RMB – which is quite lot here in China. Actually 120 RMB is the cheapest price on which you can get in, but somehow accidentally they give us seats in the VIP zone which was basically 2nd row in the theatre, so we had amazing view on the acrobats and perfect place for taking pictures and shooting videosJ), but definitely it was worth it. It was the best Acrobatics show I have ever experienced. Interesting fact about Chinese acrobatics is that it has the history of more than 2000 years and there are several acrobatics schools which are training professional acrobats. One of the most famous schools is CZU. They are taking there kids in age of 5or 6 and these kids are going through very intense training which is focused on balance keeping, power, flexibility and dynamics. The acrobat “career” finishes around age of 19 or 20 when acrobat is not flexible enough to perform some of the breathtaking acrobatic tricks.

It’s very hard to describe all the acrobatic stuff they did during the show and I think a picture can describe more than 10 000 words. I have some amazing videos from the show as well, so I will try to put it somewhere so you can download them and check them out. So, here are some of the pictures.

Party night in Latinos (hard-core Salsa and Mango dancing club)

On Thursday the whole MC team went to Latinos club. I was expecting some kind of normal dancing club which is focused on latino music. Well, I was kind of wrong. It was something like half-professional club where a lot of people who really know how to dance salsa and mango are gathering every week to have fun together. When I entered the place it seemed to me as a kind of club that was in the Dirty Dance (where all the stuff from the camp was dancing during the free time – night). :-) really hot!!!, really cool :-)

I was really amazed by the way how these people were dancing. It seemed to me like dancing competition – hard-core professional dancing. As I have no idea how to dance salsa and mango I just watched with opened mouth how cool salsa is (when you really know how to dance it:-)).

In the middle of the night there was some kind of show. Basically there was one guy who was apparently professional latino dancer and women had opportunity to dance with him. This was really amazing! The guy had never danced with those women but he was able to immediately recognize the dancing style/substyle of the woman (it took him something like 2 seconds:-)) and then he was able to lead the woman as they have been dancing for years togther. Fantastic. Women were almost fighting who is going to dance with him. He changed around 10 women with absolutely different styles and was always able to get the style and lead the women with her style (at least it seemed to me like that).

Later on I figured out that this Latinos club is something like community place for people who love latino dancing to gather and to dance together. They have a live band there (the band was singing in Spanish or Portuguese:-)) and a DJ who is playing latino songs during the break time of the band. As we figured out later the DJ is a professional mango dancer in New York who is currently here in Beijing and he is giving dancing lessons here in Beijing with his dancing partner who is Chinese (or at least she looks like Chinese).

But the best part of the night was at the end of our stay in the club. Around 1 am there was just one third of the people and just a couple of couples were dancing on the dance floor. The DJ was going around and he was saying hi to the all people he knows. Then he picked the girl (which we figured out is his dancing partner) and they started dance. Oh my god. That was so amazing. They were doing so difficult dancing movements and they were dancing in a very past way without any mistake. The harmony between these two people was just amazing.

When we were leaving I got the leaflet with the information about dancing lessons. Now I’m considering starting to learn how to dance salsaJ. I know it sounds weird to learn how to dance salsa in ChinaJ, but with this couple doing lessons… – it’s not about the place, it’s about the people:-)

Houhai (Lotus Flower) - Party Night

As I promised at the end of last week I’m bringing more detailed information about Sunday’s party. We were in the Houhai in the Northern Beijing which is one out of three party districts in Beijing (according to Beijingers – but who knows where the truth lies?).

It’s actually very nice area next to the Houhai Lake. You can rent a boat and have a beer on a small boat while enjoying the beauty of the nature.

We were in two pubs. First one was called Alpha and Omega. It was actually a club and it was quite good one. Live music (Chinese kind of rock – quite good, rhythmic and loud music. Interesting information that has to be mentioned is that if you want to stay in this pub and you want to enjoy yourself you have to spend at least 100 RMB per person. We were 5 in the pub so they told us to spend 500 RMB J. Funny stuff – so we packed our stuff (Leon was there with complete ice-hockey equipmentJ) and we moved to the Lotus Blue Bar. The pub was quite good. We were sitting outside on the terrace and we enjoyed our drinks and pop-corn. We left the bar around midnight.

There are a lot of lotus flowers in the lake and that’s why the whole area is named Houhai (what a surprise) – Houhai means Lotus flower in Chinese.

Week overview

Beijing Central Train Station
Originally uploaded by Peter Podstreleny.

It is already one week since I posted my last message on my blog. During this time loads of things happened here and I’m going to describe the most interesting ones.

1. Party night at Houhai (Lotus lake pub/club area)

2. Party night in Latinos (hard-core Salsa and Mango dancing club)

3. Acrobatics Show at Chaoyang Theatre (the most amazing acrobatics show I have seen so far in my life)

4. KTV party (the coolest party I have had so far in China)

In the next postings I will describe them one by one.

Easygoing Sunday

Today it was quite relaxed Sunday:). I woke up very late, had a lunch, answered several emails and started to play Commandos - Behind the Enemy lines game :). To increase the atmosphere of WWII I watched two series of Band of Brothers (which is military movie) - very good war movie - I'm recommending.

Tonight we are going to pub/club area in Beijing so I will keep you informed how it was:)

Shanghai Adventure - part 1

Last week I had an opportunity to visit Shanghai as there was Asia-Pacific HR Summit happening there and I thought would be good idea to be there and do some initial networking in China :). I spent 4 incredible days (30th June - 3rd July) in Shanghai and I would like to share some interesting stuff in several short parts :) - I know you would not read long parts anyway :).

Topic of today: Transportation in Shanghai

Generally the transportation (as well as whole city) is much more "mature" as compare to Beijing (sometimes I have to describe transportation system (well, it's not really system) and rules (which are actually not really rules, its chaos:) which are in Beijing. But back to Shanghai.

So as I said, it's much more mature what basically means that you don't need to worry about your life once you leave your office/home/starbucks:). When there is a green light people are walking through zebra and cars stop (which is not really case in Beijing :). When there is red light people stop and cars are going (same remark about Beijing as sentence above :). More buses have air conditioning which is necessity in this city (during my stay in Shanghai the temperature reached 39 Celsius degrees). But there is one same thing which is same in Beijing as well and which has to be experienced otherwise you can't say you have been in China.

It's travelling in the bus where there is rush hour :). In Shanghai you have big residential areas and huge office/working areas. So basically every morning milions of people are moving from their homes to their work. Now imagine this:

It's 7:00 and you are leaving home - going to work (HR summit in my case) in a suit. It's morning but the temperature already reaches 30 Celsius degrees. You enter the bus which is half-empty but there is no seat (to have a seat in the bus in Shanghai is very strategical and strongly recommended :). AC works which is good news. Now, as Shanghai has the population over 16 million and its huge it takes sometime to get to work (HR summit in my case), right? :). After 30 minutes bus is completly (word completly in this case means 150% not 100%) full and AC is not fulfilling its duty anymore. People are packed, body next to body, not even 1 cm between two bodies. Now everybody is starting to sweat and even you don't sweat (from some not understandable reason, because in the bus it's around 30 Celsius degrees) you are wet. Now the bus is reaching a bus stop which is considerably important becasue you have something like 20 people waiting there. In the country I'm coming from people are not entering bus when the bus is already extremly crowded - but this is not a case in Shanghai. You would not believe but all 20 people fit in at the end and my only worry was if the construction of the bus is able to handle so many people. I'm suggesting guys from Guiness Book of Records to visit Shanghai very soon. You are starting to have problems to breath and you wish your bus stop is the next one. Finally, the bus is approaching your bus station and you have to solve another very difficult problem. How to get from the middle of absolutly completly (absolutly completele presents at least 250%) packed bus to the doors as nobody wants to leave his/her so hardly conqured place. After the 5 minutes fight you are finally free :) and your status is:

- it's 9:00 am
- your shirt is absolutly wet and it stinks very badly - and your day in work is just starting
- you are pissed and tired after travelling 1 hour and 40 minutes in completely crowded bus
- it's at least 35 Celsius degrees and sun is so sharp that concerning the temperature the bus was more comfortable - at least you can breath without problems :).

Key learnings/recommendations:
1. You have to experience this - otherwise you haven't been in China
2. Buy a bike or scooter
3. Take an extra shirt with you
4. Don't travell in rush hours
5. Buy/rent apartment which is very close to you work or near to subway stop (subway is usually packed as well but it's at least underground and not on the sun) :)

That's it :). I hope I unleash the desire in you to travel by bus in rush hour in Shanghai. For volunteers I can get the exact bus number and time schedule with recommended hours :)))).

Waiting for your comments :) ...