Shanghaied Weblog

Looking back at 2008

The end of 2008 is less than an hour away, so this is a good time to look back at the past year. For me 2008 was once again a quite successful year and I enjoyed almost every day of it. Of course the global financial crisis hit during the past year, which also had an impact on some of my investments, but that doesn't bother me too much. The fun I am having during my daily work and with my family over-compensates any monetary losses, whether in real money or on paper. 2008 had its ups and downs,...

Scott's 1st birthday

This weekend my baby boy Scott celebrated his first birthday. Amazing how fast his first year has gone by, I still remember his birth on December 27, 2007 as if it were yesterday. Scott has grown quite big already, I think our nanny and my wife spoil him too much with tons of good food :)During his first year he traveled a lot already, among others twice to Beijing and once to Holland, Belgium and France. And within the next six weeks he will visit Beijing again and make his first trip to the...

How to lose a potential hotel customer

Today I was looking at some hotel options for a stay on a tropical beach in February. I found a very nice resort that has good reviews and I checked their availability online. I wanted to book two rooms for 6 nights each through asiarooms.com, but received a message that there was no room available during that period. That happens sometimes, but I also know that if you go to the hotel website you still might be able to get rooms. On the hotel site I found that for 5 out the 6 nights there were...

Crisis or no crisis? The online game indicator

Over the past weeks I have been asked by several media about the effect of the global crisis on China. I normally reply that I do not really see much of an effect yet in Shanghai (see for example here, in Dutch), and that I am not too concerned for now. Exports are down, but consumer spending is still pretty good. Also the huge amount of money that the Chinese government tries to inject into the economy will certainly help to soften the potential negative effect of a global slowdown on China....

A Very Shanghai Christmas

This Saturday Shanghaiist and Cotton's will organize a Christmas party at the new Cotton's on Xinhua Lu, close to Dingxi Lu. I have still not been to the new Cotton's (that's what you get when you have an almost 1-year old baby and a second coming in 5 months), and this will be a good opportunity to check it out.Because we are staying in Shanghai this year for Christmas (once again thanks to having a little boy and another boy or girl on his or her way :-), it's a good way to come a bit into...

NANC Alumni Awards 2008

Saturday night I went to the NANC (the Netherlands Alumni Network in China) annual event, because I had been nominated for (and actually also won) an 'outstanding young alumni award'. The NANC was set up in early 2005 and, according to director Jacques van Vliet, currently has about 2500 members. To be honest, I had not heard of the organization before they contacted me after my nomination, but that's probably because it's a relatively new organization and most members are fairly recent...

Father and son

Scott was very happy to see me again after I came back from Beijing early this afternoon. I traveled a bit too much lately but likely I will not leave Shanghai anymore the rest of this year. To compensate Scott for my absence I spent most of the afternoon with him, we played in the garden, went for a walk around the compound, and I taught him how to jump on my bed. Great bonding, but because he was so excited he refused to go to sleep tonight...Scott on his swing in our gardenI am going to...

Early morning walk in Beijing

This morning I made walk through the neighborhood before my first meeting of the day. It was a beautiful morning in Beijing, a clear blue sky and quite cold (at least if you're used to Shanghai temperatures). Of course I had my camera with me and I took some pictures during the walk.Hutongs are still being destroyed around GulouSkating on Houhai, I was surprised that the lake was frozen so early in the year alreadyThe bridge in the middle of the Houhai bar area, no ice below it yetView over...

A quiet evening in Beijing

I like to have a fast-paced life full of hard work and fun. But sometimes I also need a quiet day on my own in a silent place far away from the busy world. Some people find this in a cabin in the mountains or a remote villa on a tropical island, but for me that place is in the hutongs of Beijing.Tudou has a courtyard here that's perfect to be away from it all. I flew into Beijing earlier tonight and the moment I entered the courtyard I immediately felt relaxed. It's so quiet here, when you...

Chinese 2009 public holidays announced

In the past the Chinese government used to announce the dates of its public holidays just a few weeks in advance, but yesterday the schedule for the whole of 2009 was published already. Good for people who want to start making vacation plans ahead of time.Next year there will be a Golden Week during Spring Festival (from Jan. 25-31), but people will have to work the weekend before that to compensate for the holiday. Labor day will be just a one-day holiday this year (officially 3 days, but 2...

Back in China

Yesterday I arrived back in Shanghai after a busy week in Holland, without even enough time to write some blog posts... Lots of business appointments at Spil Games, a visit to the Dutch university of arts (HKU), a couple of media interviews, and a weekend visit to my parents. For some more details see my Tweets from last week, although I did not put everything on Twitter.I was in Holland with 3 Chinese colleagues, who seemed to have enjoyed the trip. Business-wise it was certainly good to have...

Lost laptop returned!

There are still some good people in this world. Last night my colleague Guo Haibin left his MacBook Pro laptop in a taxi, but we did not have the name of the taxi company nor the license plate number (see my blog post from this morning). Today a Spil Games secretary called all taxi companies in and around Hilversum and after about 15 companies she found the one that drove my colleagues to their hotel. At first they did not realize they had the bag, but they called the company back an hour later...