Archive for September, 2007

PICNIC07 in Amsterdam

The past week I mainly spent in Amsterdam at the PICNIC07 conference. It was a very interesting week, not only because of all the presentations and discussions that I attended, but also because I finally got to meet a lot of my online 'friends' in real life. A few months ago I actively started Twittering, and through Twitter I got to know a lot of people quite well, without ever meeting several of them in real life. Among many others I finally got to meet Erwin Blom, Holland's most active...
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Mistake!

Today the Dutch quality newspaper NRC Handelsblad blundered with the date on its front page. It's only September 29 right now, but according to the NRC it's one month later...
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Yoga

The whole week I had planned to work on an investment proposal. To do that I need a couple of hours without any interruption, but it's almost impossible to work longer than 10-15 minutes in my office without any disturbances. Therefore I decided to do it on Saturday. However, when I woke up yesterday after 10 hours of sleep (a new record I think, I guess I needed it) I was still too tired to really be productive. Work at Spill Group Asia has been busy from the day I set up the company, but it's...
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Off to Amsterdam

In a few hours I am leaving to the airport for a week-long trip to Holland. I will be in Hilversum at Spill Group and in Amsterdam for PICNIC 07. Gary Wang & Yang Lei will also be there on their honeymoon, and Tudou VC Bill Kung will also join us on Friday. It promises to be a busy but interesting week.I just noted that the weather in Amsterdam is going to deteriorate a lot starting on Monday (rain and only 14 degrees C, brrr...). I am therefore going to repack my suitcase and add some...
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Overcharging taxi driver

A few weeks ago I had lunch with some Indian business partners. During the lunch they told us that upon arrival from Mumbai, they had paid RMB 626 for a 19 minute taxi drive from the Longyang Road Maglev Station to a hotel in the Pudong financial center. They knew the amount was too much, but the driver had used the meter, and the figure was indeed RMB 626.I asked them for the receipt, that they had luckily kept. It turned out that the driver had added RMB 600 in toll fees to the actual amount...
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Typhoon Wipha update

So far Typhoon Wipha did not have much impact yet on the weather. It's now Wednesday lunchtime, and the typhoon has hit the coast at Wenzhou in Zheijiang province earlier this morning. According to the latest forecasts it won't reach Shanghai until tonight, and the weather today is actually better than yesterday. Although there is a lot more wind, the rain has stopped. I think this will change over the next couple of hours, but for now it actually is quite pleasant outside. I just went for a...
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Typhoon Wipha approaching Shanghai

Outside my window it's raining hard, the reason is that a typhoon is approaching China's East coast. Chances are that it will hit Shanghai tomorrow, and the current rainfall is the beginning of the typhoon. Today a total of 200 mm is expected, meaning that likely the city will be flooded (not unusual for Shanghai).The office management started to warn us yesterday already when typhoon Wipha was still a regular one. Overnight it changed from a normal tropical storm into a severe storm, and...
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Outward Bound weekend with Spill Group Asia

This weekend Spill Group Asia and our game development company Zlong Games went on a company outing in the mountains of Zhejiang. We left early Saturday morning (6:45 AM at the office!) by bus, and arrived around 11 AM close to the outward bound base. During the bus ride (in two buses, the company has become too big for one bus) I had planned to get some extra sleep, but that did not work out. Most of the ride was used to introduce oneself, and to introduce the people in front of you. The...
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PICNIC07 – let me know if you want to meet

In two weeks I will be at PICNIC 07 in Amsterdam. I will be in a panel on Friday, but will attend many other sessions as well. If you want to meet up with me during these three days, please drop me a note at marcvanderchijs (at) gmail (dot) com. Feel free to add me on the Picnic Network as...
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Pessimism

During lunch I was going through my RSS feeds when I came across a blog post by Jason Calacanis. In case you don't know him, Jason is a US-based serial entrepreneur and A-list blogger. I have been reading his blog for the past two years or so. Today Jason had an interesting quote on his blog, that I fully agree to:I'm amazed at how pessimistic the average person is. I've come to realize in my career is that the difference between people who gets things done and those who do not is this...
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Trust

As some of my readers know, the past two weeks have been pretty tough for me business-wise. I found out some things were going on behind my back, and some senior people in game development had to leave because of that. Honestly, for a few days my outlook on doing business in China became a lot more pessimistic. But I now I realize that it was partially just bad luck and I am getting over it. Sometimes you meet and trust the wrong people. But you need to be able to trust people to do business,...
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Sport is for everybody

What do Chinese model workers, career women and sports celebrities have in common? They share the same gym! If you belong to one of these groups, the Worker's Palace gym is located on Xizhang Road in Shanghai, at the top floor of one of the old buildings next to People's Square. As the guard did not consider me a model worker I was not allowed...
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Spam phone calls

Since a couple of days I suddenly started getting phone calls from 'personal investment planners' or 'private bankers' on my direct office number. I regularly get spam calls on my mobile phone, but never on my direct office line. I wonder how they got this number, because it is neither on my business card nor on my email signature. These are normally foreigners working from a call center trying to invite you to financial seminars to help you invest your money. They are extremely annoying and...
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Beijing Olympic ticket allocation

Last week I received an email from the Beijing Olympic Ticketing Center, informing me about the results for the tickets that I had ordered. It was a bit disappointing, most of the events that I booked tickets for where sold out and I mainly got tickets for some athletics and some swimming events. I was also among the happy few that got a ticket for the closing ceremony (but not for the opening ceremony).My wife also just got a few tickets, and not even a ticket for the opening or closing...
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Do Air China pilots speak English?

On Shanghaiist I came across a 6-month old YouTube video of a recorded conversation between the control tower at JFK in New York and an Air China pilot. The Air China pilot seems to have no knowledge of the English language, and the few words he says are incomprehensible to me. Quite scary considering that English is the standard language of air traffic control. I don't want to imagine that this is something that occurs daily, and what fatal consequences this potentially may...
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Back from traveling

As regular readers probably noticed, I did not update my weblog for a couple of days. The reason is that I was traveling with several Dutch colleagues around China (as you may have seen from my Twitter feed), and there was hardly a free minute to write a blog post. But now I am back in Shanghai again, and can spend a bit more time on writing.The trip we had was busy (a bit too busy actually), but quite successful. I traveled with Peter Driessen (CEO, Spill Group), Willem van Wijmen (CFO, Spill...
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