Archive for October, 2009

Tudou.com again included in the Silicon Alley Insider list

While going through my RSS feeds from the past days I noticed that Tudou.com was again included in the 2009 version of the Silicon Alley Insider top 60. This is a list of the 60 most valuable private Internet start-ups. Last year Tudou landed at place 22 with a USD 300 million valuation, this year we were at place 27 but at a higher valuation of USD 500 million. The analysis that SAI provided:Tudou is largely seen as the YouTube of China, which represents a large growth opportunity as more and...
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Halloween 2009: Trick or Treat!

Today is Halloween and probably for the first time in 10 years in China I am celebrating it. Most Chinese have no idea what Halloween is, but in an expat compound like the one that we are now living in it is a big thing. On Friday Scott's kindergarten already did a Trick or Treat (Scott could not join, because he was still sick), and tonight was the big Halloween night.This afternoon my wife and I went Halloween shopping: we bought a Halloween costume for Scott and masks for ourselves, plus a...
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Short trip to Holland

I am in Holland at the moment where I will give a speech at the WECBA Executive Conference this afternoon. It's a very short and also very busy trip, but that's how I like it.I arrived in Holland Monday evening around 7 pm and had dinner with my parents in Amsterdam. The next morning I got up early to catch up on emails and then went directly to the Spil Games office in Hilversum, where I had several meetings during the day before leaving around 4 pm to go to The Hague. At 6 pm I had a cocktail...
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Scott is sick

Scott had a cold for a couple of days already, and earlier in the week he even stayed home from kindergarten because of this. It looked like his health was improving, until yesterday he suddenly became really sick. He had a fever and did not want to do much. He slept a lot and went to bed early last night. Around 1:30 AM he woke up and started to throw up in his bed. It went downhill from there, because he could not keep anything inside that he ate or drank. During the day he kept on throwing...
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Pollution in China pictures

Last week someone posted some amazing pictures of pollution in China on the QQ BBS news forum. The post was translated in English on China Hush and is spreading through the blogosphere and on Twitter. The pictures were taken by Lu Guang, a freelance photographer, who won a USD 30,000 prize for the pollution documentary project. You can find the original BBS post here (in Chinese), and the translated article and pictures...
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Shanghai Charity Wine Tasting for The Library Project

Will you be in Shanghai this Friday (October 23) and do you like to drink good wines? If so, you should consider to join a Charity Wine Tasting event at Mesa-Manifesto. The event is organized by Tom Stader of The Library Project, and the proceeds will go toward a library for an elementary school in Anhui province. The event is from 7-9 PM and entry is RMB 250 per person. As usual there is also a lucky draw with among others stays in the Royal Meridien and Marriott Hongqiao, plus diners and...
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A weekend with the kids

This weekend my wife and I spent mainly at home with the kids. The nannies and ayi all had days off, so we could spend some private time with our kids. I enjoyed it very much. Especially Elaine has suddenly grown a lot bigger and is changing from a helpless baby into a little person with her own will. Of course she is still completely helpless, she cannot sit yet on her own and if she manages to roll over she cannot roll back, but she is capable of expressing a lot more things than just a few...
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Shanghai to raise its taxi prices

Taxis in Shanghai are ridiculously cheap compared to most major cities in the world. For a few USD you can drive all over the city, and you are not even expected to tip (if you tip they will normally hand you the money back, because it's so uncommon). I have no idea how taxi drivers can earn money at the current rates.Now that the National Holiday is over and the city is back to work again the local government announced that the prices will go up starting tomorrow. Not a lot, the base price...
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Too many items in my trash

My laptop got extremely slow over the past couple of days, so I decided to find out what the reason could be for this unexpected behavior. I could not really figure it out, until I noticed that my trash bin had over 3 million items in it. Several hundred GB of data that I had deleted but that was still sitting in there. After emptying the trash (which took at least an hour) and restarting the computer it is now noticeably faster, so maybe this was indeed the...
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Bad luck: a sprained ankle

My training over the past days went pretty well, and I had been looking forward to today's run: a long run on and around Tianmashan. With 3 friends we gathered at my place at 8:15 AM, and despite a traffic jam we arrived at the hill about 35 minutes later. We started with a climb to the Buddha statue and from there ran to the next top over a concrete path. From that top you go downhill until the path stops and you start running along a small trail through a bamboo forest. And that's where it...
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My favorite running social network: DailyMile.com

I am on quite a lot of social networks, but most of them I don't really use. Only about five or so I use regularly; my favorite one is of course Twitter, but the number two is a quite unknown one where I only have eight friends: dailymile.com. It's a social network for runners, and running happens to my favorite sport. I try to run at least one marathon a year or something similar. This year it will likely just be the Shanghai half marathon in November, although I am still considering to...
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A great morning with Scott

This morning I decided to spend some quality time with Scott. His nanny has vacation and I had the idea to take him out for a walk on Hongmei Lu and have a drink with him. The first stop on our walk was the golf course opposite our compound. I showed Scott the driving range and he was intrigued by all the people hitting balls. Right at that moment a helicopter flew over (a very rare thing in Shanghai, you never see a helicopter above the city), which he liked even more.We then walked on to have...
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Party on the Square

Today the People's Republic of China exists exactly 60 years, and to celebrate the occasion there was a big military and civilian parade at Tiananmen Square this morning. A total of 200,000 people performed in the parade and like many Chinese I sat down at 10 AM in front of the TV to watch it. It was an impressive sight, I have to say: China knows how to throw a well organized party. The Opening Ceremony at last year's Olympics was already a good example and this parade once again confirmed...
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