Hi folks !

Yeah, just confirmed , just got my super expensive flight ticket confirmed with the worlds best airline – yes, Air Canada.

On Saturday am flying to Vancouver then next day to , hard to believe , Beijing. Yeah , bit the bullet . Gotta keep my statistical average up there, to 3 China visits a year . A.C. luvs me cuz of the air miles. C.G keeps A.C afloat – yes sir !

In late June there’s gonna be an International olympics conference at Renmin Daxue (people’s university) in Beijing and they’re inviting world experts to talk about different academic stuff related to the olympics. So my speech is something like “On the sustainable development of the olympics economy from the viewpoint of Athens and Beijing”. I have a powerpoint presentation plus a paper written. Ya gotta be there to see it , but no prob cuz i can always send you an abstract (summary) if u want details but were afraid to ask. Then 2 weeks later there’e gonna be another international forum (forum, not conference, pay attention !) about the burgeoning creative industries in China. So they want me to give a speech about that … plus sing a song at the conference … umm forum. Well, ok. But I gotta come up with a speech about creative industries in China. So i borrowed a speech … this week … from the Canada Council ! Yeah , well, you see this past week i got an invite from the National Press Club here in Ottawa to attend a (horrors!) 7:30 am breakfast speech to be given by a senior manager from the Canada Council last Friday. And you’ll never guess the name of the speech , so u really wanna know ? “Canadian artists – new architects of our communities” i.e. a talk about the social and economic impact of the arts in Canada . Since i can count (i do have a ph.d in stats you know) then i put 1 and 1 together and decided that Chinese creative industries means culture industries which means the arts ! So i can ‘borrow’ this Canada Council speech and adapt it for the Beijing speech . Smart eh ! And last but not least they want me to be involved in training Chinese volunteers for the upcoming 2008 olympics. Thats a lot of volunteers. I like big numbers.

Will keep you posted. Don’t forget my new CD ‘George from Athens to Beijing’ will be out in July. Go to the DVD section to check it out .

Luv, George