This week we had the pleasure of welcoming Adele Duncan, the new Retreat Manager for the Dragonfly @ Burjuman in Dubai. Adele hails from Scotland originally but was most recently working in a luxury spa in Spain - and before that onboard cruise ships for several years working for Steiner.
Adele had her share of "China experiences" (adventures) but departed safely on Saturday after a week of introduction to Dragonfly and to her new team of experienced Dragonfly staff that will be heading to Dubai to man the shop at its opening.

We had a wonderful 1 page feature article about Dragonfly and founder Georgie Yam (entitled "Spas for Every Man - Dragonfly Therapeutic Retreats" ) in the July/August edition of AsiaSpa. (1.2mb)

After nearly 3 months of diligent support in Shanghai, we are sad to see our first student intern, Gervais Yam from Singapore head home. Gervais has been working with us on our RnR brand and has made a valuable contribution to our team. He will return back to Sing to spread the gospel of relaxation -- and conveniently will miss the bone-chilling Shanghai winter.

We have a new member join our team this week - our new Finance Director, "Tommy" Huang Yong. Tommy studied English in university and is a chartered accountant who has been working for many years with Japanese companies - so we will improve his English skills while he improves our finance and accounting procedures to tighten up our ship.

This week we were contacted by another customer who likes the Dragonfly brand so much that she wanted to get a Dragonfly tattoo on her leg.

We are again pleased to have an international intern join us for a few months. Miss Jill Weiss is coming from Germany where she is studying "International Business and Communication in Asia with focus Chinese" at the HTWG Konstanz, Germany (stands for Hochschule fuer Technik, Wirtschaft und Gestaltung).

We are pleased that Gervais Yam has joined us for 3 months as our first international intern in RnR.

Gervais is pursuing a full-time Diploma in Business Management at
Nanyang Polytechnic, Singapore, specializing in Customer Relationship Management.

Yesterday Georgie Yam and Joyce Gong our very talented and dedicated Personal Assistant have been scouting locations for the opening of our Dragonfly Academy in Chongqing, Western China. The Dragonfly Academy will open mid-summer and will be an important step forward for Dragonfly to support our ongoing expansion with qualified staff.
After a successful day, they celebrated Joyce's birthday in Dragonfly style. (maybe followed this morning by a Hangover Relief Massage?)

Today we had the pleasure of welcoming the our very elegant friend YueSai Kan - a well-known television and business personality in Shanghai - for the first time to our flagship retreat. I am very happy that she was pleased with our service and surroundings - because she has very critical taste and a true eye for beauty. Come back again Yue Sai!

Today we distributed the second edition of our quarterly Dragonfly Staff Newsletter (Spring 2006) to all of our staff in China. Much of this edition was dedicated to profiles of our nine staff who went abroad to Oslo this Spring. Our growing family of staff now exceeds 300 proud members!

It has been more than a month since our staff flew to Norway to assist with the shop opening in Oslo. This is a wonderful photo of our staff experiencing the wonderful beauty of the Norwegian environment. A bit different from the Huangpu river back home...

"Surely," you must be thinking, we do something more every day than just search for tattoos. Well we are indeed busy preparing for our Beijing launch, but we continue to be fascinated by the reasons that people choose to add a Dragonfly tattoo. Jacqueline was planning for several years to have a tattoo - and then one day she spotted a lady in Shanghai with a Dragonfly tattoo on her back -- and she said "that's it."

We believe that the lady she spotted may well be the mystery lady we are still searching for.

Today we entertain Minmin Ma a visiting beauty editor from Lush Magazine in Toronto, Canada who is keenly anticipating our Emperor's delight. Minmin was born in Shanghai but left at the age of 10.

We were delighted over the Spring holiday to be visited by the second lady we know sporting a Dragonfly tattoo.

Miss Tjin Dewi Narotski was very proud to show us where she had placed it. We are following up with her to find the tattoo artist that is helping to ensure the longevity of the Dragonfly brand for years to come - here and overseas.

More tattoos visible at: www.dragonfly.net.cn/pages/brand_me.htm