E-Beer Festival in Huafa New Land - Zhuhai

On Saturday the 22. September there was a really cool event in a district in Zhuhai called Huafa New Land.
Huafa is a very beautiful place with nice shops, architecture and have the great view of the river and the lights from Gonbei. Huafa is placed on the other side of the river from Gongbei.

The event was an electronic beer festival, with great International DJ's playing different styles of music like House and Dupstep. The event was really well implemented but unfortunately lasted only a few hours from 6:00 to 10:00 pm.  There were refreshing beers from several countries, and you even got one for free with your ticket.

There was cool dancers, people that was specially dressed up with make up and cool accessories for the guests to laugh and have fun with. At the event also had a luxury car show with stunning models - for sure worth a good look.

There were many people enjoying the event, coming together to good music, beers and a nice chilled atmosphere.  Lots of Beer Promo gifts given out too... After the festival they had arranged a after-party at a bar nearby called The Factory. The bar had live music and was nice and chilled.

Trip to Flying-Sand Beach

Interns from The ODM Group in Zhuhai participated in a trip to the Flying-Sand Beach in Zhuhai which was arranged by Intern China.

Located in the west of Zhuhai, Flying Sand Beach is about 550 meters long and 150 meters wide, surrounded by subtropical plants. White sand, clear water and sunshine all the time attract visitors.

This trip was a great experience for all of us. The water had a good temperature and we were able to play football and volleyball with some locals, what gave us a good opportunity to experience more of the Chinese culture. In the evening we had a barbecue on the beach. That was good end of great day. We slept in tents and when we woke up, we saw the dawn on the beach.

All in all this trip was a good break from work and gave us the opportunity to experience another side of Zhuhai & life in China.

"Come together" - Charity Event in Zhuhai, China

All the interns from The ODM Group Zhuhai participated in a charity event in Zhuhai. The event was with the aim to raise enough money to pay the school tuition fees for some pupils from the West of Zhuhai. When living in another country it is important remember to give something back to the society, and the money raised means that between 50 to 100 kids could carry on going to school in September. It was a pleasure helping to provide local Chinese children with school education while enjoying the nice vibes and great live music. The event was organized by Beishan Theatre and InternChina with the main purpose to help raise money to buy children equipment to school. There were the most awesome bands playing, from Hong Kong and Macau, they really made the evening complete and ensured the event being a great success. While helping a good course, people had a good time dancing and laughing together.  The charity event was a great success and all the interns enjoyed being part of it.

Back to school!

As in many other countries, September 1 is the first day of school for most of China's middle and primary pupils. Many students got their first textbooks and now they are ready to start their school life - so exciting!

Actually, the Chinese education system is the largest one in the world. It is a state-run system managed by the Ministry of Education. Compulsory education goes for nine years. The government provides primary education, starting at age six or seven, followed by six years of secondary education.  In some provinces kids may have five years of primary school but four years for middle school. There are three years of middle school followed by three years of high school.

China is spending huge amounts of money on education - around 4% of total GDP in China! A good example to follow.

Interns at Dinner - Rainbow Seafood on Lamma Island

Yesterday, the ODM Asia team left early from work to have a farewell-cum-welcome dinner. We took a complementary boat ride, offered by the restaurant we made our reservation at - Rainbow Seafood Restaurant,  from Central Pier no. 9 to Lamma Island.

After a bumpy 20-30mins boat ride, we were settled down and had our food served to us. We had seaweed soup, lobster noodles, prawns, abalone, sweet and sour pork, fish, pepper crab, fried rice and steamed vegetables (and beer).

Though it was such a scrumptious meal, we could not finish every dish because the portions were just too big! It was also some of our French staff maiden adventure in trying Chinese styled seafood and they gave the thumbs up for it. I really loved the 2nd dish because the fusion of cheese and lobster was so good; the cheese literally melted in mouth.

All in all, this dinner was definitely a good closure for those whose internship journey is drawing to an end while a fantastic start to 3 of our new Singapore interns who will be starting next week. Thus, I would like to wish all our interns 'bonne chance & Bon Voyage'!

Noodle Eating Contest - Dragon Centre in Sham Shui Po

On Sunday, at the Dragon Centre in Sham Shui Po, I had the privilege of being a VIP guest at a huge event that was being held. They were some interesting mini events and shows held in the centre such as Model Catwalks, Singing and something extremely interesting: A noodle eating competition!


As in most eating competitions the amount of food that had to be eaten was unreal, more than I could eat in a day. It took four people to eat one bowl of noodles. The competition consisted of multiple four-person teams that all tried to finish the noodles as fast as they could. The bowls had to be completely empty before you could say you were finished. The competitors looked like they were going to be sick. In fact the winner was trying to stop himself from gagging after he'd swallowed his last bite, as you can see in this video:

This was a truly great sight, to see fully grown adults try to over stuff themselves with noodles. It was very fun to watch and by far the craziest thing I've seen in a while.

All for a good cause @TEDxWanchai

This week 4 interns including myself volunteered to help out at TEDxWanchai, held at the Hong Kong Arts Centre. This organisation includes some inspirational speakers that have 'Ideas worth Spreading'. They are given 18mins to talk of their influential lives. TED serves a great purpose in raising awareness for charitable associations and campaign’s on world problems.

When we arrived, we received TEDx t-shirts to make us part of the crew. The day started off by greeting, ushering and serving coffee. For me this was a new experience, but it was lovely to see such a large variety of guests, young and old.

During the day I managed to catch two of the speakers during their talk. One of which was Rob Lilwall who wowed us with a story about his adventure cycling from Siberia all the way to back home to London. Despite the struggle of cycling 30,000 miles he amused us by sharing funny remarks about the trip. The money raised all went to a charity called Viva, giving greater opportunities to less fortunate children in China.

The next speaker, Robin Hwang from the Foodlink enlightened us with her family's aim to fight hunger and poverty in HK by reducing food wastage. Their organisation collects surplus food from hotels and delivers it to shelters for the needy.

As the talks came to an end the next stage was to serve food. The hall eventually became packed with guests and buzzing with conversations.



Crew members hard at work

After a long day, the occasion finally drew to a close around 9.30pm. The ODM team were tired from all the hard work, but through this experience we were able to meet new people and learn new things. Personally, I would consider taking part in something like this again as I found it rewarding.

Alyssa, Jaime and I taking a well earned rest.

 Some of us went to the after party at the Kee Club in Lan Kwai Fong. This was a lavish private members club where they were serving free drinks. It was an offer I could not miss!