Shanghai

Today is my third and final day in Shanghai. This afternoon I catch a flight to Singapore. An overnight flight from KL got me here on Monday at about 7am. I had a full day of meetings on Monday. I never sleep well on planes so getting through the day was a little difficult! However I have always found that the best way to get over jet lag is to immediately fit into the time zone you are in. So if you arrive at 7am it is best to struggle through until 9 or 10 pm. If you sleep during the day you take days to get over jet lag.

I met up with Ben Kelly who is the Manager of our Shanghai Office. Ben works with Eva the office administrator to look after JCU's interests in China. He spends a lot of time servicing agents and recruiting students. Ben gave me a briefing of what we have been doing in China. We also reviewed targets for China.

Later that day I visited Mr Bei Qiang the Director of Tongji Study abroad. This group wants to work with JCU to establish a pre-masters program for our Business School. I will be talking to that school about this when I get back.

I then visited one of our agents Edu Shanghai agency. I met with the Managing Director Li Weiping and Senior Consultant Vera Feng. This was a good meeting and we discussed many of our programs. Mr Li had visited our Townsville campus earlier this year.

After having dinner with Ben I got to bed at about 9.30 - not bad - no jet lag for me.

The following day (Tuesday) I went to Shanghai Ocean University. This is university very like our own (research intensive and very well respected in the field of marine biology). Professor Cocklin had visited the university earlier this year. We are looking at setting up an on going relationship with SOU in the near future. Professor Jun Ye told me about the university and what he would like to see happen between our two universities. I also met with Professor Zhong Junsheng, and Professor Cheng Yongxu. Yvonne Wang from the Foreign Affairs Office also attended the meeting. The university hosted a lunch where we ate most of the marine life we had been talking about during our meeting! This will be a university that we will work with very closely in the future.

After lunch I visited Fudan University. This is one of China's leading universities. Ben Kelly and I met up with the Dean of nursing Jia Hongli and Vice Dean Xia Haiou. At this meeting we discussed nursing in both China and Australia. There are possible links between this school and our own school of nursing. On my return I will be talking to our new head of nursing David to discuss a possible relationship.

In the evening I had dinner with Dr David Mcquire. David used to be CEO of Advance Cairns. He is now General Manger of the Shanghai Daily - the largest English language paper in China. It was good to get David's take on what is happening in China post Olympics.

Today I have a meeting at the Queensland Education Office in Shanghai and then I am off to the airport once again.