Shanghaied Weblog

Will there be a Maglev train from Shanghai to Hangzhou?

Yesterday I had a meeting in Hangzhou and during the ride there I noticed that for a stretch of at least 40 kilometers construction workers were building something that looks like a train track. It certainly was not a road, it looked too narrow for that and it would have been strange to build an elevated road next to the expressway. It also did not look like a regular train track, because these are normally not constructed far above the ground in China (there is no need for that). What it...

China's lates viral video: 打，打个大西瓜

Every now and then a video suddenly goes viral, and becomes wildly popular on the Chinese Internet. Sometimes a video site is behind this by promoting a video on the home page, but more often it just happens all of a sudden. Something like that happened over the past days with the animation video 打，打个大西瓜 (Translation: Hit, hit the big watermelon - official English name: See through). I think the video is excellent, and except for a few Chinese characters there is no Chinese...

A short but productive weekend

A couple of times per year China's weekend is only one day. This weekend is one of those times, because tomorrow (Sunday) will be a regular working day. In two weeks we will have the next working weekend, where we will have to work on Saturday. The reason is that China will have a week off next week (actually from next Thursday onwards) for China 60th anniversary and for the Mid-Autumn festival, and that part of the extra days off have to be compensated by working on weekends.I actually like to...

Yahoo & China

I hardly ever use Yahoo in China without a proxy, but when I recently logged into my account with my VPN turned off I got the message above. Yahoo is specifically asking its customers if they mind that their data would be stored on servers located in China. They note that 'privacy protections provided by China may be different from those provided by your country'.Do any other foreign Internet companies that are active in China also give users the choice where their data will be stored? This is...

Finally better economy class seats on KLM flights

When flying from Shanghai to The Netherlands I normally use KLM, because it's the only airline with direct flights. When flying business class the long flight is doable, but when I fly economy (or as KLM pursers still often call it "tourist class") I hate the flight. The cattle class seats are too small, have no legroom and you cannot put them backwards too much. But things will start to look a bit better for coach class passengers from December onwards.In the front part of economy, where seats...

Happy Birthday to my blog: 5 years old today!

Exactly 5 years ago I started this blog, at that time still at another location and from August 2005 at http://www.marc.cn. My first posts were links that I shared with my readers (likely just my parents at that time :-), like people now normally share them on Twitter. In October I started with more 'normal' blog posts, just in time for the post on October 16 about a round of golf that ends with "And as a nice thing to top if off a potentially great business idea was born during the ‘19th...

Murphy's Law

(Update Sept. 17 see below)Sunday night after I arrived back in China I decided to make a to do list for this week. But I first decided to upgrade the software on my Apple to the latest version. That was not so smart, because while installing the updates the computer suddenly became unstable and I had to turn it off. While restarting it I got a grey screen with the so-called kernel panic warning. Not good... I tried to restart the computer, but it was impossible: each time I got the same error...

Vacation in The Netherlands

This weekend I returned from a two week vacation in The Netherlands with my family. I really enjoyed it, and finally managed to relax a bit after an extremely busy and stressful summer at work. The trip started off with an exhausting flight from Shanghai to Amsterdam. Almost 12 hours with a 3-month old baby and a 20-month old toddler is not something I'd recommend. We managed, but I have not often been so tired after a flight. Normally I read several papers or books and I work for a couple of...

A company bought AdWords on my name

This week I was checking Google for what the Dutch media had written about the opening of the Academic Year in Maastricht, when I noticed that someone had bought AdWords for my name on Google.nl (the Dutch version of Google, so not on Google.com).The advertiser is the website of Dutch business magazine Quote, more a gossip glossy than a real business magazine, but (or maybe because of that) quite popular. I was featured twice in the magazine in a listing of successful entrepreneurs, and they...

Can kids learn a language in one week?

In China I try to speak Dutch to Scott, but he normally does not really understand what I say, except for some frequently used sentences (where are your shoes, you've got to go to sleep etc.). The problem is probably that I am the only one talking in Dutch to him at home, and when I talk to my wife or the staff at home I always speak English or Chinese. So often I end up talking to Scott in Chinese as well, to make sure he understands what I mean. Not good of course, because you should stay...

Maastricht University Opening Academic Year 2009-2010

Yesterday I was invited to deliver the keynote speech at the opening of the Academic Year at Maastricht University. I was very honored to speak at my alma mater, exactly 18 years after I started my studies at Maastricht University.It was a very busy but also a very interesting day. It started early in the morning already with a breakfast with Andre Postema, vice-president of the executive board (College van Bestuur) of Maastricht University. We had a nice talk about the university and its...