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Happy 2008 from Shanghai!


While most of the world is still in 2007, the New Year has arrived in Shanghai already. I would like to wish all my readers a very happy and healthy 2008!

My plan was to write a looking-back on 2007 looking-forward to 2008 kind of post yesterday (like last year), but since I have a child time seems to evaporate before my eyes. Priorities can change fast with the arrival of a newborn. 2007 was an absolute top year for me. Business wise it was a booming year, with traffic on Tudou.com and game.com.cn growing by hundreds of percent over the past year. I did a few new angel investments, and so far all of them are doing fairly well (and one or two are doing extremely well). A highlight was the Tibet bike ride that Gary, my dad and I did in April/May, a fantastic experience. And of course the arrival of my son Scott was the most wonderful way of ending the year.

Not sure how 2008 can top the past year. The most important thing for me is for my family to stay healthy, to enjoy what I am doing and to spend a lot of time with Scott and Grace. Also this year you can of course keep on following my business and private experiences on this blog. Plans for next year include for example climbing Kilimanjaro (Africa’s highest mountain) with Gary and my dad, and of course attending the Olympic Games in Beijing. No predictions here for this year, I’ll take it as it comes.

Happy New Year!

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Scott arrived home – and life changes…


Life has changed a lot since Scott arrived on this planet, especially since Scott came home yesterday. Our home was always nice and quiet, but is suddenly filled with life. Not only because of the screams of our baby. Our ayi used to only work in the morning, but she now stays a couple of hours longer because of Scott. We have a 24-hour Nanny that is trying to dictate life in our house (bad luck Nanny, not in my household), and even the driver regularly finds reasons to come up to our apartment to get a look at the baby. My parents are still here, but they wisely decided to take a hotel room at night (at least they get some sleep). And several people have visited already. If you plan to visit, please let us know in advance. Grace and Scott still need to rest a lot, so preferably wait a couple of days.

But I love it. Having a small boy around the house that is the focus of everyone’s attention is very nice. He can be very loud, especially when he is hungry, but most of the time he is lying quietly in his little bed. He is very active, moving his arms and legs all the time and making small sounds. So sweet. But at night he can be a nuisance. Last night he woke up 3 times (at 12:30 AM, 3 AM and 5 AM), and he shows that by crying for food and attention. My wife then breast feeds him, I don’t envy her for that. I felt pretty much broken this morning because of a lack of sleep, and to compensate I slept for an hour on the couch this afternoon. But Grace sleeps even less and does not seem to be tired at all.

I am sure the nights will get better, and even if that will take a while it’s totally worth it. A baby gives life so much extra value and meaning, I could not imagine that just a week ago. Even though I am tired, the end of 2007 is a very happy one for me.

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Hello World: Twitter-baby Scott van der Chijs


Thursday, December 27, 2007 at 16:58 Scott William van der Chijs was born in the Wordlink hospital in Shanghai. At 53 cm and 3.770 kg Scott is a big and healthy baby, and also all health test showed that (Apgar score was 9 after 1 minute, and a perfect 10 after 5 minutes). And I am the happiest man in the world!

I twittered the whole process, from the moment we left home until Scott was delivered. Lots of people contacted me during the day because of that, through Twitter or through email and SMS. One of my Twitter contacts even called Scott a Twitter-baby! Thanks for all the best wishes and congratulations, I appreciate it very much. I will paste the Twitter tweets here – without the twitter-replies that I received during the day, in order to make it more readable.

06:46 AM Going to Worldlink hospital with my wife. Our baby will be born today! Nervous and excited.
08:46 AM In the hospital now, with wireless internet. The doctor estimates that it may take at least another 8-10 hours before the actual delivery.
08:50 AM Baby heartbeat in the womb around 160 bpm. When doctors touches belly it goes up. Very cool.
08:52 AM My parents are in the hospital as well right now. Our room is very spacious, with among others TV, DVD player and private bathroom.
09:17 AM The hospital has excellent coffee. Having an espresso now, did not sleep much last night.
09:20 AM It’s almost like a hotel here, now the nurse comes in with a menu where I can order food from. I opt for a salad with grilled chicken.
09:35 AM Installed iPod docking station on top of the TV, so my wife is able to control volume & songs she wants to listen to with a remote control
09:42 AM Forgot my headphones, want to watch movie “I am Legend” on my laptop between contractions, but don’t want to disturb my wife with the sound
10:33 AM Trying to upload pictures to Flickr, but it seems the hospital does not allow that. Both through website and uploader tool I get error msg.
10:42 AM It seems the hospital has a limit on what you can send out on their network. Even uploading by email does not work, email size too big…
10:58 AM Contractions are regular and come every 3-4 minutes now. Luckily not very painful yet. Baby’s heartbeat still at 160 bpm.
11:03 AM My wife is still making phone calls from her bed, which is a good sign. If contractions get worse phone calls won’t be possible anymore.
11:18 AM My wife wants to see what I put on Twitter, so I will show it to her
11:49 AM The lunch in the hospital was excellent. I found out that they outsource the catering to Element Fresh, so that explains it.
12:01 PM Going to watch Sex and the City on DVD with my wife (she brought a whole season with her), turning off laptop for a while
12:32 PM Dilation is not going fast enough, so the doctor will break the water to speed up the process. Scary…
12:53 PM Contractions are getting more frequent and more painful now. Will not be online much anymore, just some updates through mobile phone.
01:34 PM Sitting next to my wife, holding her hand and trying to comfort her. Labor is getting very painful now. And this is just the beginning.
02:17 PM Dilation 5-6 cm now. Labor pain is becoming unbearable, I signed the release for a (walking) epidural.
03:08 PM An aunt of my wife comes to visit in the middle of labor, bringing a big bag of food. Not sure if it is very impolite to send her away.
03:09 PM Luckily the epidural starts kicking in, so my wife is able to talk again. Contractions come every 2 minutes now.
03:51 PM A doctor and three nurses around my wife’s bed. 9 cm dilution. We’re going to the delivery room!
05:27 PM Done! Scott van der Chijs was born at 16:58, 53 cm, 3770 gram. Delivery was not easy, but mother and baby are doing very well. Very happy!

I stayed overnight in the hospital with Scott and my wife, I did not want to be alone at home while she was there with our baby. And of course she also did not want to be alone there the first night without me. Well, I did not sleep much. Every time the baby made a sound I was immediately awake – most of the time Scott was just dreaming and making little sounds, but I wanted to make sure nothing was wrong. Or the opposite, you don’t hear anything and get up to check if the baby is OK. Of course he is, and if you softly touch his face and he moves his mouth or makes a sound you feel so happy.

Then when you finally sleep a nurse comes in to check Scott’s temperature or to check his sugar level (they do that 7 times in the first 2 days). Of course that wakes Scott up and he immediately starts crying loudly – imagine someone suddenly sticking a needle in your foot while you’re sleeping! Not long after that a nurse comes in again because it is breastfeeding time. You probably catch my drift, it’s impossible to sleep in a hospital with a newborn next to you.

Therefore I decided to sleep at home tonight, and leave our nanny with my wife and Scott. Luckily it’s OK for my wife, if not I would have been a zombie tomorrow. And the good thing is that I can now also update my blog and upload some of the pictures I took. I made a set of the pictures already, they can be found here.

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Ice bar at Binjiang One

Until yesterday I thought that Shanghai had just one ice bar (the one on Huaihai Lu), but it seems there is at least one other place where you can drink in sub-zero temperatures. I had a Christmas Day dinner with my parents at Binjiang One, and found the restaurant has an ice bar on its premises.

Binjiang One is a fusion restaurant located in an old villa on the Pudong side of the Huangpu River, about 300 meters from the Shangri-La next to the river ferries. Both the food and the location are excellent, and the view of the river and the Bund is also great. The only dissonant is that the neighboring floating seafood restaurant’s fluorescent lights spoil a bit of the view.

After dinner we went down to the ice bar, where we were given thick winter coats to wear inside. My very pregnant wife could not stand the cold too long, and left after a few minutes. My mom followed her, but my dad and I decided to have a vodka. The bar has a pretty big collection of different vodka brands with all kinds of vodka flavors (in total 103 different kinds of vodka). I decided to try out a crystal clear chocolate-flavored one, while my dad opted for an espresso vodka (both from the Van Gogh brand). Both tasted excellent, but maybe that also had to do with the surroundings. The drinks were not cheap (RMB 70 per shot), but it was worth it. It’s a nice experience to be surrounded by ice, in a freezing cold environment, especially during Christmas. We decided to only have one shot, and the freezing Filipino bar tender seemed to be very happy with that!

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A BestBuy Carol on Christmas Eve

Sunday night I decided to buy a new camcorder, so I walked to BestBuy to get one. I think I am one of their better clients, because since they opened a couple of months ago I bought almost all my electronics and household appliances there. The service is quite good, and they have an extended warranty program. The biggest problem is that most of their products seem to be always out of stock – even when there is no sign saying the product is not available anymore. Twice it happened to me that the product was not only out of stock, but would also not be restocked again (with a fax machine and a microwave). Why put them on display then? I feel that although it is the best shop to buy electronics in China, it is still badly managed. The camcorder experience was another good example.

At first I wanted to buy a Sony DCR-SR62E, a small-sized camcorder with a 30 GB harddisk. However, this model was out of stock. But, the sales man told me, they have a DCR-SR82E (same model with 60 GB HD) that was taken out of the box already, and that I could get with a RMB 500 discount. That made the price still about RMB 700 higher than the other model, so I decided not to do it. He asked for my best price and we finally decided on a discount of RMB 700 plus an extra 1 GB memory stick. Not a bad deal I thought. I checked the camera and the box, and all seemed to be OK, so I bought the camera.

A few hours later at home I opened the box and started to recharge the camera. Strange enough the battery was fully loaded after 30 minutes already, but the manual said it would take several hours. I became a bit suspicious and checked the harddisk. To my big surprise there were 86 films already on there, taken among others in several Chinese cities and in Germany, all filmed over the past 10 weeks. Ergo, this was not a camera out of the box, but a second-hand (probably revised) camera! I was quite upset with BestBuy, but because it was 11 PM the store was closed already.

Tonight, on Christmas Eve, I went back to the store with the camera. I found the sales man, and he acted surprised. He said only films taken inside the store can be on there. I showed him the films, and asked him to call the manager. The manager showed up a few minutes later, a young lady who did not speak any English and who brought her own English translator (assuming that foreigners do not speak any Chinese). I explained the problem, and she said she was very sorry and would check how this could have happened. She also asked me how they could solve it for me. I told them I would still like to buy this model, but not the second hand one, so she offered me a new camera without extra payment (“It is Christmas Eve and we want you to be happy”). That was fine with me, and things were settled. Well, almost, because the camera was out of stock again (does BestBuy have any stock at all?). But I could take my current camera back home, and they would call me when the new camera would arrive. OK, fine with me.

For some reason we then had to wait for a while, and started chatting with the translator. She mentioned that there was also another out-of-the-box model that I could take home if I preferred, but that the sales man told her that “it had been used even longer”. Excuse me? That means they have been lying to me the whole time. I did not say that to her, after all she is only a translator, but it gave me a very bad feeling about BestBuy. Do they sell refurbished models to unsuspecting customers as models which boxes have ‘only’ been opened already? It certainly seems so. They probably forgot to format the hard disk, and that gave their trick away. The fact that they did not write down the series number (so they can check what happened to the camera before) seems to confirm this as well, because there is nothing to investigate. I go to BestBuy precisely to avoid this kind of tricks, but it seems they are doing the same thing. Let’s hope I will at least get a real new camcorder.

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Fire & Ice – Tudou Christmas Party 2007

Last night Tudou.com organized a Christmas Party in its Shanghai office. The first part was a buffet dinner with lucky draw, for staff only. Some very nice prizes were given away, among others 2 iPhones and a 24 inch flat screen. At 8 PM the party itself, themed Fire and Ice started. This time it was a smaller party than usual (just for staff and some invited guests), therefore I did not blog about it in advance. The next party (in March/April) will be open to the public again, and that promises to be a huge one. Keep checking my blog if you want to join.

The party featured some big pieces of ice, that were meant for sculpting. However, people mainly used it to cool their drinks and put candles on it, so that did not really work. The combination of candles on ice, surrounded by bottles of wodka, rum, baijiu and of course beer looked kind of cool. By the end of the night the ice started to melt, so around midnight we had to remove the remaining ice in order to avoid the creation of a Tudou office swimming pool. The party also featured some acrobats, doing among others juggling and hoola hoop tricks, and of course lots of amazing somersaults. Quite amazing what humans can do, especially when they do it a few meters away from you.

Several of my Spill Group Asia colleagues attended the party as well, and of course my Dutch friends Gemme and Bouko (I don’t think they ever missed a Tudou party!). William Bao Bean and his wife Lisa also dropped by, just like musical star and internet entrepreneur Robert Vicencio. Even my wife showed up, even though she can hardly move anymore because of her pregnancy. She planned to only stay 30 minutes, but I think that she stayed at least two hours.

A nice and relaxed evening, talking to friends, dancing, watching some entertainment and drinking a couple of beers in a nicely decorated environment. Most of it was filmed, so I assume the footage will be on Tudou soon. Thanks to Evodia and her team for pulling this off in just 3 days!

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Shoe size 45? Mei you…

My dad wanted to buy new running shoes, so I took him to Grand Gateway where all the major sports brands have retail stores. Last year he also bought a pair here, and we first went back to the same store. He found the shoes he wanted, and asked for size 45. A normal size in Holland, but apparently a bit on the big side for China, because the store did not have any shoes above size 44. So up to the next store. Here they told us that they have size 45, no problem. So we looked at several models, and decided on a pair. The shoe saleswoman then went to get the shoes, but the result after 10 minutes of trying to find them: Mei you (we don’t have them). We asked if any other models were available, but it turned out that the lady had been wrong and that also this brand only had shoes up to size 44.

All other stores we went to had the same story, except for Reebok. There the sales girl told us they even have size 46. Great, so we once again decided on a model, and she went to get it. Five minutes later she came back – without shoes. She then told us they only have shoes up to size 44… I asked her why she had just told us that they carry up to size 46. Her answer: “I did not say that…”. I left it at that, her colleagues were standing around her and she probably did not want to lose face. After almost one hour we ended up without running shoes. Strange enough my dad had no problem buying shoes a year ago, did something change?

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Universiteit Maastricht alumni Christmas dinner in Shanghai

Friday night alumni of my alma mater Universiteit Maastricht in Shanghai had their first annual Christmas dinner. A couple of years ago I was the only (or at least one of the very few) alumni living in Shanghai, but now there are at least 15 former students working here. Mainly because Shanghai has become quite attractive to work (high quality of life & great entrepreneurial environment), but also because the university has grown quickly over the past years. Maastricht is Holland’s youngest university, and the faculty of business and economics was only founded in 1984.

The university is probably the most international in Holland, and already when I studied there most of my classes were in English (instead of Dutch, like most universities in the Netherlands). Also, the percentage of foreign students has increased a lot over the years (including quite some Chinese). Many of my friends have actually ended up working abroad, either as entrepreneurs or as (top) managers for multinationals.

Universiteit Maastricht is actively promoting its overseas alumni networks, and they even offered to sponsor the Christmas dinner. I think such a gesture is very nice, I am not aware of any other universities that sponsors Christmas dinners for their alumni in Shanghai. And that’s actually the main reason why I decided to blog about the Christmas dinner, I think it’s great they do this.

The dinner itself was of course a nice event, sharing some memories about student life in Maastricht, and discussing a lot about the life and business in China. We started off with gluehwein and beer in Cotton’s, and then had our dinner in Spanish tapas restaurant Azul. We ended the evening in Sasha’s, where we took some pictures for the university magazine. But the quality of the pictures was not too good (never use the camera on an iPhone in low light conditions), so I don’t think they will get printed 🙂 Amiek Krakers, thanks for organizing this evening!