hmm it was a lot of work. I've first been to china 6 years ago and liked it so much, I decided to set it as a goal to one day be able to live there as an expat with a good job.

Well I'm still a long way from that, but since I knew what I wanted, I started to base some decisions of that: 6 years ago I just started working as a software developer for a small company. When I came back, I started a job as a software engineer at a bigger (international) company, hoping that I could find a company that would employ me in china. I did an internship during my annual holiday in china, but nothing came of it.

A bit later I quit that job, moved to a bigger city and became an IT consultant, hoping I could get a project at a really big company and meet the right people yadda yadda. I worked for some time as a developer for mostly boring companies but did a 2 years certification in project management on my own expense during my free time. I then was able to get a project where I worked as something like project manager / developer (owner of an application) for a company of a big corporation. It was boring as hell but fortunately, during my time there I took a chinese class (in the evening, again on my own expense) I met someone from a different part of the corp who worked as a project manager at their chinese plant. They were trying to fill a new position, I applied officially and carved out a 1 year project for me, working in project management.

And there I am now! I am planning to complete this assignment and find the right people who can hire me as an expat. We'll see how that goes..