East Asian religions vs Western

Hello!!

I´m back..and I´d like to write about a complex issue, the religion......I´ve been thinking about all the differences I´ve experienced, read and seen since I came to China, and one of the biggest differences I´ve seen and thought about, it´s the huge difference between the East asian religions and the western, the Christian worship.
There is a huge difference between the spiritual and personal religions in East Asia and the pompous and public religion in the western countries.
I´m not saying with that the christian worshipers do not have spiritual feelings and faith, but my point is more about power and though it´s true that since the 14th century and mainly throughout the 18th and 19th centuries the cristian faith has had to go through some struggles in China or Japan related with the power .
I want to talk about the influence of the religions over the current people in East Asia and in the western countries and why in the west the church has such a lot of money and luxury to show while here the monks predicate the humility and the personal meditation and the people deals with religion by themselves and there´s not an intrisic obligation to go to the church as it happens in the west if you want to be a good christian..
Well, I´d say that here the religion is something much more deep inside...
But just my thoughts ..

Marketing will bring back the power to the people

Hello.

It´s been a long time since the last post, but I´ve been very busy preparing exams and correcting the final assesments of my students. On the other hand, I´ve been doing exams myself of a Master in Asian economics ... so all together, made it impossible for me to write.

Anyway, no more excuses, today I´m not going to talk about anything strictly related with China, but I´d like to talk about the blamed and sometimes whipped marketing, which for some people is the origin of a lot of the ills of the modern society.

The globalisation and the marketing have converted almost the whole world into a huge publicity scene, providing some companies the tools to become known everywhere and to increase their power and influence, some of them could even defy the governments and represent a big challenge to control them.

It´s scary to think about "cold" massive companies deployed all over the world and being impossible to hold 100% control of them, even by their own executives.

Even being a marketer, I could agree that sometimes, I feel tired of the publicity, promotion, customer attention... you could see and experience every day.

But, recently I´ve been following with interest the growth of the virtual e-communities and social networks as opinion generators, and I think they represent the answer to bring back the power to the current people. I tnink that marketing will payback !!

I might be a fool, but I think that the increasing growth of these social networks or communities used by the companies to improve the market knowledge and reach their targets, will be the control tool needed by the capitalist economy in order to stop some companies absolutist power .

The tools they use to have more strength would be the ones that will unveil their weaknesses.

These e-communities and social networks, because of the globalisation, could become a powerful and significant player in the business world in a medium term, if the customers can understand and realize the power they could have complaining about something online if they get together. The pressure over the companies could be massive..

Well, as the song says maybe I´m a dreamer...or I might be ...a midnight troubadour..hehe!!

anti longing pills

Hello again,

Well, it´s been hard to don´t have my friends just a few kilometers away, sometimes we don´t consider things until we do not have them. Actually, I did love my friends when I was in Barcelona, but obviously you don´t have this yearning friend´s feeling if you could see them often.

Now, that´s difficult because we are far away and I do not blame myself for it, it´s been my choice and I´m so happy with it.

I´m having such a good experience here in Beijing and I´ll make new friends here, I´m learning things from new people, I´m talking about topics you never talk about with some of your best friends, getting to know different points of view about the world, politics, food...and I love it!!!!!! but still, sometimes you have a day when you miss your friends, your food, your wine, your hobbies...basically you miss your culture and all the things you do care about I suppose!!!

Then, is when you need to get an anti longing pill! and that´s what we´ve found yesterday without planning it, we went out for dinner with an american guy, that works as a teacher at the same university as I do and we went to a nice burger restaurant in the centre of Beijing, in the Chaoyang district.

When we finished dinner by chance we´ve found a spanish restaurant, where they play live music and you could have spanish food, a great offer of spanish wines..

so we entered to have a good glass of wine and keep chating and somehow, we got to know some people there, we stayed there for quite a long time having more than one glass of wine.....and chatting with these spanish people, artists, businessmen...

Later on, we moved to another place where we found more live music and more spanish people, some of them incredible like an old guy who´s been here since the 80´s and is like an institution here! he still rocks, drinks, smokes and dances like a youngster!! and he´s like the guru of the spanish community there!! I had a chat with him and I still impressed!!! but I won´t talk now about it. I´ll leave it for next bloggings!

Nevertheless, the point is that I felt like back to the roots and I won´t say that I do feel patriotic, nothing is further away from my feelings but I felt like being comfortable and kind of more safe in this environment, from now on when I do feel upset or down because I miss home, I know that I do have an anti longing pill in my wallet when needed !!

Cheers!!!!!

David

The ant sensation

Hello!!!!!

I´m sitting here in front of my laptop, wondering how may I explain why since I came here I do have such a strange feeling, "the ant sensation".
Have you ever been in a massive concert or have you been in the FC Barcelona stadium when they play an important match? and have you had this feeling about how small am I?
Well here this happens everyday, the crowded wide avenues, the massive buildings, the traffic jams...everything is big, great, unthinkable, incomprehensible, disproportionate, massive...not enough adjectives to describe it.... you feel the sensation of power and greatness almost everywhere and you realize why this city has been the capital of "the empire" .... I try to figure out the sensation of a country side person or a farmer coming here the very first time, nowadays or 1000 years ago, it doesn´t matter at all......
Everything it´s bigger than your mind can really figure up.

On the other hand, the " ant sensation" makes me feel anonym and free of any ties, somehow I realize that nowadays I´m in the right place to avoid having any pressure and learn, study, play, read, cook, rest...whatever I ´d like to do without the western social pressure over me!!

Just some thoughts...

David

Almost settled down

Hello,

Here we are in Beijing, it´s been a bit more than three weeks since we arrived and there´s been no time to update the blog, but obviously many things had happened.
We arrived here on the 1st March and I´ve started working as a Media&Marketing and E-business teacher at the ICB university since the very beginning , we´ve been pretty busy since our arrival, the lectures, Visa paperwork, get a bank account and a credit card, a mobile telephone...and buy the stuff we need for the apartment... and so on.
After that I started feeling a bit like at home,eventhough, we just knew a bit of our area because this city is huge!!!

Thanks to some fellow teachers working at the university, it´s been much easier to get to know some basic things about the area and start having some social live, we´ve met an english teacher who lives in our building who´s been a great help for us, an american couple and his son kid Seth, he´s such a cute kid, or Mike an american teacher at the ICB, they´ve been all very nice to us.

But let´s talk about feelings and Beijing experiences, since we arrived, today it´s been our first sightseeing day, we´d gone to the City center and we walked through Tiananmen square and had quick look at the forbidden city, but we had not entered because we´d like to do it more calmly, also we went to the main commercial street in Beijing and we had a walk throgh some malls and a traditional food market where you coud buy scorpions, snakes....and many things you should see by your own...I felt very happy to do so, because It´s like start getting into the country knowledge and get to know the city where we live...I´d say our city???

I felt like an ant when I walked down the street with so many people and we arrived to Tiananmen and we saw see that massive buildings.....

Regarding the last weeks it´s not been easy to adapt to a new city and a new job, both don´t have anything to do with what I did before..but I do feel happy about how has it been and it is a really awsome experience to relate with the students, because though I speak english during the classes, they help you out of many doubts with your first chinese words and they´d explained me quite a lot of things about Beijing or about China.

Well, the last thing I´d like to say but the first by importance is THANKS TO MY WIFE!!! without you I wouldn´t be able to do anything of this.

Cheers,

David

Preparing the trip

Hello.

I´m living in Barcelona with my wife and we´re moving to China on the 25th of February.

Nowadays I have a good job nearby Barcelona, working as a Marketing director and we have a comfortable life despite the crisis .

Therefore it´s a bit weird that we are going to move to China and leave everything we have here,but sometimes all the things get together and suddenly direct you somewhere without an apparent reason.

Without any idea of what happened you have to choose between stability and a comfortable life close to your family and friends or take an unexpected chance to change your life and turn everything upside down. What should I do?

My personal answer has been fast and I haven´t had many doubts though, from my point of view I´ll have always the chance to come back and carry on with my life here, but when I´m going to have another chance to learn about China and its culture?

After speaking with my wife and seeing that we have the same ideas and concerns, we decided to give up our jobs and move forward to arrange our trip to China, now we´ve just started to realize all the changes and things we must do before going on, and all the fears we´ll have to go through and overcome before moving to China.
What are we going to do? how´s it going to be? it´s sure that we´ll miss our family and friends but it will be easy to get to know people there? .....

A lot of questions but a lot of exciting moments as well, it´s great when you sort something out and you go through to the next step in order to move there but I do feel scared also when I stop and start thinking about China...

The solution : no answers until we are there..

let´s work on the things we can arrange or control by ourselves and never expect anything, let´s allow that China surprises us.

Let´s prepare the baggage!!!