There is a full moon in Beijing, and the Chinese say to expect a delay of several hours if you want to rent a rowboat on one of the lakes in the area. While I had no plans to do so, I now have a good excuse to end the evening without this kind of sports activity. Instead, I plan to cause confusion among my colleagues tonight with the following question: When there is a full moon in Beijing, does that also apply to my small village in Germany or to, say, South Dakota?

It just so happened that we had an Australia Day in the Otto Bock workshop, as well as an Austria Day, a Netherlands Day and a Switzerland Day. But the Paralympics are not really about nationalities, are they? This is why today's column is dedicated to International Women's Day in Beijing, which I have hereby invented (sorry Heinrich, of course today is also your day!). But that was already covered in the news.

Mindy Tan has just left the village. She is a researcher and photographer for The New Paper in Singapore. And what a photographer! She turns photography into a sport with high standards of flexibility. The picture shown here merely hints at what is involved. Natalie Simanowski made an interesting comment in this regard, to the effect that the demands on media representatives at these Paralympics are much higher than they were in the past. "They really have to work hard." While the number of journalists is not much higher than it was in Athens 2004, newspapers in the mostly faraway home countries are looking for significantly more material. This in turn reaches the athletes here in Beijing quickly in the age of the internet. "Simply amazing, all this media activity," says Natalie in reference to the newspaper clippings on the pin board in the accommodations for the German team. Among them are plenty of reports about Natalie's journey to win two silver medals.

Mindy from Singapore also had a compliment. "I think it's great what you are doing here. One can see how incredibly dedicated your technicians are." She talked for a long time with Andreas Radspieler and - the power of women again - Anne Bott. More about that in today's news. Katrin Green is also among the women of the day. What does that mean, a "thankless fourth-place finish"? In a race she finished two-tenths of a second behind gold medal winner April Holmes, one-tenth of a second behind Marie-Amelie le Fur from France and Juan Wang from China who were awarded silver and bronze based on the finish-line photo. An incredibly dramatic sprinting final.

Things usually get quiet outside the workshop around this time. But now we have a visitor all of us were really looking forward to, although he was actually announced for tomorrow: Baatarjav Dambadondog, the first Paralympic gold medal winner from Mongolia as we have just learned from his coach. He did it with his new lower leg prosthesis. "Thank you, Otto Bock," he said. Since he speaks no other English, I assume he's been practicing. 

Never fear, my thread on the power of women was only briefly interrupted by this late-breaking news item. I would also like to point out that the video of our excursion to the Great Wall of China is wending its way through the global network and will take correspondingly long to arrive. But we are confident that the transmission will be complete well before the closing ceremonies on Wednesday, so that the video will be available on this page before the ladies' wheelchair basketball final on Monday, September 15 at 9:30 pm local time in Beijing.

We can look forward to great ratings; when the final between the USA and Germany starts, people in the USA will be enjoying breakfast and TV while Germany should hold a national coffee break. At least that is what we are hoping for as we root for our medal-winning ladies' team. The final quarter in the semi-final against Japan, which was hairy for quite some time, led to an outstanding 60:40 victory. I ask for your understanding that even we, as employees of an international company, cannot remain entirely impartial and have, in all fairness, openly documented this with a photo.

Who else should be mentioned in this column on the power of women?  Maybe the Chinese lady who collects the breakfast coupons in the morning. Since I never need a coupon to have breakfast back home, I once again forgot mine back in my room. "No problem," she said. "Please go inside." And so we come full circle, since I am now going inside to send a few more photos. I just hope the video left enough available bandwidth.

Video of Walter [wmv | 1,5 MB]