From Paris to The Netherlands

Earthquake in China , not much to say , when my new job settles , I will be in that part of China for one month to help MY People , not much I could do , but I will do my best , we're heart connected ...

China and Chinese government show what should be done during this disaster , this new leading party worths a respect , I love them , as much as I love my country , my language , my culture , my people ...

Last week was not good , at least to my understanding and my wishes ...

Quite a lot of information around , you barely make Friend friends in the job , we're business connected ... Jealousy is a topic forever , that's just human being ... my wish was all the competitios are positive , aiming to make everybody better and better , the real world told me the competitions are just brutal , nobody would be happy for your doing better ...Doing communication is to make the job better or to make the people in a better performed way , the real world told me a lot are just quite waiting for your mistakes and make them bigger and 'well-known' , One and a half month in this ' real world ' , I've seen quite a lot of human weaknesses and darknesses ... As everybody would have the thinking in mind that she/he is just arriving , she/he is so ambitious ... Living in my world thinking just doing the job well and keeping running after my dreams of living all around the world , experiencing all the different cultures in the world , that's just a dream and as one of my 'friends' in this company told me that ' JJ , you've to learn how to protect yourself here... ' Guess what , I suddently , understand Louis , the guy who left Paris for Afghanistan , left his 'bright' career for an unknown world , what can I say , there's 'ambitious' people everywhere , there's mean or called smart people everywhere , however , I do believe I DO NOT want to be smart in this way , maybe the kite running thing , the landscape , the historical monuments of this century would satisfy me in a better way than the ' Real World ' is doing ...

One thing to mention here is French culture could never work out with a Chinese says , when you’re in Rome , do as Romans do , but when you’re in business with Chinese , do as a Chinese do . Here I’m coming to conclude the major differences in business mind-set :
• A ‘good’ business to a French might be a very bad one to a Chinese , the reasons could be --- Chinese are not paying a fortune for the nice design in French decoration , they’re basically just respecting pretty well the rule in the French ‘ Fonds de commerce ‘ business , says , ‘ we’re buying the right to use this space , there’s nothing to do with them for the fortune the French paid for their way of decoration ‘
• A ‘CA’ doesn’t mean that much to a Chinese than it meant to a French . By the way , for information CA – the revenues in English term , says we don’t really care how much revenues you sell , because we’re doing completely different business anyway . However , some of my Chinese customers are starting noticing the CA in the French balance sheet , here I’m sorry to mention , French balance sheet is just so pointless to me , I’ve been trying to understand the mind-set of Chinese who even don’t perfectly understand French language , how could they deal with the complex and useless French BILAN , then figuring out that they’re actually just acting , and here acting , I meant ACTING in real term , says , they’re just pretending that they have ideas about how to value a business in order to avoid the cliché that Chinese non-french speakers are just easily to be cheated . I’m here neither to defend French nor Chinese , Chinese just don’t understand the real term in French Balance Sheet as most of French .
• Don’t do paper thing ! That sounds not very English , but it’s hard to explain in any language , that , Chinese just hate paper stuff . A very simple example , a Chinese customer came to our office , I received him , nice talking , conversation went perfectly , presenting the business which correspond to his research , however it didn’t end up happily because the basic policy in French real estate company is ‘ do ask your customer to sign something called ‘ bon visite ‘ , which to me as well , don’t make that much sense if we asked someone to sign it without asking for the identity card , says I could sign my name as GEORGE BUSH , how could you know that I’m Jingjing LIU not Maggie Chuang something … Running out of the topic here , back to my customer story , he didn’t want to sign the ‘bon visit’ for a pretty logical reason because he didn’t understand what the hell is written on the ‘carnet de bon visite ‘ , I completely understand his situation , you don’t sign anything which you don’t understand , how about people just want you to donate all your property for free and just ask you to sign ??? I successfully persuaded him to sign and he just told me that ‘ I sign because I do trust you as a Chinese , if that’s a French , I would never sign , I don’t believe them ‘ WELL , Chinese 1 , and French 0 !!!! Joking here ! Seriously , It would be really hard for a Chinese to accept a very French way of working , no one wins , no one loses , it’s just the rule of this game , that’s culture and mind-set , nothing that much you could do with it , and for a French , if he/she could make it , then I would say ‘ BRAVO ‘
• Money is a problem , and Money is never a problem . I’ve no idea how my Chinese customers gather money , the point which surprised me is I’ve seen a lot of them having less than 1000euros in their bank account , came to visit something valuing up to 300,000euros , as soon as they took the decision to take this business , they got a full account 300,000euros ten days after the decision-making , that was just amazing , they were robbing or something ? Another idea came up right after they paid … Joking here again , for sure , they definitely didn’t rob or steal or doing anything bad to get these huge amounts money , they’re just behaving very Chinese , hiding how rich they actually are !!!

That was last sunday -- Musee de la mode

One bicycle for two , how sweet it was , poor my TaraJarmon outlet , italien boots ...

Balenciaga is on in paris , very arty , very elegant , I could have ran into Balenciaga flagshop in Av Montaigne immediately paying a fortune for a 1954 dress , Jeremy stopped me ' calm down , that's for ladies in early 50s , besides in theater ...' I'm over sometimes , I know it ...

The 2nd floor of the museum is 'Art nouveau in art decoratif ' , that reminded me Richard who's in Beijing right now , dunno why ... the furnitures , the chairs , the beds , by the way , I saw the first sofa bed in the world , that was WOW , very ugly

Diner time , topic from the early painted limestone in Egypt to 'venus de milo ' from Greek , from ' Cupid playing with a butterfly ' to very italien ' Eros and Psyche ' , a glass of Bordeaux 1998 hand , very french happy hour ...

Which reminds me the conversation with Mr Lee from Ascott Singapore days ago , ' give me your CV , I would bring it back to Singapore next week and u would have an interview with our HR ' , very nice offer from Ascott group , an international group which owns billions of property in France , billions in europe , billions in Asia as well as in the states , and the one who asked me for CV , Mr LEE , the CEO of Ascott Group , my friends said ' you don't know how lucky you are !!! That would be an opportunity which happenes once only in the life ' ' maybe , I dunno ... ' I'm not ready to quit paris maybe , or more like there's something and someone become more and more important in my life , I'm not convienced by myself that life would be easier with nice offer but being alone in Singapore ... That's the reason why it took me three days to finish a motivation letter for Ascott group , but not yet done ... why I kept telling myself ' I would make it tomorrow ' , why I kept the Ascott homepage on and off with a dulk look in from of my PC ... Maybe , a very reliable word in life ...

When I walked out the office today , my boss told me ' ça va aller' , maybe , I donno , sometimes I'm so expecting this coming friday when I would have my presentation for one of our biggest investments for this quater , but most of the time , I'm just scared , a 15million euros project would be lost because of my poor performance . There's still 2 days , and I'm not ready at all

I've no idea how people usually deal with pressure , but for me , I donno how , honestly . I've been nervous for a week since got the call for this RDV , since being determined to carry on this project alone , shouting at my boyfriend , he said I'm so moody , shouting at my boss , he gave me candy: ) It's easy to calm people down , but it's so tough to calm myself down , spending hours online shopping , buying whatever , having the presentation thing in mind , the current size of the market , the interest rate for the coming year , the new french real estate law thing ... a mess , I have less than 48hours to make myself ready , these chinese people would call me tomorrow when get out of CDG airport , my boss would check out my pp presentation file tomorrow to ensure everything is fine , and I would just screwing on my sofa , having TV on , drinking beauty tea , sleeping well ... And by the way , the fastest way for me to fall asleep is , just reading french newspaper ...