I missed writing last week’s diary, I was simply too tired by the events of the week and of the day, all of which ended up with me acquiring a set of keys, symbols of my increasing sense of permanence in Beijing. 
I took possession of keys for my new apartment, which strangely came with mixed emotions. Apparently, metal locks began to appear in China nearly 2,000 years ago in the last year of Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD), both a symbol of wealth but also of marital status, married women seen with jangling pieces of metal called “key carriers.” It was my nerves that were jangling on Sunday afternoon as I had run 32km on the treadmill in the morning just before meeting my landlord Mr Zhang, a smart suited general manager of a Chinese shipping firm, and handing him RMB6,200 for the deposit on Unit 1105 of the Great Mall apartments. (The photo: Twin rams combine to form an old chinese style lock. This one is for sale on Yahoo!'s auction site.) At 2pm I called the removal men to ask where they were, only to be told that I had asked them to come at liang dian xia wu, ie. 2 a.m. instead of liang dian shang wu ie. 2 p.m. “Who moves at 0200” I asked rhetorically, the logic of which was entirely lost in translation. Due to traffic laws the van could only come to Jian Wai after 8pm and there then ensued security meltdown as the guards refused to let us leave without me signing reams of paperwork to confirm that I was just moving clothes. It struck me only later that people may indeed move at 0200 to avoid detection, leaving behind empty offices and unpaid bills. I hadn't thought of it until I stepped into a proper apartment, but my way of living had become a little neurotic. In this 2 bedroom 150m² open space I moved everything into one room. I have become so accustomed to living without comfort zones; life has been confined to the bedroom and the office, interrupted by ever longer stints on the treadmill. Leaving Jian Wai also made me nervous. I realized that in the same way that a parent might have a newborn child sleep alongside them in bed, even at the expense of their own slumber, I had slept next to the business since March always able to cast a watchful eye. Unit 1105 has a kitchen I can be in without the illumination of the flickering of the router and my bedroom doesn't have a Dell computer box or promotional give away items stowed in the cupboard. In truth my new apartment doesn’t really have anything in it, except for a double bed and mercifully, an extremely expansive and comfortable sofa. My recently purchased scooter is proving to be a godsend for nipping about Beijing, but en-route to a meeting with Saatchi and Saatchi, I found that once again I was on the wrong side of a recent promulgation. In between my purchase of the unlicensed scooter and running out of petrol, the Government passed a law to say that vehicles without license plates must not be sold motion juice; the Government owns the petrol stations. At first I thought that the pump attendant didn't want to sell to me because the RMB15 to fill my tank was just too much trouble. I nearly helped myself when he pointed to the forecourt camera and another driver explained in English to me this new law. Later that evening I parked my scooter in a dark shadow on the street and ambled up in a nonchalant way with an empty orange juice bottle, but again the spotty young attendant was able to scupper my plans and immobilize the scooter. The ever smiling chap in the scooter shop will conjure up license plates from Hebei, a neighbouring province, for RMB400, necessary because the Beijing police stopped issuing plates for motorcycles in 1998 which doesn’t appear to have stopped sales. Sometimes I sit in meetings with CEO’s of multi-national companies discussing multi million dollar business strategies feeling like a character in “Bonfire of the Vanities,” at other times I am powerless in the face of simple enforcers of arbitrary promulgations, until finding the key that unlocks another sequence of events which makes the Da Vinci code look like a beginners suduko. Another puzzle that I now have to figure out is scaling the business. EASTWEST now has five retainer and project clients, and this week we had one pitch and two new leads. Our large pitch was with China’s largest milk producer and Saatchi & Saatchi, for which we unfortunately arrived 40 minutes late; in large part because the mini bus organized was not allowed to drive on Chang an Jai in Beijing, confining us to gridlocked backstreets. One tendency I have noticed now is that when presentation times get shorter, Chinese people speak faster, instead of cutting content – we had a concise 68 slides for 40 minutes. Inexperience, anxiety or lack of flexibility or perhaps all three causes, the results so far have repeatedly been super fast speaking of the kind that might win an award on BBC Radio 4. If successful with this pitch, which while fast was very comprehensive, I will have to speed up the development of the Agency considerably. I am trying to focus now on the Singapore Marathon and keeping a good pace in training, the race is 3 weeks away. The Beijing marathon on 16th October was won by Kenyan Kipsang in a smoking pace of 2:10, I wonder if he too has Beijing lung now, but my goal is a more modest 3:55. The temperature is now around 12°C, a far cry from 32°C in Singapore where I will run attempting to raise money for the Singapore Children’s Society. Today I ran 20km in 1:40 which is a respectable pace if I can maintain that for another 22.1km; after that I will be looking for a couple of different kinds of barrel. Man Zou Jim US$1:RMB8
I took possession of keys for my new apartment, which strangely came with mixed emotions. Apparently, metal locks began to appear in China nearly 2,000 years ago in the last year of Eastern Han Dynasty (25-220 AD), both a symbol of wealth but also of marital status, married women seen with jangling pieces of metal called “key carriers.” It was my nerves that were jangling on Sunday afternoon as I had run 32km on the treadmill in the morning just before meeting my landlord Mr Zhang, a smart suited general manager of a Chinese shipping firm, and handing him RMB6,200 for the deposit on Unit 1105 of the Great Mall apartments. (The photo: Twin rams combine to form an old chinese style lock. This one is for sale on Yahoo!'s auction site.) At 2pm I called the removal men to ask where they were, only to be told that I had asked them to come at liang dian xia wu, ie. 2 a.m. instead of liang dian shang wu ie. 2 p.m. “Who moves at 0200” I asked rhetorically, the logic of which was entirely lost in translation. Due to traffic laws the van could only come to Jian Wai after 8pm and there then ensued security meltdown as the guards refused to let us leave without me signing reams of paperwork to confirm that I was just moving clothes. It struck me only later that people may indeed move at 0200 to avoid detection, leaving behind empty offices and unpaid bills. I hadn't thought of it until I stepped into a proper apartment, but my way of living had become a little neurotic. In this 2 bedroom 150m² open space I moved everything into one room. I have become so accustomed to living without comfort zones; life has been confined to the bedroom and the office, interrupted by ever longer stints on the treadmill. Leaving Jian Wai also made me nervous. I realized that in the same way that a parent might have a newborn child sleep alongside them in bed, even at the expense of their own slumber, I had slept next to the business since March always able to cast a watchful eye. Unit 1105 has a kitchen I can be in without the illumination of the flickering of the router and my bedroom doesn't have a Dell computer box or promotional give away items stowed in the cupboard. In truth my new apartment doesn’t really have anything in it, except for a double bed and mercifully, an extremely expansive and comfortable sofa. My recently purchased scooter is proving to be a godsend for nipping about Beijing, but en-route to a meeting with Saatchi and Saatchi, I found that once again I was on the wrong side of a recent promulgation. In between my purchase of the unlicensed scooter and running out of petrol, the Government passed a law to say that vehicles without license plates must not be sold motion juice; the Government owns the petrol stations. At first I thought that the pump attendant didn't want to sell to me because the RMB15 to fill my tank was just too much trouble. I nearly helped myself when he pointed to the forecourt camera and another driver explained in English to me this new law. Later that evening I parked my scooter in a dark shadow on the street and ambled up in a nonchalant way with an empty orange juice bottle, but again the spotty young attendant was able to scupper my plans and immobilize the scooter. The ever smiling chap in the scooter shop will conjure up license plates from Hebei, a neighbouring province, for RMB400, necessary because the Beijing police stopped issuing plates for motorcycles in 1998 which doesn’t appear to have stopped sales. Sometimes I sit in meetings with CEO’s of multi-national companies discussing multi million dollar business strategies feeling like a character in “Bonfire of the Vanities,” at other times I am powerless in the face of simple enforcers of arbitrary promulgations, until finding the key that unlocks another sequence of events which makes the Da Vinci code look like a beginners suduko. Another puzzle that I now have to figure out is scaling the business. EASTWEST now has five retainer and project clients, and this week we had one pitch and two new leads. Our large pitch was with China’s largest milk producer and Saatchi & Saatchi, for which we unfortunately arrived 40 minutes late; in large part because the mini bus organized was not allowed to drive on Chang an Jai in Beijing, confining us to gridlocked backstreets. One tendency I have noticed now is that when presentation times get shorter, Chinese people speak faster, instead of cutting content – we had a concise 68 slides for 40 minutes. Inexperience, anxiety or lack of flexibility or perhaps all three causes, the results so far have repeatedly been super fast speaking of the kind that might win an award on BBC Radio 4. If successful with this pitch, which while fast was very comprehensive, I will have to speed up the development of the Agency considerably. I am trying to focus now on the Singapore Marathon and keeping a good pace in training, the race is 3 weeks away. The Beijing marathon on 16th October was won by Kenyan Kipsang in a smoking pace of 2:10, I wonder if he too has Beijing lung now, but my goal is a more modest 3:55. The temperature is now around 12°C, a far cry from 32°C in Singapore where I will run attempting to raise money for the Singapore Children’s Society. Today I ran 20km in 1:40 which is a respectable pace if I can maintain that for another 22.1km; after that I will be looking for a couple of different kinds of barrel. Man Zou Jim US$1:RMB8