Archive for April, 2007

Start of the bike trip

Saturday morning at 8:30 AM we will start our biking expedition. The plan is to leave from the square in front of the Potala Palace, taking some pictures and then starting the first stage of the tour. Tomorrow will be a 85 km ride, with only one mountain pass to climb (at 3950 meters). We will camp 10 kilometers past the summit, to get used to the higher altitude. The second day looks to be much tougher, when we will go over a 4700 meter mountain pass and later over one of 4400 meters, but the...
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Acclimatization

As mentioned in a previous post, acclimatization was a bit tougher than expected. If you should ever go to Lhasa to visit, and you travel by plane, be prepared to feel a bit sick the first days. You can take Diamox (not available in China, so also not in Lhasa) to feel better, but you have to watch out because if you have AMS (acute mountain sickness) you may not see the signs on time. In Lhasa this is normally not a problem, but higher up in the mountains this can be very serious (AMS can be...
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Lhasa weather

The strangest thing about Lhasa is the weather, probably because the city is located so high in the mountains. It can change completely within an hour, and that has happened a few times in the past days. Yesterday is a good example, when we woke up it was cloudy but dry. Soon after it started to rain a bit, and that turned into light snow around 10 AM. Within 20 minutes the snow actually became quite heavy, and it was freezing cold outside. Then at around 12, when we just finished our finished...
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Tibet, here we come!

Today is my last day in Shanghai before we are off to Tibet. Sean, one of our camera men, is now interviewing some of the Spill Group and Zlong staff for the documentary that they will make about the trip. It will be a surprise for me what they will say about my trip, I will find out when the documentary is finished.Today is extremely busy in the office, so I don't have much time to think about what we will be facing in Tibet. On the one hand I really look forward to it, but on the other hand...
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Problems posting to my blog

Since Friday, each time I try to post to my blog through the blogger.com interface, I get strange errors. My ftp server seems to be the reason, I cannot upload pictures and I cannot get my blog published. Quite annoying, especially since I do not have much time to look into it because of my departure to Tibet in less than 36 hours. I am now posting through my email, I hope at least that will work. ...
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Shanghai Auto Show 2007

Today I went to the Shanghai Auto Exhibition during lunch. As a former DaimlerChrysler employee (and currently also freelance reporter for Dutch car magazine Autovisie) I still am a big fan of cars, so each time there is a car exhibition I try go there. The problem with car exhibitions in general, and the Chinese ones in particular, is that it is always extremely busy. But because today the event was only open to the press I could walk around relatively quietly and take a lot of pictures...
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Super Mario birthday present

Virals are interesting. Over the past 2 weeks a Tudou clip with an extremely difficult (actually almost impossible) level of the classic game Super Mario became very popular. For the first time not only in China, but also on the English language internet the clip was sent around. The 23 (!) minute clip has been watched 668,000 times already, without counting the views of copies that were re-posted on the site.Now there is a second clip featuring Super Mario, that was made as a present for...
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Hongjingtian

One of the things Esther and Doris provided us with for the bike trip to Tibet, is a huge amount Hongjintian. I never heard about the product until yesterday, it is a Tibetan herbal medicine that should prevent altitude sickness. I am always a bit skeptical about taking medicine, so I did a Google search. There are not a lot of pages about it, and there is not even a Wikipedia entry yet (quite unusal nowadays), but it turns out it can be quite effective in treating altitude sickness. It also...
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Trip preparation

Six days to go before we are off to Tibet, very exciting. Today I got all my clothes for the trip. Long thermal underwear and a thermal shirt - both can be worn for 7 days without a bad smell according to the sales person at the outdoor shop... Well, I don't plan to try it out. I am now wearing my waterproof mountain shoes with special socks. Feels quite comfortable. Also we have our sleeping bags, that should be good for temperatures until around -20 degrees. We will need it, part of the trip...
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Tudou.com closes C-round

Tudou.com today officially announced that it has closed its C-round of investment. Next to our current investors (IDG, Granite Global and Jafco Asia), three new venture capital firms have invested in this round. These are General Catalyst (USA), Capital Today (China) and the Korean VC fund KTB. Partners from General Catalyst and Capital Today will join the Tudou.com board.Tudou started exactly 2 years ago, and had two other rounds: a 500,000 USD angel round in 2005 and a 8.5 million USD B-round...
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Tudou 2nd Birthday Party

Last night it suddenly started to rain, meaning that the Tudou party had to be an inside-only party instead of a rooftop event. Several people also SMS-ed me that they could not make it because of the rain (as usual hardly any taxi's available when it rains in Shanghai). That was a pity, but it was still fun event with lots of friends.I met among others two former colleagues from Mercedes-Benz Indonesia (Jorge and Evelyn), where I did a project in 1996. I had not seen them in 11 years, and it...
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Tibet trip update

I have been doing lots of sports over the past 3 weeks to get in shape for the upcoming Tibet trip. We are leaving in 10 days to Lhasa already, so it is now really coming closer. I am looking very much forward to it, although to be honest I am also a bit scared. The distance, altitude and expected cold weather high up in the Himalaya are not going to make it an easy ride. But I am glad we made the decision to go. Some things you just have to do, and as most people who know me will probably...
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Creative job ad

I saw an interesting job ad in the newspaper just now from Pioco. It reminds me a bit of the cryptic ads that Google used to have, although Pioco's riddle is much easier to solve. They are looking to fill several positions, among others an account executive, a channel manager, an executive secretary and several...
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Tudou 2nd anniversary party

This Saturday the Tudou Tradition continues, with a party in our office and on our rooftop terrace. Expect among others a live band, lots of beer and soft drinks, a Wii with projection on the wall, and many great people to meet with.If you did not get an invitation but want to come, send me an email. I sent out the invitations last night after 1 AM and might have forgotten some...
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Second Life to charge for real names

Over the past weeks I have started to use Second Life a bit more again, after a one year pause. The main reason I left the community was because I just did not have time for it, and it became quite addictive. Nice if you're bored, but not if you have hundreds of more important things to do.However, now Zlong Games (a daughter company of Spill Group Asia) is building the virtual presence of several companies in Second Life. In order to follow the progress I fired up my avatar again, so I can now...
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Blogspot not blocked in Beijing?

For the past month or so blogspot weblogs have been blocked, unblocked and blocked again thanks to our friends running the Great Firewall. Nothing new there, and not worth blogging about anymore. The only reason I write about it here, is because a friend of mine in Beijing (with two blogspot blogs) said that she had not noticed any changes. She can still view her blog without a problem. Now I am just wondering whether the block is only in Shanghai, which is hard to believe. Or is she somehow on...
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Good Shanghai restaurants to try out

For a while I tried to visit all new good restaurants in Shanghai. But because there are so many new restaurants each month, and I normally only have time on weekends plus I also want to revisit the best ones, I have given up on that goal. Another thing I gave up on is saying that a certain restaurant is the best in Shanghai in its category (e.g. best Italian restaurant). I think Shanghai has become one of the best cities in the world with regards to good quality food, and a good restaurant...
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INSEAD VC – Entrepreneurs Summit 2007

On Friday I was invited to attend the VC - Entrepreneurs Summit 2007, organized by INSEAD. A very interesting conference with excellent speakers, covering the VC industry in China from the perspective of both the entrepreneur and the (foreign and Chinese) VC. The event took place in the KIC (Knowledge and Innovation Community), a new complex of working and living space for entrepreneurs, start-ups and VC's in Shanghai's Yangpu district (next to the Jianwan stadium in Wu Jiao Chang).The...
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SMS spam

More than half of the SMS messages that I receive on my China mobile phone number are spam. The messages vary from 'normal' ones such as business men trying to sell fake invoices, to more explicit ones such as a person offering the virginity of his sister to the highest bidder (seriously!). Very annoying, because unlike email I normally want to take a look right away when a message comes in. Somehow SMS seems a more urgent medium. There is nothing I can do about the spam, as far as I know (if...
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Cleaning service

This morning I was working at home before going to the office, when I suddenly heard some sounds outside my study window. I looked up and saw a building cleaner hanging on some ropes outside my balcony! I managed to take two pictures before he used his abseil technique to clean the 36 floors below my...
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