Finnish Embassy Information Session

The European Union has had a promotion of all its embassies to have a "day of open doors" when some people are invited to the embassy to come and see what work they are doing and also to get to know the people representing them. There was a few hours talk about what different departments do at the embassy and I also introduced what Finnish Young Professionals does in Beijing. 

Mikko Puustinen - Fluent in Chinese and in charge of promoting Finland in China

 Short speech about the commercial department

 Half of the people were Finnish students, the other half Chinese students studying Finnish language here in Beijing

 Like always, traffic on the third ring road. Picture taken from Embassy, Kerry Center 26th floor

CCTV building, in near future 10.000 more people will work here!!

Admiring the views

 I wonder what the "shouldn't know" means....

Beijing INTRO festival 2013

Last year the Beijing insto festival was organized on Crab Island, this year in the western part in the old steel factory. The venue was so awesome, never been to anything like this before! And James came all the way from Ningbo to party with us, one of the best days so far this year! 

Buss from Wudaokou towards intro, took about 1 hour. 

 Entering Shougang, what a scene!

 The first small stage

Beer, hot dogs, kebab, other food. Well organised, no long ques or crazy high prices

 The Main Stage

 Far right with goggles is me

 Wooooooooooot????? Beijings XXXXL

The human hurricane

  This place is seriously REALLY cool. Could not choose a better location to have an electronic music festival at!

 My friend knew the DJ so we got on the mainstage DJ booth to play with the lights, was awesome!

 Afterparty at LANTERN. Got a ride back from Shougang with a random person, thank you Linda for fixing that and thank you random person too. Saved so much time and trouble, when INTRO was finished it was mayhem and 10.000 people trying to get cabs and busses...

Bad bad luck day

One of those days when it rains, it pours! When nothing goes right....First, I get to know that my broken hard drive cannot be fixed. Leaving me lost of a LOT of my pictures from travels here and there + movies, mails etc etc. Well you can imagine if your hard drive would break how it would make you feel. Second, my scooter also breaks and it takes 1 day to fix it. Luckily it didn't break THAT far from a repair shop, still. One of those days when you wish you just would not have got up from bed at all....Best way to get mind of things is just going to the gym doing some heavy reps and after that rewarding yourself with some nice food...

Bainaohui, one of Beijings electronic malls where they have ANYTHING you could ever want. Ranging from computers, games, cameras etc etc. And they also fix anything here.

 My hard drive for fixing

 Don't buy a Western Digital WD drive....Seagate is better quality

Once again a broken scooter

Gym reward food: pasta, egg, ham, sausage and olive oil

Beijing Duck Birthday @ Lao Zhai Yuan 老宅院

One of the hutongs build to a restaurant that makes it feel like you REALLY are eating in China some traditional Beijing Duck. Haven't had duck for years, was great! Celebrated Danny's birthday here, perfect place for someone who just been in China for a few days! The design and food were great but service kinda bad. The waiter seemed a bit off like she could not hear or understand what anybody told her. Apart from that, nice! 

Entrance to Lao Zhai Yuan

Own wood and owen used here

And the inside

 Duck skin!

 Wonder what they were talking about.... :D

After the dinner to Cheers for some drinks and cake

 Cheers is a wine shop that sells imported wines, you can buy all drinks cold and enjoy them outside the shop, great concept! And it's very cheap too. 

 Evenings are warm here now, always above 20 degrees

Irresistable Cafe - A cool place for tea, coffee or drinks

Around Nanluoguxiang area there are loads of small bars and coffee shops. This one however, is a bit different. Salud is located just a bit east of the Beijing Drama University about 50 meters away from the busy street. It's empty, quiet, great service and reasonable prices. So if you want to chillax in Beijing "old style" this is your place! 

And next to home they are building Wangjing SOHO, wonder how many shopping malls they are going to build, most of them are already empty of people....And this SOHO will be huge! Sky looks blue-ish but its been pretty hazy and polluted the whole week

Sitsit Beijing Style

In Universities over Finland and Sweden we organise Sittings. A sitting is an event were people eat, hold speeches, drink and most importantly, sing before drinking. There are rules of what you can't and can do, if not followed your will get some kind of punishment. The punishment can be to sing a song, get a huge shot of vodka, tell a story or do something funny. We had a few late comers who had to do some singing and drinking vodka from a beer pint.

Event was great and in the future we will have 2-3 sits every year!! Go Young Professionals :)

Opening speech by out toastmasters Erja & Jonas

The song books

 The 3 Chinese that came had found a Chinese drinking song which they sang for everyone

 And a group photo and some of the people enjoying the evening

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