00:03Michael's opportunities are endless. It's a very small place and so being small you meet friends,
00:11you create friendship, but you also connect very quickly with decision makers. I believe that in
00:17many places in the world success comes at the expense of long commute, of a compromise with
00:24family. Here, no, we can do both. I absolutely love this.
00:40I'm Jeremy Arton de Saint-Martin. I'm Belgian and I've been living in Macau for many years now.
00:47I first came here in 2009. The reason was to support the opening of a hotel in Macau.
00:55Professionally, I'm the CEO of ISA Technologies. It is a tech company that is based in Macau and Hong Kong.
01:05Well, the first time I arrived in Macau, it was absolutely not what I had imagined.
01:09It was very much a place of contrast. So on the one hand, you have this boom of hotels and
01:19casinos,
01:20international hospitality. And at the same time, you were in a place that is very much
01:26influenced by its history, which is Portuguese and Chinese.
01:34I'm also the founder of Liège. It's our waffle brand. This was a brand that was created by Maggie,
01:43my wife and myself, 10 years ago. The reason why we started the Belgian waffle, why we started Liège
01:51in Macau is because of nostalgia and family. The people of Macau are very open to gastronomy.
01:58They are exposed to a lot of food coming from everywhere in the world. And so we thought
02:04that we should give that waffle a chance. Starting a business in Macau is fairly easy.
02:11I think the government and the administrations are trying to make it as straightforward as possible.
02:17Macau is very small, but at the same time, it's connected to the world. It is very well located.
02:22So in terms of business, it offers everything that an international city would want to boast.
02:28At the same time, it's a village. So we connected very quickly to the community.
02:34So we thought that this was the perfect place to create a business, but at the same time, build a
02:40family.
02:48Macau can connect you to the environment.
02:50So there's a lot of hiking trails in Koloan, some very green environments.
02:56So, you know, you have business, you have convenience with school and everything.
03:01But what about nature? We have it too.
03:07I coach rugby on Saturday morning. It started because I wanted the kids to do sports.
03:13And I'm a former rugby player. I saw the club, the Macau bats. It's run by also former rugby players
03:20who are parents. So the sense of community is very strong.
03:34I play in a rock band. We started as a small idea, very quickly became something quite serious.
03:41We've performed in China, in Hong Kong, in Macau several times. See, that shows you that Macau allows you to
03:47do many things.
04:08Macau is a very safe place, but it's also a very multicultural place.
04:12So this is very enriching for the children. They learn to grow with, again, different cultures.
04:23And what is great is that the children are not only reading about the culture, they are actually living it.
04:29So it's a concentration of all these different cultures, and that makes Macau so rich.
04:35If I had to describe Macau in one word, I would say possibilities. Macau keeps on surprising you.
04:41It's a place, when you arrive, you find it very small. You're wondering what it is.
04:45But as soon as you start learning from it, you understand that it's much more complex than what you thought.
