Archive for April, 2006

Gmail almost full

Gmail's motto is "Never delete another message anymore" - and that was one of the reason's why I started to use their service last year. I forward all my private and corporate email accounts to this service, so I have access to all my mails from every computer in the world.But it seems I will very soon need to start deleting old emails, because my Gmail box is almost full. This morning I am using 2629 MB (97%) of my 2719 MB. This is without the on average 100 spam mails that I get per day, and...
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Queens Day

Today is Queens Day in the Netherlands. Officially it is the 30th of April (the birthday of former Queen Juliana), but because that's a Sunday the festivities have been moved to the 29th. A bit strange considering that most of the Dutch people have no connection anymore with the religious concept that Sunday is a day to rest.I decided not to spend the weekend in Amsterdam (the Queens Night is a huge party!), but to go to my parents house. A relaxed weekend, catching up on some sleep and overdue...
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Early morning running

This morning I started the day with a run along the Amstel River. Because in Shanghai I don't have many opportunities to run outside, let alone in nature, I try to use the opportunity to run as much as possible when travelling.There is a small gravel path next to the Amstel river, so I did not have to run on the main road. I ran to the village of Ouderkerk aan de Amstel, and it was beautiful. The sun was just rising on the horizon, and there was some fog over the river that slowly disappeared....
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Amsterdam

I am in Amsterdam for a few days, it's always nice to be back in my home country and breathe some fresh air! Today I went to the Blognomics seminar in the RAI in Amsterdam. A fantastic seminar with some great speakers. I got many new ideas and took lots of notes. I hope to find some time to write about it this weekend.Just went through all my mails and uploaded another blog post that I wrote on the plane. Now I am planning to get some sleep. I just calculated that since Monday morning I only...
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Office Furniture

We had a pretty bad experience to get our office furniture for the new Spill Group Asia office. The desks and chairs were ordered through a furniture factory in Hangzhou. I have used this factory before when ordering furniture for another office, and they make good quality products and are very reasonably priced. For 2 big desks, 6 cubicle desks with dividers, one reception desk, 8 office chairs, a small meeting table with 3 normal chairs, and 8 sets of drawers we managed to negotiate a price...
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Pleurotus Nebrodensis and Great Bumper

Sometimes descriptions in menus at Chinese restaurants are truly amazing. Yesterday I came accross this one in a Sichuan restaurant next to our office (sorry, picture is not very sharp), where a plate of stir-fried Pleurotus Nebrodensis is available next to a portion of Great Bumper.What happens is that the people who make these menus just translate the Chinese name in English with a dictionary. In this case a Google search learned me that the Pleurotus is a mushroom, so they should have just...
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BWM Asian Open 2006

This weekend I went to the BMW Asian Open at the Tomson Golf Club in Shanghai. This event, part of the Asian tour, has been organized in Shanghai for the past 3 years at this golf club, and it is attracting quite a crowd.Yesterday was the last day, and Jim and I decided to get there early to walk with some of the lower placed players. Jim's driver dropped us off at the entrance, saving us a 15 minute walk from the parking lot. We watched two players tee off at the 10th, and then went over to...
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Verdict in fake LV bags

Yesterday the Shanghai court reached a verdict in the case of the fake Louis Vuitton bags that werre sold in Carrefour in Shanghai (see my blog entry about this). The company that operates the Carrefour shops argued that they did not know the bags were fake, so they could not be forced to pay compensation. But the court did not agree witht that and ordered them to pay RMB 300,000 in compensation to LV (LV had sued for RMB 500,000). It makes you wonder what other fake products are sold in...
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Beijing trip

Yesterday I went to Beijing to attend the China Mobile Game Forum 2006. This was a forum in the Kerry Center Hotel, where content providers, service providers and VC's discussed the current status and the future of mobile gaming in China. A very useful meeting, where we (Demi Wang, marketing director for Spill Group Asia, also joined) met many potentially interesting companies to work with in China. I also blogged about this on marketingfacts.nl, the article (in Dutch) can be found here.After...
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Louis Vuitton bags at Carrefour

Suppose you would want to buy a Louis Vuitton bag in Shanghai. You could go to the Xiangyang Market where you can buy a fake one for less than RMB 100. But if you want to buy a real product you’d better go to an international chain store, to make sure you get the real thing. Carrefour for example. And what does the bag cost there? Only RMB 49.90 (less than EUR 5) as employees of LV found out! Because the retail price is normally around RMB 9000 this did not smell right. And indeed, the bags...
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Games.net.cn live

Another Spill Group Asia site has gone live: games.net.cn, our third online gaming site in mainland China was launched last night. The next sites that we plan to launch are websites outside China, they are similar to the sites that we now have running here.Off to Beijing now for a conference on mobile gaming, another big market that we want to enter with Spill Group Asia later this year. More about this...
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Sports event TV coverage

On Saturday morning I got up at 9:30 AM to watch the Chongming island cycling race on the Sports Channel of STV. Marcel Ekkel is helping the Marco Polo cycling team, and he had told me the first leg would be live on TV. The program did indeed start at 9:30, but the first full hour was completely dedicated to speeches from government officials and dance performances by local school children. The cyclists had to participate as well at the beginning of the performance by riding over the stage, so...
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Toodou 1st Anniversary Party

I am having some trouble keeping my eyes open this morning, after the 1st Toodou Party last night. Luckily a large mug of Starbucks Coffee does wonders.The party was a big success, with even more people than during the first two parties (Graffiti Party in November & Life is a Game Party in January). This time there was a rock band playing in the office. The band "Limit" played a mix of its own songs combined with covers. The covers even included two Beatles songs, a strange combination.An...
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Bigger curves for Chinese women

The Shanghai Daily reported today that over the past 10 years Chinese women have become both taller and gotten bigger chests (the word breast was carefully avoided).The chest circumference of Chinese women increased by nearly 1 cm in the past 10 years, the Beijing College of Clothing Technology found out in a recent study that focused on changes in figure for Chinese women. The study also found that Chinese women are 0.5 centimeters taller than in the previous period. These changes are mainly...
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Ah… A Foreigner next to me!

After a beautiful day yesterday with 26 degrees and a (relatively) blue sky, today the temperature dropped at least 10 degrees and the blue sky became grey and rainy. That normally means lots of traffic jams, so I decided not to drive to an appointment on the other side of town, but to take the subway. I got in at Xujiahui station and was lucky to find an empty seat, next to a middle-aged woman. The moment I sat down she looked at me for a split second, and suddenly realized I was not a fellow...
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Chinese jail for foreigner

Most foreigners in China assume that the worst that can happen to them if they break the law, is that they are kicked out of China. But that is quickly changing.Last year an American was thrown into jail for several years because he set up a huge fake-DVD trade between China and the US (and when he gets out he will be tried in the US as well....). But also for smaller offences, such as hitting a police man while you are drunk can have serious consequences. And Indian guy found this out the hard...
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Toodou One Year Anniversary Party – 20:00 Saturday, 15th April 2006

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Shanghai Jazz Orchestra TV concert

On Sunday morning the Shanghai Jazz Orchestra played for a full house in the Shanghai Concert Hall. It was a very special concert, because not only it was broadcasted live on Chinese radio and TV, but also because conductor and band leader Rolf Becker had composed several works from W.A. Mozart for a big band! The reason: this year is Mozart's 250th birth year.The result was absolutely unique. Imagine the beginning of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik being played by the strings, and then suddenly the big...
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DJ Tiesto's Shanghai gig

Right after the Rolling Stones after-party Marcel, Samuel and myself went to Babyface to see DJ Tiesto play. It was a ten minute walk from Xintiandi, and it was nice to be outside for a few minutes to cool off. The tickets for Tiesto were quite cheap, only RMB 220 including his latest CD! So it was no wonder that Babyface was overcrowded. When we came in Tiesto (or Tijs Verwest, as his real name is – he is Dutch) had already started his set.After some intelligent dancing (dancing through the...
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Great Rolling Stones concert in Shanghai!

Last night the Rolling Stones had their first performance ever in Shanghai, and luckily we had managed to get tickets. We had an early dinner with Jim Feldkamp and his friend Cecilia, and during the dinner Marcel Ekkel and a friend of his (Samuel, marketing director Asia-Pacific for Goretex) also joined. Marcel and Samuel did not have tickets yet, but I was quite sure they would be able to get them for a reasonable price at the entrance: for most Chinese concerts half the tickets are given to...
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