off....

The last 2 weeks have been fun and quite productive. I have been having some interesting meetsings, and am now investigating AIESEC launching some initiatives related to AIDs; since I have got so involved in it now, i feel I am much more aware of the issue. At the moment AIDs here is just in high risk populations (drug users, prostitutes, people who had blood transfusions), but it is about to enter the mainstream and that could be a disaster since those who will suffer most will be the poor.

There is a huge impetus to make extralarge efforts now to prevent the World's largest ever catastrophe. Already up to 4 or 5 million are HIV+ in India, China the number is under 1 million; but due to so many isses (social stigma, lack of understanding, high internal migration and so on), the next 5 years will define if in China the number grows up to as much as 10 million or not. If it hits 10 million, then where will it go next? At the moment, AIESEC has been invited to join the joint UN initiated AIDs Working Group in China so this afternoon I'll go to this (yay), having met UNAIDs and spoken to several other UN organisations.

Recently life has been ticking on; relaxing and going out; a reunion with my old classmates in BLCU; back to Tianjin to help AIESEC there; a full-page feature on AIESEC and me on a national english language business magasine and so on...not see the article yet, but should get a copy in the post soon since we didnt buy one. Our next big conference should be in a month; more info to come soon.

Chris arrives tomorrow (Manchester University housemate) for a 2 week visit including a week in north-west China along the old silk road in Gansu province with a couple of girls..shoudl be fun, although it will start with a 20 hour hard seat journey (extending my record for hard seat journeys by about 4 hours...)- can't wait! Saturday is the 56th Anniversary of the Founding of the Republic of China. So what? yeah, well its not as famous as 4th July thats for sure!