Shanghaied Weblog

Gary Wang & Yang Lei's wedding on Bali

Last Sunday Gary and Yang Lei held their wedding ceremony in Tirtha Uluwatu, in the southern part of Bali. Gary (the CEO of Tudou) has become my best friend over the past years and I was honored to be his best man at the wedding. A bit unusual actually, because in China best men need to be single (not sure how this is in Europe actually), but I was happy when Gary asked me to do this. The wedding was planned only a few weeks ago, so there was not too much preparation time, but everything went...

Indonesian airports…

I am writing this from Jakarta airport, where I arrived two hours ago from Bali. No wifi here, at least not a wifi connection that I could connect to (there is one but there is no way to pay for it, which reminds me of Mumbai airport). I will try to post this in Singapore, where we will have a short stop en route to Shanghai and where there is free wifi on the airport. I travel a lot, but sometimes I am still surprised by stupid things happening at airports, because airport management or staff...

Van den Ende & Deitmers invest in Spill Group

Yesterday Spill Group (the mother company of Spill Group Asia) announced that the crossmedia fund of Van den Ende & Deitmers has taken a substantial minority stake in Spill Group. For more information see the official press release that can be found here. An article about the investment from Dutch website Emerce can be found here (in...

No more swimming this vacation

This morning I went for a walk on the beach before breakfast. However, the walk had to be cut short because I stepped into something. It hurt a bit so I walked into the sea to clean my foot. When doing that I realized it was bleeding heavily and it may be more than just a small cut. So I walked back to the hotel as good as I could. There I tried to clean the wound in the shower, but it turned out this was not possible - it was actually quite deep and full of sand. Hmm, not good.So I called the...

Blogging from a Bali beach

Tuesday night my wife and I arrived on Bali for a short vacation. Normally Bali is not the best destination in August, because it is high season here, but when you go to a high-end resort you don't really see a big difference (except for higher prices of course). This weekend Gary is getting married here, and that's the main reason why we came here. I think it's great he took the decision to tie the knot, and this is a perfect location for it. I am actually going to be his grooms man, but I am...

Venexia – great Italian food in Shanghai

My wife and I just got back from an excellent dinner at Venexia, an Italian restaurant on Panyu Lu (at no. 127, close to Yan'an Lu). I thought I knew most Italian restaurants in Shanghai (or at least in Puxi), but for some reason I had not been to, nor heard of, this one. And it's a pity I did not hear about the place before, because the food and ambiance are excellent!We talked to the manager during dinner and found out that it has the same owner as La Gondola. That used to be my favorite...

Proof that it was HOT in Shanghai

When I came home from my last trip, I noted that a big candle in our living room had melted because of the high temperatures inside our apartment. I am not sure at what temperature this kind of candles melt, but it must have been very hot in the living room while I was away! Outside it was 40 degrees in Shanghai when I was in India, and because our apartment is on the top floor of a skyscraper (right below the flat roof) it was likely a lot warmer inside. Glad I was not home - and I wonder what...

Upgrade – again!

Yesterday I was checking in online for a flight from Amsterdam to Shanghai, when to my big surprise I was able to change my economy class seat to a seat in business class. At first I thought it was a mistake in the website, but I was able to print out my boarding card. When I arrived at the airport I was still a bit suspicious that it would have been a mistake, but while dropping off my luggage nobody said anything.When I entered the aircraft it turned out I indeed had a business class seat...

A new trend in Dutch boating?

Last weekend I was in Holland, and the weather was so good that we decided to go sailing on the lakes in Friesland (pictures see here). I love sailing, but did not do much sailing in the Netherlands over the past 10 years. I was surprised to see how things have changed in the mean time. It seems people's wealth is really increasing, because a lot more people than before now own a boat. Several new harbors had been built to accommodate the new boats, and it was very busy in the canals that...

Nokia copyright infringement?

Everybody can freely use my Flickr pictures under the Creative Commons license, and because of that they end up on many websites. Sometimes even on commercial ones, which is actually not allowed according to the Creative Commons license that I use (Attribution, non-commercial, no derivatives). I don't mind that very much, but people should at least have the decency to check if it's OK.Recently for example Nokia used one of my pictures on its website to promote the E65 phone:...

50,000 Flickr views

I just noted that I have over 50,000 views of my Flickr pictures already. To be exact, 50,503 visitors have looked at my photos at the moment I write this. The count seems to be picking up, even though most people in China cannot look at my pictures anymore (Flickr has been blocked since a few months).Some more statistics: I started my Flickr photo stream (http://www.flickr.com/photos/chijs) in July 2005, so about two years ago. Since then I posted 4701 pictures, or over 6 pictures per day....

After dark walk in Mumbai

Last night we had once again a very good dinner, this time at the quite famous Khyber restaurant, that serves North Indian food. After dinner we decided to walk back, because the weather was very pleasant (27 degrees and dry). It was an "interesting" walk!It started with the beggars outside the restaurant that tried to follow us. They did not understand why we did not take a cab, because everybody who dines at Khyber seems to do that. We crossed the road, where lots of people were just making...