Archive for December, 2006

Looking back – and forward

2006 was a great year, once again a year full of changes and opportunities, but also lots of hard work. I set up Spill Group Asia in January and did not expect that at the end of the year it would be a 35 person company, active in running game portals and in game development. The take-over of Zlong Games in September was successful as well, and we managed to get some big multinationals as clients over the past months.Gary ensured that Tudou also kept on growing extremely fast, the average Alexa...
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Internet problems in China

As usual, this morning when I got up the first thing I did was to check my mail. But for some reason the server from Spill Group Asia timed out. That happens sometimes, so I was not too concerned. Then I noticed that none of my colleagues at SGA were online in MSN, and that is more unusual. I suspected that the internet in the office was down, until I noticed that some were online in Skype.At the same time I started checking my RSS feeds, and quickly realized from several blog posts that the...
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The best Christmas present ever!

My wife (or Santa Claus?) gave me a very cool Christmas present. I was totally surprised when I opened the package and I had a printed version of this weblog in my hands! It is a hardcover book, printed on high-quality glossy paper with all weblog entries from September 24, 2004 until December 5 this year. All posts including pictures fill a whopping 554 pages. I am very happy with this, all my memories and ideas from the past 2 years in one book.If you had asked me before I would have probably...
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Christmas in China

Merry Christmas! A few days ago I was interviewed on a Dutch radio station about how people celebrate Christmas in China. When the producer of the program called me before the show, she seemed surprised that Christmas is not a regular holiday in China.Basically, most Chinese do not celebrate Christmas. People do not get days off from work, and most people probably don't even know it is Christmas. Only in the big cities you see Christmas decorations in stores and restaurants, but in Chinese...
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KLM check-in in Shanghai

While checking in for my KLM flight yesterday there were long lines as usual, both for economy class and for business class. They seem not to be able to reduce these lines, even in the business class line you normally have to wait for half an hour. But there was one very short line, in front of a single computer terminal. I had not seen this before, so I checked with one of the KLM staff. This person said that it was the self check-in for people with an e-ticket who already checked in at home....
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Off to Europe for Christmas

In a few hours I will be flying to Europe for Christmas. Because there is not much snow in the Alps I likely will take it easy, and just have a relaxed couple of days in Holland. A bit of running and bike riding, good food and wine, catching up on reading books and magazines, and spending some quality time with my family. If any of my friends wants to meet up, I'll be in Ommen most of the time, so give me a ring or send me an...
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Working on the last weekend of the year

Micah Sittig notes that the Chinese government has suddenly decided to ask people to work on the weekend of December 30-31. But they will get days off on January 2-3 to compensate for this (New Year's Day is already an official holiday). This is causing travel agencies a big headache, because they planned for people to have Dec. 30-Jan. 1 off...I think that many companies (including Spill Group Asia) will give the staff the weekend of Dec. 30-31 off anyway, and ask the staff to report back to...
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Gadget

Last weekend I bought a small gadget, the latest iPod Shuffle. Literally small, becacause it's about the size of a stamp - see the picture of the mp3 player next to my pen. I lost my black iPod video (probably left it on a plane, very stupid of course), and I cannot really live without an iPod anymore.I still have an ancient white iPod bought in 2002, but its battery has long given up. If connected to a power outlet I can still use it, but that's a bit inconvenient when going for a run. And my...
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Word verification

I am getting so many spambot comments lately, that I have decided to turn on word verification. If you want to leave a comment you will have to type in the letters and numbers below the comment box before it will be published. Sorry for the inconvenience, but I hope this will stop the spammers from using this blog as a free tool to promote their sites and...
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Shanghai transportation cards

Last week several blogs asked the question what happens with the RMB 30 deposit that you pay for your Shanghai transportation cards (these cards that you can use to pay for the metro, bus and taxi). The argumentation was that this money (@ 15 millon cards this is RMB 450 million) should generate a lot of interest, and people wanted to know what that money is used for. Even the Shanghai Commission on Consumer Rights and Interest Protection got involved, and argued for "the right to know"....
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Saturday night: Big Band at JZ Club

Since a couple of weeks the JZ Club in Shanghai has a Big Band playing on Saturday night, the JZ All Star Big Band. And it's a huge success, despite the fact you have to pay to get in (30 RMB), which is still quite unusual in China.The band is led by Rolf Becker, a very talented band leader who also arranges a lot of the music himself. Over the past year Rolf and his wife have become good friends of us, and we try to watch his performances in the JZ Club and other venues at least twice a month....
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The Tudou idea

I made a back-up of my blog earlier today, and came across an interesting post. If you go to the archives (on the right side of this blog, scroll down), and click on August 2005 you will get all the posts from August 2005 (of course), but also all the posts that I wrote on my old blog between Sept. 2004 and Juli 2005. I just went back to October 2004, and noticed an interesting post.The post was about a round of golf that Gary an I played on Sheshan Golf Course. I will quote some of it here:We...
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Finally I can post again

For exactly a week I was not able to get my posts published on my blog. Readers who were using RSS could see the posts that I wrote (mainly tests that I deleted already), and also in the archives they were visible. But not on the main page. The same for the comments, they showed up in the archives, but not on my blog's main page.I tried everything, but could not figure out what happened. This afternoon I finally asked Davin, who is in charge of all servers and technical issues at Spill Group...
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Problems posting to my weblog

Since Friday night I have problems posting to my blog. I use the Blogger.com service to write my weblog, but for some reason it cannot find the path when publishing my blog ('the system cannot find the path specified'). I have not been able to figure out what happened, could this have anything to do with the Firewall in China? I am still using the old Blogger, because I heard stories that the upgraded version does not work here (anybody who can confirm this?).I am now trying to post through my...
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Ruyan, the Chinese electronic cigaret

It seems the tobacco lobby is quite powerful. Just a couple of months ago a homegrown Chinese innovation, the electronic fake cigaret Ruyan, still received an innovation award. But now the Chinese State Food and Drugs Administration says that after testing they found that the product is dangerous. Of course the Chinese government receives about 20 billion USD in taxes from smoking, so that might give an incentive to make the results look worse than they really are. And the Western media likes...
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Reducing traffic jams

The Shanghai police has found a new way to reduce traffic jams: just close the exits where they occur. They already used to close entrances (among others the Nanjing Road entrance to the North-South elevated road), which causes a lot of extra jams on the normal roads. Of course people will use the elevated roads less, but it will only move the traffic jams to other locations.According to a police spokesman in today's Shanghai Daily the major reason for the problems is the increasing number of...
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On Dutch radio tonight

I was just reading Fons Tuinstra's Dutch weblog, where he mentions that Dutch broadcasting station TROS is having a China week this week. Suddenly I remembered that Francisco van Jole (from radio program Radio Online) interviewed me in September for this China week. A quick check on their website confirmed that this program will be broadcasted tonight. I don't recall what we discussed anymore, but if I mention any figures about website traffic, be ensured that they are much higher now. If you...
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Delays

On Friday afternoon the flight from Shanghai to Macau boarded on time, but right after boarding the captain came on the intercom. His message: air traffic control had taken away our start slot and we would have to wait at least one hour. Bad luck, but I had sort of expected it already (Air Macau is always delayed on this route in my experience). Because I had only slept 3 hours the night before I just closed my eyes and went to sleep. I woke up about 90 minutes later, and found that the plane...
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Macau marathon reviewed

Yesterday's Macau marathon was a very difficult one, as I mentioned in my last post. I knew in advance that it would not be easy, because I hardly trained for the event. But I did not expect it would be this hard. The combination of warm weather, a lot of wind, hills and bridges, and not enough sport drink and food along the road can be killing. And that the marathon course was not an easy one, as can also be seen from the winning time: the number one runner 'only' finished in 2:18. This...
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Macau marathon in pictures

Today my dad and I ran the Macau marathon. It was extremely difficult, especially for me. My dad is in a much better shape than me it seems, although he is 26 years older than me. Not only was the course quite diffucult (several steep inclines, including four times a high bridge plus a lot of wind), but I also had dehyrdation problems (I guess it was too warm for me, about 23 degrees), which was a a bit scary. But my dad managed to pull me through, and we both finished in 3:58:16. A new PR for...
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