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Causes of the apartment building collapse

On Saturday I wrote about the apartment building that collapsed (or better: fell over) in Shanghai. Over the past days more details about what may have caused this have become available. As many people suggested substandard construction materials may have been a reason, but that was not the only cause. Initial investigations point at the fact that the developer was excavating an area for a garage under the building (Did they forget to build one? It does not seem logical to first build an apartment building and then build a garage below it). They made a big pile of the earth next to a flood wall of the river, causing the flood wall to collapse the day before the building went down. This combination may have been fatal for the building. The official probe will still take some time to finish.

In the mean time the developer is filling up the garage again (shouldn’t they wait until the investigation into what went wrong is finished?) and inspectors are monitoring the other buildings in the compound every 30 minutes. The people living there moved in again after the government told them it was safe to do so. To tell you the truth, if I would be living there I would not dare to go back. The buildings all look the same, so I assume the same building materials were used. Can you really prevent another collapse by checking a building every 30 minutes?

People who bought apartments in the collapsed building are now asking for refunds of their investment, but the question is whether the developer has enough money to reimburse them (in total the community had 629 apartments, of which 489 had been sold so far). The developer’s bank account was “under control”, the district government said, and they also had put 9 people from the developer “under control”. To make matters worse for the developer, an investigation showed that the company was able to buy the land for less than a third of the price of what other developers had paid for similar parcels of land. I assume the government employee responsible for this transaction won’t be sleeping so well these days.

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Apartment building collapses in Shanghai


This morning I saw some tweets about an apartment building in Shanghai that had collapsed, but only tonight I saw some pictures of what had happened. The building on Lianhua Road, just a few kilometers south of where I live (I go bike riding there sometimes), apparently just fell over!

It makes you wonder how safe other buildings in Shanghai are. Luckily there was only one casualty because the building was still under construction. If I would have bought an apartment in one of the other buildings I would seriously reconsider whether to move in or not!





Source: Daqi via ESNW

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Opening Academic Year 2009 at Maastricht University

On August 31 I will give the keynote speech during the Opening of the Academic Year at Maastricht University, the university where I received my masters degree in Business Economics. I am very honored that I was asked by the board of the university to give this speech. I still remember that when I first became a student in 1991 the Dutch prime minister Mr. Ruud Lubbers opened the Academic Year, and at that time I would have never imagined that I would ever get this honor. The theme of the day will be “Innovation and Leadership”, so I plan to give a talk related to this.

In the morning there will be a symposium where I will discuss a management idea and students can challenge me about that (see the flyer above that was distributed among students). The winners will get nice prizes. If you’re in Maastricht on August 31 I look forward to seeing you there, and if you are a student in Maastricht: feel free to challenge me!

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My tweet makes it into a newspaper


A couple of weeks ago I was quite frustrated when an online booking for a KLM flight turned out to be impossible to do from China. While doing the booking I tweeted about it and I later also wrote a blog post about the experience. It happened several times before that my blog was quoted in newspaper articles (sometimes even completely wrong, like in March this year), but now it also happened to a tweet, or actually a string of several tweets, that I wrote.

The tweets were picked up by a Dutch journalist, who did some research and today wrote among others about my experience and about the reaction of the KLM, in Dutch newspaper Het Parool. Part of the article in a rough English translation, with below it part of the original Dutch text:

“After Marc van der Chijs, who works for Dutch game company Spil Games in China, earlier this month twittered about his frustrations about a difficult booking with airline KLM, something remarkable happened. The KLM started following Van der Chijs’ twitter account.

Even more remarkable was that Van der Chijs on his next KLM flight suddenly received an upgrade from economy to business class. “Coincidence?”, the then twittered, “problably not.” In the meantime he has been invited for a discussion about the problem with a KLM manager.

Next to Van der Chijs, de KLM also follows 2300 other Twitterers in the world. According to a spokesperson of the company that happens ‘on a project basis’. “We monitor Twitter and try to react whenever possible. But there is no policy for it.”

The company does not seem to know what it wants to do yet. One hour after our question the KLM adds the words ‘unofficial’ and ‘fan’ to the KLM-profile ‘Royal Dutch Airlines’.

(…) Despite the fact that many companies try to use Twitter commercially, it is still mainly a media to share personal experiences. Marc van der Chijs, who managed to get KLM on its knees, twittered around the same time a lot about the delivery of his second child.”

Original Dutch text:
“Nadat Marc van der Chijs, die voor het Nederlandse gamebedrijf Spil Games in China zit, eerder deze maand zijn frustratie over een helse boeking bij luchtvaartmaatschappij KLM van zich af twitterde, gebeurde er iets opmerkelijks. De KLM begon Van der Chijs’ twitteraccount te volgen.

Opmerkelijker nog was dat Van der Chijs plotseling op de eerstvolgende KLM-vlucht ongevraagd bleek omgeboekt van economy naar businessclass. ”Toeval? twitterde hij vervolgens, ”waarschijnlijk niet.” Hij is inmiddels uitgenodigd voor een gesprek met een KLM-vertegenwoordiger.

Naast van der Chijs volgt de KLM nog ruim 2300 andere Twitteraars in de wereld. Dat gebeurt volgens een woordvoerder van de maatschappij ‘op projectbasis’. ”We monitoren Twitter en proberen waar mogelijk te reageren. Maar er is momenteel geen beleid.”

De maatschappij lijkt er ook nog niet uit. Een uur na onze vraag wordt aan het KLM-twitterprofiel ‘Royal Dutch Airlines’ in hoofdletters de woorden ‘unofficial’ en ‘fan’ toegevoegd.

(…) Ondanks alle commerciële pogingen, blijft Twitter vooralsnog een uitvalsbasis voor persoonlijke belevenissen. Marc van der Chijs, die de KLM op de knieën kreeg, twitterde er rond dezelfde tijd vrolijk op los over de aanloop naar de bevalling van zijn tweede kind.”

By the way, while posting the picture on top of this blog post I suddenly notice a KLM Google Ad next to it. Irony!

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Scott and Elaine


Right after Elaine was born Scott was not too happy with her: she took all his mother’s attention and of course he was a bit jealous of her. But after three weeks he changed and suddenly started to play the role of big brother. It is so cute to see the two of them spending time together. Scott loves to hold her and wants to kiss her all the time. We’re very happy with our two kids, and we look forward to seeing them both grow up together.

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Singapore airport has everything – even toilets with a view!

Last Saturday I flew from Singapore to Shanghai and I had a few hours to kill at Singapore Changi airport. Even though the airport is not the best in the world anymore (this year it was voted number 3, after Seoul and Hong Kong), it is still one of the few airports where I actually enjoy the waiting time for a flight. The restaurants and shops are excellent, the terminals are clean and make you feel relaxed. No constant announcements for flights that are boarding or departing and most important to me: free and fast wireless internet all over the airport.

The airport has several gardens where you can walk around, a free cinema, a free guided bus tour of Singapore (if you have a stop-over of 5 hours or more), and even an outdoor swimming pool on the roof. You can basically have a mini vacation while waiting for your next plane! And the airport has one other thing that I have not seen before: the male toilets have windows so you can watch the planes take off and land. Of course I had to take a picture of this 🙂

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Jakarta

I am writing this on Saturday morning from Jakarta airport, where I am waiting to board a Garuda flight to Singapore, followed by a several hour stop-over at Changi airport before flying on to Shanghai. I will be arriving home around midnight tonight, not the nicest way to spend a Saturday. The reason I mention this is because many people seem to think that business trips are more like vacations than work. Sometimes they are, but more often a trip is very intensive and leads to double the amount of work: many new ideas and things to follow-up on plus a huge amount of work that is waiting to be handled because you’re out of the office. Combined with losing half a weekend on an airplane (and often also jet lags) it is not necessarily my favorite pastime. But it beats not traveling at all, during the 6 weeks before Elaine was born I only stayed in Shanghai and I was getting a bit restless. And it’s also a good way to catch up on sleep if you have a young baby 🙂

Anyway, this week I spent 2 days in Singapore at the AdTech conference and 2 days in Jakarta, to get a feel for the Indonesian Internet and mobile market and talk to some agencies and related companies. As some of my readers may know I worked for a couple of months in Jakarta in 1996, as part of an SAP implementation for Mercedes-Benz. Since then I have only been back to Indonesia 4 or 5 times, and the last time I spent a few days in Jakarta was in 2002 – on one of my last business trips before I left Daimler.

I used to love Jakarta when I lived there, and I still like the city a lot. Of course it’s hot & humid and quite unorganized/chaotic, but that’s also its charm. I guess that’s one of the reasons why I liked the place so much, after living in ueber-organized Germany for a while it felt like a breath of relief to do without rules for everything for a while. Indonesians were (and are) very relaxed, they enjoy life without focusing too much on hard work – a big difference with the Chinese. Not always easy when you want to accomplish something during work of course. Even though the people are still friendly and relaxed, I felt the city is not as livable as it was in the 1990’s. The main reason is the traffic, that has become unbearable. I am used to heavy traffic in China, but Jakarta is a lot worse. The toll roads that were built when I lived here are one big traffic jam during a big part of the day and it impossible to have more than 2-3 appointments in one day. Yesterday I spent at least 3 hours in traffic jams, which is a not the best way to enjoy a city.

I had hoped that the city would have improved its infrastructure, but that was not the case. Already in 1996 there were plans to build a subway from Blok M to Jalan Thamrin, but these were never implemented. I heard the plan is still there though. The only thing I saw where “Khusus Bus” (Only bus) lanes, where express buses could drive past the traffic jams. If they drive: yesterday I read in the Jakarta Post that buses stopped driving for a few hours because the bus company did not pay its fuel bills for 2 months and the gas stations refused to supply them with fuel! If I look at how Shanghai has been transformed over the past 10 years it makes you wonder why this cannot be done in Indonesia. A non-democratic country certainly has its advantages in this respect.

There were more visible changes to the city. I was surprised to see the number of new skyscrapers that had gone up for example. Also the bomb checks at every hotel and shopping center were a big change from before. The bombing of the Marriott hotel changed the relaxed vibe that was all over Jakarta in the 90’s.

Other things did not change, like a taxi driver that ‘forgot’ to turn on his meter. When I noticed it I decided to wait a bit before telling him (reducing my fare), and when I informed him the meter was not running he at first pretended not to understand me. I remember having this same conversation many times in the past. Also the sound of the mosques calling people to prayer were still there. I remember waking up by them while working in Jakarta, and if I could not sleep anymore after that (at 4:30 AM!) I sometimes went for a run around Kemang. This time I also woke up, but because my hotel was more sound proof than the villa I lived in, it did not bother me as much. The only time it really annoyed me was when I relaxed for 30 minutes after a working day at the hotel pool and suddenly from all sides the sky was filled with loud calls for prayer. I twittered about the fact that it bothered me, immediately leading to a sharp “I strongly disagree with you” from a Muslim follower of mine. Oh well, maybe it makes it easier for him to accept that not everybody enjoys the ‘singing’ if I tell him that I also hate church bells on an early Sunday morning in Europe. But these things are a fact of life in countries where religious beliefs are an important part of society, and they also add to the couleur locale.

I had an interesting trip, it was good to be back again and to see the changes. I still like the city and its friendly people, but after being used to the fast pace of change in China it takes a bit of getting used to the slower pace of change in Indonesia. But less changes means also more potential business opportunities, and in that respect the trip was certainly worthwhile for me.

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Nachos logic

I had a beer in the bar of the Shangri-La hotel in Jakarta with a colleague and we wanted to order something small before dinner. So I asked for the snack menu, which they promptly gave me. I ordered some nachos but a minute later they told me that they did not have nachos. Can happen, so I wanted to order something else from the snack menu. I looked at it again but then the waiter informed me that nothing on the snack menu was available, because you could only order snacks later at night. Great, I thought (but did not say), why did you give me the menu then in the first place? Probably because I asked for the snack menu, which they indeed gave me – without any further thoughts about the reason why I asked for it.

But that was not all, because then I asked if they had another menu from which I could order. Yes they did, I could order from the normal dinner menu. And guess what was listed among the starters? The exact same nachos! So I ordered the nachos again, just from a different menu and the waiter said “no problem, misterrr, we have”. Interesting logic!