Archive for May, 2009

Booking KLM tickets online, a disaster…

I urgently need to fly to Holland this week, so last night I went to the klm.com site to book a return ticket from Shanghai. I also needed to book another return ticket from Amsterdam, so I decided to book that as well. At first everything went relatively well. The site was a bit slow, but that's something I am used to when browsing the KLM site in China. Because the last time I used klm.com was in Holland it was still set to departure country Holland, so I first had to manually delete the...
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Elaine arrives home

After giving birth to Elaine, my wife had to stay in the hospital for a few days. But today she was allowed to go home, so our family of 4 is now together in our house for the first time. It takes a bit of getting used to, when you suddenly have two kids in the house. Especially when they both decide to cry at the same time :)Scott also needs to get used to Elaine a bit. He is a bit jealous that his parents are holding Elaine as well, and not only him. But I think he will get used to it...
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Hello world: Elaine van der Chijs

This morning my wife gave birth to our second child, a healthy daughter. Her full name is Elaine Claire van der Chijs, she was born on May 21, 2009 at 9:15 AM. Birth weight 3270 gram and a length of 51 cm. Both mother and baby are doing fine, but will need to stay at ParkwayHealth in Xintiandi for a couple of days to recover.Just like when Scott was born in December 2007, I Twittered a bit before and after the delivery (not during the actual delivery, I was too nervous watching the whole...
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How do you find a good location for a wine bar in Shanghai?

A good friend of mine is planning to set up a wine bar in Shanghai. Although he is Chinese and pretty well connected, he has not been able to find a good property yet. He has been using Chinese agents, but they somehow seem to miss out on the best locations. During the past couple of months some new bars popped up in locations that he is looking for, but he did not hear about them on time. Most of these bars are run by foreigners, who seem to be able to scout these places before the Chinese...
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Tencent (QQ) keeps on growing

Last night Chinese instant messaging/gaming/social networking giant Tencent released it Q1'09 figures and they were once again impressive. I have been following Tencent for years and the company keeps amazing me with its figures. Also tech blogs outside China finally start to understand that what Tencent is doing in China is a lot more impressive than Facebook's and MySpace's figures, and that these two companies can learn a thing or two from China.The Q1 revenue for Tencent was USD 366...
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Renovating the pool – in summer time…

Our compound has a nice pool to hang out at during summer. Over the weekend the thermometer hit 34 degrees Celsius (93 Fahrenheit), but what do you think? Someone at our compound's management company decided this is a good time to start renovating the pool. To be fair, they actually already started a few weeks ago (when it was just 24 degrees), and they "hope to be finished in June". Well, I certainly hope that won't be delayed until July or...
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The Sichuan Earthquake 1-year anniversary

Today it's 5.12 and it's exactly one year ago that a huge earthquake hit Sichuan province. Last year most entertainment websites, including Tudou, game.com.cn and xiaoyouxi.com, shut down for 3 days because of the national mourning. Today you will see that many sites on the Chinese Internet changed their look as well. Tudou for example did not show any ads on its homepage during most of the day and the homepage had a different look and feel - only black and white with some Tudou orange.Last...
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New business models for newspapers

Rupert Murdoch's announcement that he does not believe in free content on the Internet made me think a bit over the weekend. So far I have always said that I believe that everything on the Internet will eventually be free. I still believe that for the majority of the content this will be the case, but the more I think about it the more I see that a shift may be coming.If you look at music for example, even though most music is available for free if you search for it, many people are willing to...
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M1NT rooftop terrace opening

Yesterday I was invited to a shareholder brunch for the opening of M1NT's new rooftop terrace. I had been there a couple of times during the pre-construction already and was impressed by the end result. The terrace now has a wooden deck with tables, white pillow couches and a hammock with a view over the city. To get a tropical feel they even built a waterfall on the roof. In the middle there's a well-stocked bar, where M1NT's Danielo Hotti and his experienced cocktail staff were making...
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A bigger Kindle e-book reader – some thoughts

Last night I was following the launch of Amazon new e-book reader on the Internet through Twitter and Engadget's live blog. The new e-book reader was named Kindle DX and is much bigger than the original Kindle. It seems to be especially designed to read newspapers and magazines on it.As regular readers know I have been using e-book readers for several years already (I used to have a Sony e-book reader and am already using my second iLiad), and I am a big fan of this product. From the first time...
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Do you love games and are you looking for a job in Shanghai? This is your chance!

For the past couple of weeks we have been working on developing a new business idea for games. The new business will be part of Spil Games Asia, but we will run it as a separate entity that has to be profitable by year end. For obvious reasons I cannot disclose here what we are exactly planning to do, but it has to do with MMO games. We plan to hire 3-4 people who will be in charge of our new business, they will operate and grow the games under my supervision.Who are we looking for?Ambitious...
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Peace Hotel to finally reopen in 2010

Last Friday I was having a drink at the rooftop terrace of Bar Rouge with friends visiting Shanghai and we were looking at the Peace Hotel next door. I told them that the place had been under re-construction for ages and that I wondered if it would ever reopen.The Shanghai Daily answered my question today, writing that the hotel should reopen in March 2010. Searching my old blog posts I found that the hotel closed its doors for renovation in early 2007, so when it opens again it will have been...
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Wikipedia entry

Just now I was checking whether Google already indexes my new site www.chijs.com (to be officially launched in a couple of days after uploading some more press articles), when I suddenly saw a result for a Wikipedia page for my name. I was very surprised because I had no idea somebody created one for me. The page contains a couple of mistakes, but I am afraid the Wikipedia rules do not allow me to change those.I wonder who wrote the article? I can probably find that out on Wikipedia, but I did...
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Air Asia – from bad to worse

After my blog post about Air Asia's treatment of its customers I received a email from the company telling me that the USD 3000 that they have been sitting on since January will be paid back to me in 30 to 60 working days! Worst case that means an additional 3 months of waiting to get my money back. Ain Izzaty, a customer support staff at Air Asia sent me the following explanation why it takes 'some time' to pay me back the money they owe me:I will explain to you why it takes some time to...
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A bad Air Asia experience

During Chinese New Year my family and I had a holiday in Malaysia, and we took Air Asia for that trip. I was quite positive about the airlines (see also my blog post about the trip) and planned to use them again. That has changed in the mean time.When I received my credit card statement in February I noticed that Air Asia charged me two times for the flights, instead of USD 3000 I paid them USD 6000. Looking back I should have immediately canceled the booking on my credit card, but I made the...
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