Opera

The terrace Of Heineke, the most hospitable café in the village boarding the Lake. The day after my birthday. I am on my own, listening to my I Pod. Eyes shut. Sun hits my face. In the blind I can reach my glass of Cola Light. Its 14.25. Yes sometimes I have to look. Is it safe? yes it is safe.
Its Bartoli again. Singing arias, or "songs" my Chinese friends would say. Yes nice Songs. "Who is that girl?" 14 days ago I visited The Commune of the Great Wall, a hotel 60 km to the north of Beijing. Never go there, there reader, dont follow my mistake, unless you are one of those dead US professors they dump in that unhuman prestige hotel.
But the girl behind the counter interested me. Direct. Reserved. With those slight hesitations that trigger my curiosity. There is the hotel music. Good choice. Kathleen Ferrier echoing in the huge hall. I interrupt the ritual of showing mij passport aso, walk into the center of that big, high, hall, ridiculously impressive. And I close my eyes to listen better, all on my own. Listening.Enjoying.
I walk back.
"Beautiful!"
She is polite.
"Yes."
"Kathleen Ferrier, do you know her."
She is wearing a red star on her shirt. It starts to move.
"No."
"No problem."
Gracious me. I must have smiled. She gathered her self.
"I dont know much of those singers. The only one I know.."
"Yes?"
"Tom Cruise."
Yes, I said, he is a great singer.

But that conversation I remember just now, trying to describe my stay at the terrace of Heineke. It was past 1400 then. Sunday. And it maybe the sun melting down the lids of my my memory or the melancholic state I was in, anyhow, suddenly it came into my mind how the little Jan passed his sunday afternoons. His ears glued to the old Philips listening to his favourite sunday program: Het Opera en Belcanto programma van de Belgische Radio. Always on those dead sunday afternoons in that completely town I lived.
There I was, just 5 meters from my unhappy parents, warming my chaotic and despairing heart.
"Please," I screamed," I want to go out. Let me go. I want to go out and conquer the world."
But the screaming stayed inside. And I stayed put. Because 13. Because of the pain imagining the despair of my miserable father and mother, when I would leave.
I opened my eyes. The man besides me smiles at me. He raises his hands towards heaven.
"Delicious."
And yes. "Fantastic" I said.
And that it was. The sun warming my face, a stranger hugging me, Bartoli stroking my heart.

27 Birthday eve/ she de

00.40 hours . On my own, middle of the night. House at the Lake. Outside some distant lights deepen the blackness of the night. i Tunes gives me Bartoli in her newest set of aria's called Maria. I finished a glass of malt called the Balvenie, present of Gonnie. A bottle of Wasabi peanuts near by. They are strong and keep me awake while I type this Blog.

And I try to review the past year.
I memorize things gained: little pearls deepdown the river of consciousness, almost forgotten, dug into the mud of my history. I feel good. At the same time I look at life with the big eyes of a bewildered child. Its not chaos that surrounds me but a well contoured world that so often is not mine.

And I ponder about what I lost, or in the process of losing or fighting against losing.

I once met a 1000 year old Chinese Woman and at certain moments handpicked only by her self, she descends from her planet to visit me. So she does this night. She is sitting opposite me me, blocking the view of the lake. She is extremely agile and while her increasingly greying hair is waving likes the manes of a fiery litlle lion, she lectures me about "loss":

"Loss is destiny. But God is fair. There is Chinese word for it: SHE DE.
SHE means: give it away. DE means : gain something.."

"I don't understand? Whats the use?"

"Only if you can stand giving away you can get things back. So SHE and DE are closely related to each other."

And off she is. My room is empty as if she never visited me.

Can I stand giving away? Can I stand the pain caused by the misery of others?
Tomorrow is my birthday. What will I gain the coming year?

And how come, that just writing all this down refreshes my hope?

26 Leadership Course: the simplest format, (1)

Ad Kokke died some 16 months ago. He used to be President of our Board and I miss him,
we alle miss him. At this very moment our leadership courses start in Beijing I think of him and his views on leadership and I mix his views with mine.

Its 21.24 and dark outside, the Lake is like an impressionistic painting. Turner?

Can we lead people?

There is a preliminary question: who is "we"?

But first one must admit that many leadershiptasks in many companies are taken out of the hands of that glorified species called"manager"and/or "leader". People in many organizations are led by many substitutes of leadership, like mechanical devices, procedures, all sublimations of the running belts of olden times.
So far on the relevance of "leadership".

But if this competence is asked for, as it is on many occasions: who is "we"the leaders?
Here I must state this: people can not be led, they only can lead them selves.
So the often heralded leader, so proud of his job, has only one task: to elicit or trigger the
leadershippotentialities in the men he is supposed to lead.

So a leadership course can be simple: define the one condition that seduces the men to grant
the "manager" succes in his triggering task.
That is integrity.
This quality is not to be defined by management but by the clients of management: The Men. The Women. And only them.

Integrity is a bunch of actions displayed by the actor called "manager"in front of the spectators
he depends. They feed the answer to that all important question: Can I trust him or her, Can I depend on him.

Leadershiptraining as directed at changing your habits gets its most direct format by asking your clients (your men) for feedback on this issue. By accepting it. By acting accordingly. And also by accepting that your men and women in this respect lead you, act as your boss.

I remember an old french defintion of "Manager" : traiteur d'un champion...(caretaker of a
champion horse)

And I remember my own definition: de leider is de knecht van zijn zijn mensen. The leader is the servant of his men and women.

I am not an experienced China watcher but I must declare that as far as my observations go, as to this definition I can not see any need for adaptations in my and our approach in China.

But is the hierachical leadership- the bossy boss-style not the most
dominant style in the PRC.
Could be.
But if so, its the style of the past.

25 News from Beijing

The sun sets over the Lake, littered with all kind of craft, heading to a meeting point I can not
discern. Its 20.34 dutch time and a naval review has been organized this night. The ships will be
all in full light and will pass my window in the first darkness.
I am on my own and thinking of Beijing where everybody important (a few) and non important( 17 million) are sleeping now, most of them I mean. But the city will be be fully lighted I know, till the sun will rise in the morning.
Tankers will start to spray the roads against the dust. Groups of people practising Tai Chi and Yoga in the parks or on the grassy sides of the streets. The majority of the 1.5 milion cars start hitting the traffic jams. Bicycles and carrierbikes. On the pavements the pretty pretty ladies of all ages unfold their parasols. Soon the offices will be filled and inside temperature will rise up to
27 degrees- nearly every office obeys the order that the airco sticks at that point. Not lower! But
27 degrees C always is better than the 35 or so outside.
Or is it raining? And is a thunderstorm passing by, cleaning the air and making mirrors out of the otherwise dusty surface of the tarmac.
Or did it rain yesterday and is the air transparant like glass?
I wonder. I will ask Tonio asap as soon I get him on the phone. Or Dong Yan or Chris Jiang the
freshly engaged CEO of SchoutenChina. The last two last week were our guest in Holland: getting to know Schouten&Nelissen, together refining the businessplan for the coming period, famiiliarize with the Dutch colleagues. Yesterday we waved them goodbye from Schiphol. It
felt and feels like a farewell, even if thats not reality.
But my thougths are with them and shifting my mind to Beijing seems the only way to cope with the nasty feeling associated with separation.

July 15 I left Riversides. 1100 hs. Hot. But I felt good and so I strolled to the tabacconist
called Juan Yan Chao Shi. I like the owner, an elegant 40+ woman, always smiling with gleaming eyes whenever I enter her shop. In moments of solitude I even think she is beautiful. But not today. She seems to hide and does not offer me the gift of her smile. Her face worn. What does
she hide for? Not for me of course (sorry) but what else? What sadness is overwhelming her? Or
did she get ill because of the heat? Or tired of nasty discussions with a husband I never saw?
I paid my cigars and left before I could answer those questions. Maybe I have to learn Chinese
so I can ask her.
Fully loaded with 10 cigars I crosses the road untill I reached the corner of Hong Yan Lu and
Nan Xinyan Zhong Lu. On the pavement there is a small platform surrounding a huge
leaning tree. Shadow.
A small man greeted me.
I said" Hallo, may I sit down?"
He nodded. I sat on the concrete edge.
I lit a cigar.
He offered me a small plastic baby stool.
"Thank you," I said. In Chinese I think.
I offered him a cigar.
"Thank you," he said and I said Buketsji meaning "My pleasure".
He studied at my gorgeous body and smiled. From behind his back he produced a bigger chair.
I set fire into his cigar.
And so we sat along side each other, peacefully smoking, observing the traffic. Taming time
and chasing it into the Corral called the "here-and-now".

Outside on the Lake the parade of boats advances. I am in Beijijng.

24 smoking healthy

So I stopped smoking cigars, an important step in anybody's life, also in mine, though I must add
that I easily can stop. I did it many times. So from this statemement you rightly may infer I started smoking one time less than the many times I stopped: up to this moment I mean. Not easy to understand?
"Think! " ,my Chinese Colleague would say.
"Its easy!" She would add.
And she is right because she gave me a more difficult riddle, far more difficult: she went to the dentist for cleaning her teeth. She has all her teeth. In good condition. She had the company of two friends and the condition of their teeth was very bad, they even missed some! Question: After the treatment the dentist ordered my Colleague to pay far more for his job than the two friends had to pay. Why?

But about my smoking: stopping feels as bad as just going on. But I will prevail this time.
The house of the Lake is full of halffull cigarboxes. When I see them I immediately hear that
loud cry from the virginal brown monsters:.
"I am delicious, please smoke me!"
"No,"I say.
Good, isntit?

The last stay In Beijing was succesfull. also in the business sense of the word.
My Colleague made the new picture.
"Why?"
"To prove you really worked here in Beijing."
In the background the lush gardens of ShanShui were I live, when in Beijing.

Faits divers:....the book I wrote on Assertiviness will come out in Chinese Translation and formally handed to the Ambassador of the Netherlands on Beijing on october 24....On the same
date we will have the big opening reception of SchoutenChina....7 days ago SchoutenChina started its campaign dor the first open softskillcourses....We found a candidate for the COO function...He (Chris Jiang) will next week our guest in Holland together with MT member ms
DongYan...We will be present at the big conferences of HRM China and ASTD China in Shanghai and Beijing (september/oktober)....We intensified our investment in the coming years for SchoutenChina...The staff will grow, Dongyan already looking for a new location....We found a
partner for the Chinawide distribution of opencourses....on the move..


In the mean time The Schouten&Nelissen Group is full of life, more than ever. New endeaviors
are in the make.

And Argentina? The Shangri La of the lost souls? Its in the small moments of profound content
that hit me and flare up from under the layers of everyday routine.
...the evening sun goldening the birchleaves..
...the smile of the person presenting me the the Chinese translation of the flute
player
...the naugthy running away of Jonas, my grandson,
...the voice of the persons I love,
...the rain pouring over my body while I worked like a horse to navigate my sailing boat through a thunderstorm....,
...the pureness beaming from a photograph I unexpectedly received
... the very nice crepes susettes I spoiled myself with this evening in Veenhoeve,
that sweet restaurant, in the mean time allowing my self to be moved by the tender way the owner/mother hugged her 16 year old son.

Alone is good, Colour: cobalt blue, red. Loneliness is grey, a haze that hides the horizon. Absent
shoulder. So, when in that gloomy predicament, I pray to all those I love, please keep welcoming
me as a guest in your life.
But my colour is blue.

23 Pork at Mao Jia

Its 12.44 Beijing time. In my apartment at Riversides, Shan Sui, meaning "water" and "mountain". Weather cool, dont see any sun from my study and I dont care, always better
than the usual 35 or 40 degrees, though I dont care about that either- I just slow down.
On my 9th trip since october 17, I slept well and long- the beneficial effect of a two hours delay.
At the exit I had an unexpexted reception of kind people, one of them the habitual driver. I described him earlier and I keep respecting him for the dedicated way he performs his duties.
During the trip I detected new proof. Every 5 minutes he seems to restart. He straigthens his
back and makes that movement atletes show before the start: he shakes his shoulders, makes
fists (one after the other!) and loosens them. And then on for the next stretch of tarmac- very
quiet yesterday. I imitated him and he recognized his habit. Laughed. Then he complimented me with a loss of weight by admiringly putting a flat hand on my stomach. I am not sure I deserved that gentle gesture.
While typing- always with two fingers, and as fast as they can be- I enjoy the tiniest sigaret
I ever smoked. Its called CAPRI and not much bigger than a matchstick. Menthol. Superslim.
From the USA. I got half a package of the lady R who joined me for a businesslunch with A,
the senior account manager of a firm that may help SchoutenChina by opening her nationwide
distibutionchannel.
This meeting took place in Mao Jia. A had made a reservation in a seperate room, not unusual
in Chinese restaurants.

When you carve a dead pork, you first have to force your way through the tough pigskin. After that you will experience a sudden fastening of the speed of your knive, because it glides through
the thick layer of fat. After that you hit the muscles, the flesh.
This three layerd piece of the pig( skin, fat, flesh) was the lifelong delicatesse the chairman, the founder of the Chinese Republic, kept enjoying until his last days.
And that delicatesse was offered to me, guest of honor, in my chair facing the door. And yes
I really liked it. I ate too much there in MaoJia, the restaurant offering food from Hunan, where
the chairman was born. Simple food, rich food. I read somewhere, he caressed this food, also
to honor the simple village life, when times were harsh and heroic.

Just before I left I finished my novel. Gave it to read to Anne, Monique, Carry and Willem. The
book is not about me, but about a 43 year old character living his rich life deepdown in a dutch
polder untill things happen he no longer can control: old pains he cannot longer hide from, fraud
and the loss of ideals. " How can you attach to people. love them who once will leave you, betray
you." Thats not the story, thats the theme.
I placed the story in a polder, resembling the polder I live in Holland: de Bommelerwaard.
Zaltbommel is the main town. Thinking about my diner at MaoJia it comes to my mind
how poor the people uede to be in that polder. The peasant family very often raised a pig. Their only extravagance. Slaugthered the beast just in time for Christmas. I am talking about 90 years ago, when the social revolution in Holland not yet had taken place. Pig food a delicatesse for those who could afford.
I ate far too much from the chairmans delicatesse.
" Why," the elegant R asked.
I could have said:' Out of solidarity with my grandparents and their parents." But that
would have been a lie.
"It was delicious," I said.
"Think of your health." R riposted.
"Next time," I said.
I knew of course, it would take me 3 days to overcome the beneficial but poundsgaining
effect of the chairmans' delicatesse.
How did he manage, I wonder.

22 Spoiled? My father and his aircooled shipengine

I only have to open my eyes, focus and a memory pops up. Now, at this very moment, my father
comes into my mind. Its 11.00 in the dutch morning. Just finished my mails. They almost concerned my 9th trip to China. Taxi will arrive 14.30.
Yesterday I could finish all the officematters and yes: there now is a natural pause in the flow of
work, so I can leave quietly.
Goals in China: meet high ranking officials at the Dutch Embassy, hiring the COO for SchoutenChina ( I mean speaking with 6 apllicants) And have lunches diners with new contacts useful for SchoutenChina.
Outside, my window shows a rippled Lake, whipped by an increasing western wind. All the redwhiteblue flags are ratling at their poles. A couple of sailing boats are fighting the white crested waves. Inside Skyradio softens me up with sweet middle of the road music. Behind my
back on the kitchenette The Senseocoffeeapparatus is screaming at me, but though I crave
for the brown watered drug I am firm: first finish this Blog.

When I cleared the table I sit on, I detected the advertisement Bobbiaan printed from Ebay. It
shows a 5 meter boat. White, shallow, easy. But more important: it is powered by an electromotor. I will buy this one, for the long summernights ahead of me. Noiselessly cruising
the Lake over calm waters heading for the setting sun and staring at the magnificent evening
clouds, pink and rosefingered.

Forty or more years ago our family owned a wooden sailing ship and for reasons of safety and
comfort it needed an auxiliary. Normally a Diesel is installed, deepdown under the floor and always watercooled. Of course: cooled by water. "deepdown under the floor"there is not enough
fresh air to do the cooling.
But my stubborn father decided differently. He bought a second hand VW engine- aircooled and he installed the black monster deepdown in the hull.
It was an excellent engine. It roared like a tiger, gave power like an elephant. The propeler
propelled. Our ship easy made 6 knots. All this however for only 13 minutes. Not that we- my
mother, my 3 brothers or 1 sister- cared about the tropical heat building up inside the ship: the
motor did, overheated like a burning furnace. It just stopped, where ever it felt necessary: in the
middle of a river, while landing, it did what it should do without the requiered cooling: it broke
down.
Not my father however.
After 2 or three of those experiencesdhe started thinking. And yes, he invented the first
working aircooled auxiliary shipengine in the world.
How?
Just by installing pipes from the motor to the backend of the ship. Ans when they got hot too
he folded them in layers of abestos (why not, we are all alive still, my father and mother died very old). It took him 2 months hard work.
It worked. Our boat was named"Swarte Hont" , black dog in english, a pirate name, very appropriate, because when on motor our Black Dog resembled a steamingship with all that
hot air pouring out of the tubes.
Of course there were people who thought my father crazy and we as his childen did not always like that kind of attention. He just laughed.
So here I am looking at that picture of that electrically powered boat, I bought within 5 minutes. Yes, I am spoiled. But warming up at the memory of Hein, my father, I immediately
get some comfort. Yes, I think, in some ways I resemble him: I am at least as crazy.

I will call my electrically powered toy with the only suitable name.
Swarte Hont.